This morning, after a leisurely breakfast and taking the opportunity to use the internet computer in the cellar when no one else was around, we went into town and picked up my photos. The man in the photo shop was a bit bemused by my excitement, and grinned uneasily at me a couple of times, and finally giggled as I skipped out of the shop.

It was a lovely warm day, which is typical now that I've bought an extra sweatshirt, and we stopped to change money and then bought loads of things for a picnic. Back at the hostel we made sandwiches and took everything to a big park called Santa Lucia, in the middle of town. We used the metro to get there, and were accosted by students who were collecting donations from passers by for their tuition fees. I gave one of them some change, thinking that they'd share it, but the other one asked too, so we ended up giving more away. We have to learn not to be so easy!

The park is a big mountain in the centre of the city, and it has stairs and paths and walkways all the way to the top of the rock where there is a big fake castle. There are lots of smaller towers and turrets and paths all the way up, and everywhere gives a great view of Santiago. From right at the top, we could see, in the distance, and mostly obsucred by fog, some purple peaks of the snow-capped Andes. I looked at my photos (no problems at all, but I wasn't too impressed with the printing quality; I hope London Camera Exchange in Bath canhelp me out in Decemebr), we had our picnic and an ice cream and sauntered back. There was a procession of soldiers or a marching band of some sort, which included men on horses with swords, which we watched, and I made a point of checking out the weapons of every soldier or policeman we went past. There are loads of them everywhere, in green uniforms, and most carry guns, but some have knives or daggers or swords, or telescopic truncheons. I haven't worked out if it's some sort of rank thing.

Back at the hostel we read for a while and made supper. Then we watched Kill Bill 2 on DVD (they love their pirated films here) and Mikey wrote an RSS feed for the website. It was quite exciting. He's upset that no-one's noticed yet, though...