The day of free

We are broke! It is not a secret or something to be ashamed of considering we have been living off of our savings for almost 1 full year and we actually travelled through Australia and New Zealand, two of the most expensive countries on any traveller's itinerary and because of this, they are sometimes missed out entirely. But, we have managed to get ourselves to South America after both of these countries with money to spare...a tiny bit, but money none the less. So this is where the real budgetary travelling experience begins. It was easy in India and Southeast Asia, as everything was so cheap there was little reason to penny pinch, Australia and New Zealand were so easy and "safe" and we felt so at home that it was hard not to slip into a regular way of life...but we did our part by living in a van (a posh van) and cooking bowls of bland for 4 months to help save our pennies.
Now, here we are, our final leg of this journey around the world and the true elements of living on a shoestring have begun to surface. We literally spend less than $25 for a hostel and food, with the odd extra expense on more expensive accomodatin in obscure locations and of course bus tickets, which are super expensive in Chile. Overall, Chile is as expensive as Argentina and Brazil. Peru, Bolivia and Uruguay are much less expensive and we are looking forward to some financial respite in those 3 countries. Additionally, we will be staying on an eco-village for 3 weeks to work on an organic farm, engage in yoga, meditation and chanting, as well as eating only vegetarian cuisine for less than $13 per day per person.
Despite all of these money saving techniques, you can't beat a day of free...they are few and far betwen, but we just had one yesterday and it made a huge differnece in our 17 hour bus ride that followed. Our day started off with a little sleep in, as we were to spend the next night on the bus station floor. We literally sat in the hostel until the noon check out, but before we left, as young Chilean couple who were leaving that day had a half bottle of Polish vodka left over from the prevous night of drinking, which they just handed right over to us...for free so we could indulge in a tipple in the future. What a treat, as we are far too poor to purchase or indulge in any sort of liquor drinking...those days of wine tasting are done!
We continued on our merry way to the local supermarket, as we do every single day, and to our surprise they offer loads of free samples on the weekend. So, of course, we ran around the entire store eating as many free samples as we could squeeze into our mouths. We had some cheese cubes, some Coke Zero, some Corona Lite, some olives, some pretzels, some yogurt, a nice handful of nuts and raisens, some potato chips/crisps, some random ladies cereal, some chicken with bread and a sample of fresh peaches. This was enough to get us through to our early dinner!
Luckily the hostel offers a full day and night backage storage service and you can come and go throughout the day, use the kitchen and shower and WiFi. This is unheard of in the hostel world so we were lucky and would be taking full advantage! After our free brunch, we spent our afternoon site seeing some more, but La Serena is a small town so we spent most of the day sitting on the beach, exploring markets and completing our tour of the 29 churches in the town. We also spent some time in the local supermercado putting together our menu for the 17 hour bus journey we had in front of us. I think they were surprised to see us again after we devoured all of their free samples and you know what...we did it again while we were shopping for our bus journey food. Awesome!
We got back to the hostel around 7pm and went for a 25 minute 15 second run, stretched out, pet the local street dogs (they are well cared for and not abused here in Chile), took showers and started preparing our dinner for that evening, as well as breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next days' bus journey. During these tasks, we got to chatting to the other travellers staying in MAria's Casa (our hostel). We met a couple from Sheffiled who have literally been following us around...like stalkers. Ok, not really, but they strated their around the world trip in June 2010, like us and will end in June 2011, like us...so they went to started their trip in China...they were in Christ Church during the Para World Championships and Buskers Festival, like us and they were in La Serena and Maria's Casa on the same night...oh, and they were at the Arsenal v Sheffield Wednesday football game in 1992 when Alex was there with her brother Matt...sounds like stalking to me.
Anyway, we got to chatting about travelling and 'must see' places and places to miss and before you know it, they offered us each a Chilean pastry, which is kind of like two round shortbread discs sandwiching some dulce de leche with coconut all around the circumference of the biscuit...delicious. I serioulsy cannot beleive they even gave us each one...for free. I let Alex eat mine, but I had a little bite...sheer heaven. A few minutes later, we were chatting to 2 young Austrian girls who have been living in Bolivia volunteering for the past 6 months and are just taking 6 weeks off to travel around South America before returning home to start college. They made a giant bowl of guacamole that thry could not finish, so they gave the rest to us, which tasted great with our chiken dinner!
After we ate our dinner and chatted on Skype for a bit, we were just sitting around wasting the hours in the comfortable hostel before having to leave at 11pm to sleep in the bus station until 5:25am the following morning when another young Chilean couple were drinking something called Pisco, another Chilean liquor that you add Sprite to. We were asking some questions about it and discussing it when they offered us each a glass of the concoction, which went down a right treat! I swear we thought we were in heaven...and we were.
Then, out of the blue, one of the owners of Maria's Casa said we could stay in the front room of the hostel on the couches if we would answer the door for anyone who came looking for a room and tell them that it was full. For this, we could sleep in a warm safe hostel until we had to leave at 5:00am to get to the bus station...so basically a free night's stay in a hostel...unheard of! We quickly agreed and were able to take a power nap of a few hours before the marathon busride! Of course, this did not do anything to help my application for the Hardcore Club, but our day of free was complete...to recap we got a half-full bottle of Polish vodka, 2 Chilean pastry biscuits, 1/2 a bowl of guacamole, 2 glasses of Pisco with Sprite and a free night's stay in a hostel...all of this probably worth about $50...that is several days worth of food and a bus ride for us!
I don't know if it is sheer luck or our sparkling personalities, but we always seem to fall on our feet and get through even the roughest of times. Alex rolled her eyes at me as I typed that line, but you don't get free shit without a bit of personality and that is just a fact! Thank G-d Alex is travelling with me so she can benefit from the free stuff my dazzling personality garners.