walk the line

   April 2024. How many years have we been going to Brussels regularly? It was always just a few hours away. Finally made it!

  Tbilisi - Mtskheta - Kakheti 

Our trip from Santiago to Mendoza was one of the best examples of Latin-America being on the "Latin time". Our bus was supposed to leave at 9.50 pm from Terminal del Sur. First of all the counter told us the bus will leave from the station 40 to 49. So could be whichever. The station was so overcrowded that you couldn't basically move, walk or stop anywhere. There were buses of different companies coming in and leaving the station every second. It was pretty chaotic. There was no El Rapido bus on time, at least we hoped there wasn't as it was quite hard to be sure when you don't know from where the bus is gonna go exactly. It got 10, then 10.15, we got a bit worried. There were some gentlemen trying to organize the masses of people yelling something into the loud speaker. Then again they had no idea about some El Rapido bus. "If it comes, it comes, then we'll know", they said. When it was 10.30 we were definitely worried. I went back to the counter ...

We traveled to Santiago with Ria on a Thursday evening, finally a bus that took less than 2 hours instead of 7 to 22 that we are used to. What a luxury. Ria went to her hostel and we took a subway to our friends place. As Ria was traveling south the next day we met up for dinner later the same night. Yes, dinners starting around 11 pm are totally casual in South-America. Headed to Bellavista patio which is a lovely complex of restaurants and bars.  Headed home around 1 am and who goes to bed that early on a Thursday night, celebrated our first night in Santiago with a bottle of gorgeous red wine.  Before Chile we expected Santiago to be another big city, so thought about stopping by for just a couple days, when actually in Santiago we were prepared to stay for four days, in the end stayed for eight. The vibe of the city was somehow so right and although we chilled most of the days and weren't too productive, there was always so much to do and ...