Due to the rigours of travelling, Steve´s Psion has finally given up the ghost after years of sterling service.
The flight from Aukland to Santiago de Chile is a long one - especially when crammed in by Lan Chile. Actually, excepting the lack of leg room, the service was excellent. We got to choose what film(s) to watch and when. Megan seemed to watch all of them during the 11 hour flight.
We´ve visited a few
capital cities by now and so are quite
adept at arriving, finding somewhere el cheapo in a grotty
part of town and then "doing the sights". We had,
of course, wondered what South America was going to be like
and in particular Chile. Steve wondered if he´d remember any
of the Spanish he picked up years ago in Guatemala.
We were pleasantly surprised by Santiago. It´s very cosmopolitan - now why did we expect anything else? It is said to be the most scenic capital in South America but we both voted for Quito (Equador) over Santiago. The weather is fine and hot although there is a pretty thick haze over the city. The setting is spectacular; the city lies on a perfectly flat plain but is surrounded by enormously high mountains which still have snow on the top even though it´s nearly Summer.
We did what tourists would do in any capital city. We rode the funicular to the top of the Metropolitan Park overlooking the city. The Chileans had thoughtfully placed a large whitewashed Virgin on the top lest we forgot we were in South America. Megan thought the funicular rather reminiscent of Llandudno [sigh!]. We explored the local cathedrals and visited the pre-Columbian art exhibition, which is a bit tough when you´re jet lagged to the tune of 8 hours! We made extensive use of the excellent metro system, which is quiet and smooth and finely decorated a la Russia.
In the end, we spent about a week in Santiago wandering the streets, eating out again (after self-catering in Aus and NZ) and generally people watching - as the locals do. We enjoyed being here very much and it made an easy introduction to South America. It does look as though we won´t get to eat very healthily though. Everything we´ve had so far has been battered. It´s cheap though with a main course costing about GBP2 and a litre of beer about GBP1. At lunch time, you can get a 3 course meal for GBP1.
The only downsides to the city seem to be that it is paved in chewing gum [yeuch!] and the buses only seem to have first gear which makes the streets exceptionally noisy - they´re worse than the tuk-tuks in Bangkok! Otherwise the place has some outstanding colonial architecture and the people are very friendly - even to gringos with our level of Spanish!
700 km North of Santiago is the relatively small town of La Serena. We wanted to see a little of what the North of the country was like and we did not have time to go up to Aticama where most Gringos go to see the desert. We´d seen pretty impressive deserts in Mongolia anyway!
What we did do is take the local bus up to a town called Vicuna where we visited a pisco factory. Pisco is the Chilean drink - a distilled wine which they mix with sugar and lemon and call a pisco sour. It´s rather like caipirinha of Brasil or Portugal. The guide spoke only Spanish but we managed to pick up what 40 per ciento meant!
The week we were there was the end of the school year and it seems that it´s traditional for all the schools in the area to meet up for a day and put on some kind of display; dancing, singing etc. for all the others to watch. We stood in the baking noon sun and watched little Chilean darlings in costume dancing around in front of doting parents. There were 7 year olds dressed as conquistadors, pretty Chilean girls in medieval costume - everything you could imagine. Including the bunch of disaffected 16 year olds who barged all the kiddies off the stage to regale parents and gringos alike with their version of Steppenwolf´s "Born to Be Wild" which they had obviously picked up from the record as they obviously didn´t know what the words were. Mind you, who does? They actually made a pretty good job of it. Guitars and drums thrashing, they then launched into a Black Sabbath number followed by Uriah Heep! A more incongruous sight is hard to imagine. Of course, all the parents had cleared off by this time, which we suspect was partly the point. We clapped!
The La Serena area is also host to many joint Chilean, European and US observatories due to the mountains and clear air. We thought we should visit one. Some of these are pretty big telescopes - 8m mirrors and the like and not really open for visitors. You are allowed, however, to visit Mamalluca Observatory, which we did. This is built specifically for tourists and staffed by volunteers but it was none the less interesting. Strange to see all the constellations upside down. Just shows that the dudes who thought up the Great Bear, Orion etc all lived in the Northern Hemisphere and didn´t have the imagination to look for any upside down ones!
