From The Surf To The Snow
Hey everyone
Hope you´re all well. We finally managed to acclimatise and get over our jet lag and get to sleep at night in the heat. We stayed in Santiago for a couple of nights and then headed straight to the coast.
Santiago is quite pretty for a city. It has pretty parks and old buildings and isnt any different to most modern cities. We did discover what are known as ´cafe on legs´. They are a bit like strip joints but they are just coffee places (they dont sell any alcohol) where men are served by women in really short skirts! We just saw a couple of tamer ones but apparently you can get girls in bikinis serving men their cappuccinos behind dark windows… sounds a bit dodge to me and dont think you´ll see your local barista in Starbucks strip down to her undies just yet..
Leaving Santiago was a bit of a ´mare and all the Spanish Ben and I thought (note the word ´thought) we had learnt just did not help us. Just trying to buy a bus ticket to Valparaiso, our next stop, was a lengthy task. In SE Asia, even if you dont speak the lingo, you can get what you want just by saying where you are going. In Chile, though, and we have found it outside of Santiago too, ticket sellers really want you to give them a detailed breakdown of where you are going, what type of ticket you want, where you want to sit and so on! So we thought we had our tickets sussed but then the seller quotes us a price that sounds a bit more than what other people told us it should cost so we tried to ask her if she weas charging us for a return instead of a single… but damned if we knew the word for óne-way´and no amount of miming could make her see what we wanted. We lost our place in the queue and an Argentinian who had seen us struggle came and asked in English if we needed help. We asked him the Spanish for one way and he told us. We bought our ticket and got on the bus. SOLO IDA kids, solo ida. Remember this, it could help you one day.
Buses are really comfy coach style with plush seats and very cheap too. To the coast, a 90 minute journey cost us 4.50.
Valparaiso was a really cool port town with cobbled streets high in the hills. Mauritians amongst you, it was exactly like Port Louis with the square and government buildings as you come in. We stayed in a hostel up in the hills (accessible by funiculares – oh joy) owned by the author of the Footprints guide. More people who want to know about this experience can ask… The area is quite bohemian and the houses are all painted brightly. There are a lot of stray dogs and I did get chased by one when it saw my backpack. As soon as I turned around to look at it. It stopped barking. Make of that what you will…
After Valpo, we wanted to catch some sun so we went to the very resorty Vina del Mar, just 15 minutes up the road. We took a train and this too was a nightmare as we couldnt understand that we needed to buy a metro card before we could buy tickets and it was this that was pushing up the price of our tickets unexpectedly…gawd…. Vina lived up to its reputation as the place where Santiaguins go on holiday. Very expensive and a bit tacky… but the beach was nice! This was also where we were meeting our friend, Ray.
We met Ray and headed down the coast to a very little known surfers hangout called Pichilemu. We stayed in a very comfy, very cool place full of stoners and grumpy senoritas (the only place I think where our little knowledge of Spanish has not been tolerated). It did get to a point where one of the women would shake her head at Ben whenever she saw him (he had tried to have a conversation with her about buses and got nowhere) and he thinks that she said something to him about it being terrible that someone can come to Chile without being able to speak Spanish… oh well… I dont know if any of the Yankee or Aussie surfers could speak Spanish, but there you go, we are the gringos.
From Pichilemu we have headed down south to Pucon, which is a bit like Queenstown in NZ – its the adventure capital of Chile. Ben and Ray have gone mountain biking and we are all going to climb a volcano tomorrrow! Its very eerie, Volcan Villarica. We arrived this morning after an 11-hour ride on a night bus (we did stop and have dinner in a small town called San Fernando) and seeing this conical, snow-capped mountain billowing smoke in the distance did give me the heebie jeebies but hey, volcanoes and earthquakes are my thing, so I have come to the right place. I cant complain now….
Am very safe here. Things are not as crazy as I though they would be and the gringo trail is well trodden, not as much as in SE Asia but lets say that I dont think I will have to hitch-hike while I am here. The men dont give you any hassle either. Food is cheap and very good. We just had a 3 course lunch for 1.50 and we get fresh fruit juices everywhere too. Downside is bread. Most things are bread-based and breakfast is very bready. We were expecting fruit and cereals but you´re more likely to get offered cake than you are a banana here. I was very naughty and ate nothing but bread my first couple of days here as there was not anything else and I suffered for it but we have now worked out what sort of places to eat at and how to say a few foodie things in Spanish so its all Ok. We have tried some odd things like Rico Mote which is dried peaches boiled in sweet water with barley kernels and I had to try a pisco sour, pisco is the local drink here made of fermented grapes. It tastes like sweet tequila (not that I would know of course…!) and even though ham is added to a lot of things even though it doesnt say on the menu (I asked for eggs with prawns and mushrooms and got a good sprinkling of bacon with it…grrrrr!), there are a lot of beef and fishy things to keep you going and complete vegetarians are OK too.
Right, going to go cos this internet place is boiling and I would like to get some water. Gonna stay in Pucon a while and next we will head further south into the lake district….
Lots of love
Farrah xxxx
Tags: Chile, Pucon, South America, Travel, valparaiso
PixieDoux
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