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Published: January 28th 2012
Reñaca Beach
The sea and the sun at Reñaca BeachHola!
I am currently sitting in the very exotic study, in the very exotic Stevenage, in the very exotic England. It is cold... and it is dark. But I am sure you are desperate to know what I've been doing in the last week, so now I shall dutifully update you on my last week in Chile.
After another overnight bus I arrived in Valparaiso, potentially the coolest city on Earth. The journey itself was less exciting than some of my others, although I did meet a very nice lady who lives in Valparaiso. As I'd heard some rather worrying stories about the city, I asked for her opinion on whether it was a dangerous place or not. She advised me that if I take taxis and 'have a strong faith in God' then I would be ok. This did not exactly fill me with confidence.
My friend Theresa who I had met in San Pedro and then spent some time with in Copiapo was also in Valparaiso, and had booked into the same hostel as me. So the first day (Saturday) I spent with her and some other guys from the hostel. The city itself is on
Valparaiso
A photo of the city taken on the way to the delicious seafood restaurant the coast but has a harbour rather than a beach, but further along are a string of very nice beaches. Two of the guys we spent the day with were from Argentina and had their car, so we drove along the coast to a really lovely beach at a place called Reñaca. Unfortunately my sunburn meant that I had to regularly apply my factor 50 baby block so this was not an ideal time to be sunbathing! But regardless it was a lot of fun, and I tried Fernet for the first time, which is quite a strong spirit made with a bunch of spices. The weather was amazing so the cold drink of Fernet, coke and ice was pretty much ideal. That evening we had a barbeque at the hostel with the two owners, who I must hasten to add were AWESOME. After some drinks and food a few of us went on to a club that had different rooms with different music, most of which I did not know, but it was a lot of fun. The downside is that I'd barely slept the night before on the bus, so by 5am I was exhausted!
The next
Sunset
A photo I took as the sun was setting and we left the 'Yellow Sand' beach day me and the other guys and the owners of the hostel went to this amazing seafood restaurant which the owners recommended. Here I had what I think has to be the nicest meal of my trip, which was salmon, prawns and this sort of concoction of corn and onions. With so much coast Chile is pretty well-known for its seafood but until this point I am sorry to say I had not tried any, and I was certainly not disappointed when I finally did. Me and the three guys from the hostel then went to another beach. This time it was near a place called Concon and the beach itself was called something like 'The Yellow Beach'. This was rather misleading because the sand was more like a slightly gross brown colour and so this beach day was not quite as good as the previous one! That evening was a bit more chilled out, so we just shared some empanadas and red wine (I'm starting to come round to red wine now although I'm still not convinced that it's nicer than white!)
The guys left the next day (Monday) to continue their travelling which made me extremely jealous
as by this point I was getting very sad about having to leave soon! I spent most of the day with a guy from Germany who had recently arrived at the hostel, and we wandered around the city, snapping photos every few seconds because what I have failed to say so far about Valparaiso is that almot every other building is covered in artwork, and the multi-coloured houses are all beautiful, tumbling down the hills that lead to the city's harbour. One of the best sights was a big cemetary which was beautiful in itself, and also had a fantastic view of the city as it was high up on one of the hills. The lunch/dinner I had on this day was not as impressive as the previous day's but it gets points for being extremely cheap. For about £7 we got soup, salad, lasagne, fruit salad and a drink. Good times. The late nights had caught up with me by this point so on this evening I think I had fallen asleep by about 11pm.
Tuesday was my final day in Valparaiso which was totally heartbreaking. Desperate not to leave without seeing some more of the city which
Cemetary
A photo taken from the cemetary in Valparaiso I'd fallen madly in love with, me and the guy from Germany again wandered around the city, and again took many many photos. We also went to Pablo Neruda's house which has now been turned into a museum. Neruda was a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Prior to my trip I'd bought myself a collection of his poems and was completely blown away by them so it was really exciting to see his house. The collection of artwork in his home was impressive, but more even more spectacular was the views of the city through his windows. Every room had a slightly different perspective of the multi-coloured jumbled array of houses and the sea beyond them. So my plan now is to become a rich and famous poet, and build myself a matching house in Valparaiso. There's a SLIGHT chance this might not happen for me but I think it sounds like a good plan, right?
I left for Santiago sometime in the late afternoon and after a couple of hours had returned to the same hostel I had first stayed in when I arrived in Chile at the start of my trip. That evening
Harbour
Interesting mix of boats, from the cute little duck boat at the front to the big mean-looking ships in the distance myself, a guy from Germany (I met a lot of people from Germany on this trip - not sure what it is about Chile that attracts Germans so much?) and a girl from Scotland (one of the few British people I met on the trip) went to a nearby restaurant which the hostel owner recommended. We were definately not disappointed as the place had some of the nicest cocktails I'd tried on my trip, and the food wasn't bad either! The next day (Wednesday) was my last proper day in Chile and I decided that the best way to alleviate my grief was to buy myself an irrational amount of earrings. It was the Scottish girl's last day too so together we went to a big artisan market and stocked up on a lot of very pretty and very cheap jewellary. The market was close to Parque Cerro Santa Lucia which is a really beautiful big park in the middle of the city that I had visited a few weeks previously on my first visit to Santiago. We bought a fruit juice which was to be the last delicious fresh fruit juice of my trip (sad times) and went and
sat in the park. Theresa had been staying at this hostel in Santiago too, but on this day she was leaving to continue her trip in Patagonia. So we said goodbye for the final time and, once again, I was left feeling very jealous as my trip was ending!! That evening, after some wine and some pisco (ouch), a few of us went out to the couch surfers meet-up (again, like I went to on my earlier visit) and had some more cocktails. The taxi home was slightly disastrous as the driver clearly had no idea where we going. After driving around aimlessly for about 10 minutes and a difficult conversation in Spanish I politely advised him that we would be leaving now and not paying. Luckily we then found another taxi who's driver did manage to take us back to the hostel!
And so, I woke up on Thursday morning feeling tired, hungover and miserable at the prospect of leaving Chile and taking a horrible 24-hour journey home. The journey itself was relatively pain-free however, and the 6 hour wait in Madrid airport wasn't even that bad as I got talking to a guy from Brazil so we
The View from Pablo Neruda's Living Room
Why do I not see this when I look out of my living room?! shared our travel stories, and I then bought an unnecessary amount of chocolate from the duty-free shops. When I arrived in Heathrow on Friday afternoon, Mum and Dad were waiting at the airport with a big home-made sign, in Spanish, welcoming me home (I'm not kidding). Slightly embaressing and slightly over-the-top as I'd only been gone a few weeks, but this made me smile all the same! We drove home in the rain and the dark at 5pm. A couple of days previously at 7pm I'd been sitting by a pool in my bikini and so this was a little shocking!
And so now the journey is over. Cue, the world's saddest song on the world's smallest violin. The trip exceeded every expectation that I had, and although I had expected to encounter an amazing landscape, I hadn't anticipated meeting so many wonderful people on the way, both Chilean and travellers. Thanks for everyone at home who has been reading the blogs; it was great to be able to share the journey with you. I will see you soon!
THE END.
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KG
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You Rock!
Red wine beats White wine anyday of any week in any year!!! Secondly YOU are AWESOME. Thanks so much for blogging. Have really enjoyed reading it and looked forward to each new entry. Relaly nice to have you back though :-)