We started to head South, having realised that Christmas was looming and that we were 2400 km from our target destination of Ushuaia for New Year. We`ll not be racing to get there though. We suspect that travel might get a little difficult as we get nearer to the pointy bit and closer to Christmas. Seven hours on a very hot bus got us to the third largest city in Chile - Conception. It`s thus named as this is where Chile`s declaration of independence from Spain was signed. i.e. where Chile was conceived - clever eh?
Third largest city it may be, but Concepcion is not big. We saw most of the centre in one day. It`s a university town and humming with students. Consequently, there are loads of bars, eateries, book shops, cyber-cafes, etc. From here, we even managed to create the Easter Island report, with pictures - a first (after saying we`d be out of touch for a while!). There is an excellent local history museum containing impressively detailed (and amusing) dioramas of the town`s history. The university art gallery had a couple of really good temporary exhibitions and a rather poor selection of Chilean painters through the ages. Of course, if could have been a good collection of poor painters... All museums etc, seem to be free too.
We took a local bus out of town to see the 1865 steel battleship Huascar. Made in Birkenhead and sold to the Peruvians, it saw battle in the war with Chile. The Chileans won. Consequently the ship is now on display, fully restored, at a local naval base (or in out now fluent Spanish, the "Base Naval"). Conning our way past the uniformed guards was not a problem, but getting on the correct bus had been. Although they`re clearly labelled, it`s not so clear as to which direction they`re travelling in... you know the rest. Base Naval is one terminus of the bus route and so is a dusty field one hour in the opposite direction!
There`s a hill on the edge of town and, true to form, Steve wanted to stomp up it. We had a bit of a problem finding the path and ended up scrambling up a mountain bike track and getting quite lost in the process. The summit, once finally gained, afforded absolutely no views what so ever, but it did reveal the correct way back down.
We really liked Concepcion. It`s a good size, the climate seems ideal and the food was pleasantly varied, i.e. not all fried. We did meet a crazy Canadian missionary woman who told us never to eat fruit or veg not drink the water. Needless to say, we`d already been doing that for two weeks, She`d been here 15 years. maybe someone should tell her, she didn`t look so well! We stayed in a nice old rambling house near the university and the landlady was also a little crazy. Steve had tried to speak to her on the phone and given up in frustration. We almost gave up trying to get her to let us in when we got there too, although it turned out to be worth the effort. GBP6 each a night including breakfast and someone´s Great Aunt looking after us.
Pronounced Baldibia... unless you´re Megan, who wants to know why they can`t pronounce their letters like everyone else (i.e. her!). Billed in the guide books as one of the most beautiful cities in Chile, Valdivia certainly has a pleasant location. At the confluence of two rivers, it is a pleasing jumble of streets and hotch potch of houses of all styles surrounded by water which never seems to smell.
We happened upon a well hidden alleyway in one street and ended up staying in the oldest,
most ramshackled building in town. The house seemed to be situated on a hill amongst
some trees and we`d caught glimpses of it from various points around town but weren`t quite
sure where it was. In the end, we found the front door, which was opened by someone
tugging on a long piece of rope whilst remaining hidden in the depths - spooky. The
building was entirely made of wood and seeped a strange light through an infinitude
of cracks. It had weirdly sloping walls, floors that met at odd, indescribable angles
and internal doors that did not seem as though they could possibly lead anywhere -
and, in many cases, didn`t. At times, we thought we detected the earthquakes we`d
been warned about, but it just seemed to be the building moving around a bit.
Valdivia plays host to a group of what the Chileans call "Sea Wolves". We managed to discover that these are actually Sea Lions and they come in for the morning fish market. They obviously fare well on the leftovers as some of them are the size of small battleships. In fact, there was not so much "coming in", as just waiting around, from one day to the next. One dude didn`t seem to move from his spot the whole time we were in town. There`s a colourful local market every morning down by the river. Just the sort of thing for tourists to photograph although we didn`t see any.
Having come quite a way South already, the landscape has changed now. No longer one large valley with sea on one side and Andes on the other, this area is known as the Lake District and there`s water everywhere. In fact, the area around Valdivia looks exactly like Queen Charlotte Sound at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. Rolling hills, pine forests, rivers everywhere. We took a collectivo (communal taxi) out to the coast to Niebla and Corral to see the Spanish forts lining the coast and guarding the entrance to the River Valdivia. It looks like our journey South will slow down a bit now as the proportion of land to water changes in favour of the Sea Wolves. However, before we strayed any further South, we had to make a side trip to Pucon - a volcano was calling.
