Night 24 - Bad to Worse in Chile - March 22, 2013

To his credit our AirBnB host, Juan Carlos, called the apartment 10 minutes after we arrived.  He was quite concerned about the water situation, but it was clearly outside of his control.  He suggested that we try the street one block away and walk towards the ocean to find a dinner place.  First we went across the street to the mall.  There was a food court there with a McDonalds, and with little sustenance during the day, it was sounding good.  As we stood there for a minute or two contemplating the choices (weird) and prices (extraordinarily high), the girl told us they were cerrado (closed).  Shit.  The nearby Lider (Wal-Mart, going by the traditional store name in Chile) was also closing within seconds at 10PM.  We dashed inside and grabbed eggs, turkey luncheon meat, some veggies, and a 6L bottle of water, paid with a credit card.  We took our loot back to the place, now ready for breakfast, and set out to find Juan Carlos restaurant suggestions.  There were precious few besides hot dog street vendors, and every single one demanded payment only in cash - solo effectivo.  One guy even suggested we should go find an ATM on the street in the middle of the night and get some cash to spend at his place.  Resisting the urge to tell him my thoughts on his plan, I simply said, "No!" and turned on my heel.  Fuming, we returned to the apartment building, now at midnight.  While I had the foresight to get US$100 in Chilean cash while still in Argentina, I had spent US$15 on the bus tickets, and I was not willing to blow the rest on overpriced junk food.  The small store (tienda) in the apartment building had some tiny, home-made pizzas, and we bought 3 for about US$6, a relative bargain.  K got the oven going and we had them with some water - awful but delicious under the circumstances.  We used a bit of our 6L of water, warmed in the teapot, to do sponge baths, then crashed at 1AM, exhausted.  In case you were wondering...

Chile STILL SUCKS DONKEY BALLS!