Get Down, Get Out

Our nine months in New Zealand were and will be the most spent in any one country on this trip. We came face to face with urban life in NZ´s two biggest cities, walked for miles through beautiful national parks and brought joy and laundry to countless towns and cities around the country. But all things good and otherwise come to an end and all that we mortals can do is enjoy what time we have and take as many photos as possible. Our flight from Auckland to Santiago was a good one. Comfy and well serviced as we crossed the international date-line. Despite the name it´s not actually a dating service for guys who want to meet foreign ladies. It´s an imaginary line that seperates, for legal reasons, one day from the other. Crossing it in a Westerly direction -ie LA to Tokyo- means you technically lose a day and are legally entitled to call people at home and wake them up in the middle of the night for no reason. Going East one is forced to re-live the same day in a different city. If your plane is fast enough you can theoretically call yourself at your point of origin and remind yourself to pack more shirts and to turn the gas off.
Ger and I left Auckland at 5pm and arrived in Santiago at 1.30pm the same day. Our customs and immigraton checks were easy peasy and for once we were ahead of the game. I´d booked a hotel the prevous day over the internet and had a nice printout with the address of the hotel and a little map to show the shuttle driver. The drive from the airport was a little uninspiring. Santiago has a bad smog problem and the day was rather overcast. This and the rampant profusion of graffiti on every structure gave the city a decrepit appearance. Our guide book doesn´t exactly sing it´s praises either, describing it as a travel hub for the continent and little more than a necessary evil. Our hotel was much the same, though it had less graffiti and smog but the same tatty-ness. The staff however, were very friendly and quick about the formalities. In accomodation you get what you pay for and Ger and I were happy just to have somewhere quiet to flop – and flop we did. Later on our bodies regained enough verticality to have a blear-eyed dinner at a really cool neighbourhood pub. Great steak and inexpensive beer may not be the cure for jet-lag but they definitely tranquilize the symptoms. The place had a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. So what if the streets and the hotel were a little unkempt – this city is more about results than appearances. Over all, not a bad first night.
The next morning was, despite our improved opinion of the city, all about getting the fuck out of Dodge, as they say in Chile. Getting a bus south was easily arranged and we killed the rest of the day at a museum of pre-Columbian art. That´s basically the period before Europeans arrived and frantically tore the place apart searching for gold and victims. The work was wide ranging and impressive in quality especially when we found out that some of it goes back over 7000 years. Was my country even inhabited then? After some lunch and another bout of unconciousness we made for the bus station. Unlike most of Asia where the vehicles are 7000 years old, South America has a highly competitive, and therefore high-quality, range of buses. Ger and I had opted for semi-cama which sort of translates as ´half-bed´. What you get are well spaced seats that recline most of the way and a padded rest that folds out and bridges the gap between your feet and your seat. Alot of services throw in food and drinks along the way but I´ve since found this to vary greatly in quantity and quality and should be viewed as a bonus. There´s nearly always a film shown and I highly recommend Starsky Y Hutch in the original Spanish version.
The next morning after a quick coffee and bread roll our bus arrived in the town of Pucon where something startling happened. As Ger and I gathered our belongings, we wondered where to look for accommodation. The website I´d used for Santiago failed me the previous day and phoning the places listed in the guide book had proved impossible. A small woman politely approached us on the platform and asked if we needed anywhere to stay. Her name was Alicia and she had a guest house nearby with double rooms, kitchen and hot water for a good price. We agreed to go take a look, were very pleased with what we found and decided to stay for a few days and fight off the jet-lag. What surprised me about the whole exchange was that it took place purely in Spanish. Alicia understood me and I her. Apart from a year studying it when I was 13 and films like Starsky Y Hutch, I don´t have much of a background in Spanish. As a language, though, its really user friendly and so far people here are helpful and encouraging when we speak it. It still pays to have a phrase book handy for on the spot translations. Pucon is located in Chile´s lake district and most of the tourists that can afford to go there are either backpackers or stuffy yuppies from Santiago. One of the main attractions to the area is Mount Villarica, an active volcanoe. So as not to waste the afternoon, Ger and I went for a stroll about town and before we knew it had signed up to climb the volcano the next day.
As it was still Winter in Chile, Mount Villarica was sporting a snowy top and smoking away like a Cuban tobacconist. Volcanoes are at best rather unpredictable and a few feet of snow won´t make much difference if a river of molten lava decides to roll your way. Our guide for the day, Claudio, had proudly shown us a photo of him from 6 months earlier. From a considerable distance, it shows him and a female member of his party being chased by just such a river of lava. They got away ok so our group of six thrill seekers was told not to worry. Claudio´s main concern was that we fitted our spiky crampons properly to our boots and walked in the correct way. When an incline is at it´s steepest it helps to climb the ice as if it were a set of steps – a kind of half sideways walk like Fred Astaire with a top hat and cain. Claudio also showed us how to stop if we stumbled and slid down the mountain and generally warned us about not walking over cliffs. Each warning was accompanied by a jovial ´Hasta La Vista Baby´ which was meant to mean ´Should this happen, you will die´. Nice to know that a joke that has to be over 10 years old is still getting some mileage.
The climb was tough. Mount Villarica is around 2800 metres high and although we covered the first 1000 by bus and chair lift, the portion that remained was the steepest and coldest. Nonetheless Claudio spurred us on and we found ourselves within reach of our goal. In hindsight, he seemed a little surprised at our collective perseverence. He told us later that some groups give up half-way as they are usually yuppies who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. European backpackers, of which our group was comprised in it´s entirety, want always to get their money´s worth and will, through sheer scabbiness, drive their bodies to extremes. To me this would be good preparation for the Inka Trail. That is a hike of several days through Peruvian jungle and mountains that finishes up in Macchu Picchu, The Lost City of the Inkas. Along the way I wondered what sort of structures archaeologists would find in mountan ranges in a thousand years. Definitely not anything as historically rich as Macchu Picchu – more likely The Lost Ski-Lodge of the Yuppies. All joking aside, the climb pushed me to my limits psychologically. At several points I would have accepted any offer to go back but since no one else was voicing defeatist sentiments I was determined not to be the first. We hung in and reached the summit. Our celebration was short. We needed to get back before sunset and bad weather caught up, but we savoured those 15 satisfying minutes. On one side was a gaping, steaming hole that would belch hot liquid rock at you as soon as shake your hand. On the other was an unequalled view of Lake Villarica, the town of Pucon and the Andes Mountains. Beyond was Argentina and more adventures in food, terrain, bus-seating and God knows what else. Over all, not a bad introduction to a continent.

Tags: Travel

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