Situated at the far end of Lake Villarica, Pucon
is high on any self-respecting Chilean tourist`s itinerary. We`re in the Lake District,
so they come for all the usual reasons: walking, fishing, boating and volcano climbing.
Mt Villarica is 2846m high, text-book volcano shaped, has a permanent glacier on it and is
active... and we wanted to climb it! It actually turns out to be quite easy, once
you`ve jumped through the bureaucratic hoops. You have to have a guide and carry
certain basic equipment such as crampons and ice axe. In reality, all you need to do is
pay money to one of the companies in Pucon and it just happens. You still have to do
the walking part yourselves though.
There`s really not much to say about hiking up this volcano other than that you can see smoke coming out of it as you get near the top. It`s reasonably steep and gets steeper towards the crater. It`s metres deep in snow and at this time of year, the crust is not stable enough to walk on so there`s some thigh-deep sinking. At the top, the crater is about 100m in diameter and belching sulphurous smoke constantly - or ejecting molten lava like it last did in the mid-80s. Rather novel was the sliding back down again. You simply sit down and slide to the bottom. Plenty of self-arresting practice with the ice axes. A good wholesome climb and the weather was fearsomely clear and hot. We both got nostril sunburn from the reflection. Never thought to put sun block there! We could easily see Argentina, which is not something you can say every day.
You could come here rather than NZ really. The outdoor activities are equal to the Kiwi ones, if not better. As we`d had such fun last time, we decided to go quad-biking again. This time, we went on a 3 hour ATV trip up one of the (dried) lava rivers of the Villarica volcano. In 1971 and 1984 the volcano had erupted and the resultant lava flows are only now becoming vegetated. We started in drizzle and low cloud, only to emerge into brilliant sunshine with spectacular views of the volcano and surrounding national parks. We ended up at the foot of the snow field we`d been climbing the day before, above the clouds that remained in the valley. Spectacular! Of course, being ATV experts, we forded rivers and traversed precipitous edges like the best of them.
Actually, Pucon reminded us very much of Yangshuo in China. That`s to say, hideously touristy on the one hand, but replete with creature comforts and scenery on the other. We met a whole bunch of foreign tourists here, European and Antipodean. We managed to hire a really nice self-contained cabaña for GBP15 per night and there`s a decent supermarket here which meant we could cook fresh veg. The only downside to the accommodation was the pack of wild dogs that lived under the cabaña and came out to play at night.
Bused it down from Pucon to Puerto Montt and arrived in driving rain -
what we`d been expecting of this part of the country. We knew that we were
right at the start of the main holiday season, which meant that the ferry
schedules were in a state of flux. What we didn`t know was that one of the
ferry companies had gone bust the month before and the other one was sticking
resolutely to its Winter schedule. i.e. one sailing every Saturday
without fail. So, we ended up half way down the Western Island of Chiloe in a town
called Castro on a Sunday, with nothing to do but go back up to Puerto Montt and
try to get a flight. We did have a look around at some rickety old houses on stilts
over the sea that were rather quaint and the local cathedral that has the most
fantastic wooden interior ever. There seems to be a collection of steam engines
here too; made in Lincoln.
We ended up flying from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas, which is South of the fjord type area of Chile (the bit with no roads - or ferries). From here we managed to get a bus to Rio Grande on Tierra del Fuego in Argentina after only traipsing around town for a few hours visiting all the bus companies. We only had to wait two days for the departure too - bonus!
During the wait in Punta Arenas, we took a boat trip along the Magellan Straits on some dodgey old Chilean ferry to Isla Magdalena where the "Los Pinguinos" National Park is found. For those not totally fluent in Spanish, that`s "The Penguins". This is an isolated island with about 60 000 pairs of Magellenic penguins nesting on it. No one can fail to like penguins, and these ones are amongst the best. They are about 80 cm tall and waddle around in typical penguin fashion. This is one of the few places where you`re actually allowed to mingle with the creatures and get pecked by them if you`re Megan. A top trip if you find yourself in Punta Arenas.
We left Chile on the bus to Tierra del Fuego - a mere 8 hours of gravel road. But more on that in the Argentina report some time next year. Join us then. In the meantime, Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all.