Into the Wild

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Consider the mullet. No dad, not the fish, the haircut. Like any rare breed, it has pockets of popularity, in the case of the mullet these are East London, Eastern Europe, Australia, the deep south of the United States and South America. In all but one of these places, the mullet succeeds only in making its owner appear to be a cretin. The mullet can reveal a good many things about the owner; inbreeding, a love of country and western music, low intellect or high radiation levels in the blood. It is only in South America where the mullet is worn well, where it looks, dare I say, cool. Where it says bandit, not bogan. And for these intrepid travellers, the realisation that the mullet can look cool is one of the most startling discoveries of our trip so far. It's a bit like the realisation that Kylie had gone from pop princess to sex goddess, it utterly alters your perspective. And so a new chapter begins with a new discovery, and the saloon doors to the South America tavern swing open.

Chile's not quite cowboy country though. Come to think of it, that's Mexico isn't it, and we're not even going there so that was a bit of a pointless analogy. It must be all the ponchos, and there are plenty of those. Actually, Chile, or at least what we've seen of it so far, is very developed and much of Santiago could easily be mistaken for Spain. So it was all quite a gentle introduction to South America. Our plan for the first three weeks was to learn Spanish. Easy. Ahem. So, after a weekend of pointing and mumbling we started our lessons which would see us fluent after a mere 40 hours.

In the meantime, we acquainted ourselves with our new housemates in our Plasa Brasil guesthouse. That is, we spent the first 48 hours in our room hiding from our new housemates because we couldn't communicate with them. Fortunately, our knight in shining armour came in the form of Philip, an English/Chilean chap who was revisiting the country where he'd spent his early years. He introduced us to the joys of Pisco Sour, the local tipple, and enlightened us to the fact that the Great Britain hockey team were taking part in an Olympic qualifier in the Prince of Wales Country Club (all very colonial!), so that's where we spent a couple of days over the following week, cheering on the boys in between practicing our verbs and learning how to order food. Due to our diligent schooling, our Santiago experience didn't reap too many experiences. We ate a hot dog one day (AKA a completo, which is Chile’s national dish) and that was about it. So intent were we at becoming multilingual that all other pursuits took second place. After a week, we moved our schooling up the road to Valparaiso, which would be our home for the next 10 days. And what a little gem. Valparaiso's made up of loads of hills, a bit like Sheffield, but very bohemian and lovely, not at all like Sheffield. All the tourists wander round the Cerro Concepcion which is the prettiest and most colourful of the hills, and where we found ourselves a place to stay in the form of La Biciclette, a French run guesthouse clinging to the edge of a very steep hill. In fact, all the buildings cling to the edges of the hills, resulting in an intriguing mix of shapes and sizes of buildings, with a few precariously perched over the edges of ledges, some man made, some natural, all seemingly awaiting a fateful nudge from an earthquake like 2p coins in a shovehapenny machine. It's an intriguing town, peppered with street art and stencils on every wall and pavement. We could quite easily have spent our 10 days investigating every nook and cranny, although our Spanish teacher might have been wondering where we'd got to.

Now, not being great linguists, living in a French house inevitably led to some confusion. Every morning began with a confusing rearrangement of what would be a suitable greeting, 'bonjour, hola, hello?' Then when it came to our classes Jenny rediscovered French skills which neither of us knew existed, at the expense of the development of any Spanish skills at all. Our progress was hampered by a combination of teachers, one of whom buggered off for days on end with us having no clue as to where she'd got to, the other one (her boss), took over but huffed and puffed his obvious frustration at being faced by two students who couldn't speak Spanish quite as well as he could. To be fair, learning a new language when you're in your 30s and English (well come on we're rubbish at languages aren't we?) is an enlightening experience. Considering that we have no cause to feel proud of ourselves for speaking our mother tongue, it's incredible how depressed you can feel at being unable to speak someone else’s language. The fact that when you try to say 'my bag is green and black and small' and it comes out as 'her apple going to be fried chips and wanker is', makes your confidence shrivel to the size of a pea. Compounding the ridiculousness of the situation was the fondness of our language school for having us read children’s stories. The whole experience amounted to feeling like our consciousnesses had been zapped into the bodies of one year olds, like the film Being John Malkovik, but in our cases, Being Juan Carr, aged 18 months. It's hard to say how we've done and only time will tell, but we're full up with theory and now have to turn it all into practise. For the meantime, being unable to make jokes or ask who farted is tantamount to being gagged, and in Ant's case, is probably a good thing.

So with schooling behind us, we thrust ourselves once more into the daunting world of hitting the road. It was a shame to leave Valparaiso behind, especially our flamboyantly French host, Giles, whose morning eulogies kept us thoroughly entertained, even if we understood about 3% of what he actually said. We were heading to Pucon, a 12 hour bus journey south and home to a great big stinking, steaming volcano which Ant had set his sights on climbing. Dull as it sounds, we must point our what a joy it is to travel on Chilean buses. They have films...not just shit ones, but shit ones that you want to watch (or Ant wanted to watch) like Transformers and National Treasure. And with Spanish subtitles, we even convinced oursleves that they acted as suitable learning tools. So now we can't order a coffee but we can shout 'Get the f### out of the mainframe, she’s gonna blow!' in perfect Spanglish. Added to that is the attentive and very efficient matre di/porter service on board the buses. They fluff your cushions, clean the windows and bring you breakfast and if we'd found the language to ask if a happy finish was available, they might well have obliged. (It's 'final feliz' by the way, so we'll keep you posted).

So, Pucon. Full of bloody tourists. Fair enough, I suppose, and we are tourists too, after all. But quite cute too. It's one of those towns where the facilities are totally out of kilter with the size of the place; where you can buy a mochiato and a $300 fleece, but you're hard pressed to find a mushroom. Still, with every other shop selling hikes up the volcano or bikes to hire, we did both. First we hired some bikes for what we thought would be a gentle tootle around the area, a warm up to the following day's hike which would be a toughie. The gentle tootle, however turned out to be a 7 hour marathon up slippery gravel hills and up yet more never ending hills, on heavy bikes with wide, soft tyres. We teamed up with another couple of Gringos, an American girl and a German guy called Arthur, who became increasingly insane as the day wore on. The going was soft to gravely, with Arthur building a commanding lead by ten lengths from Ant, who was hugging the rail, American girl was some distance behind with 'oh my god where's Jenny’ a staggering nine hundred lengths adrift at the back. It was a day of mixed emotions: fun for Ant and utter misery for Jen, but we made it back, somehow, with about 9 hours to recover and rub our aching muscles in preparation for our daunting hike the following morning.

Alas, the hike never happened. As we slept, an almighty wind gathered in town, which inevitably meant an even almightier wind was gathering around Villarica (the volcano who's name, I couldn’t, until now, be bothered to look up). Our disappointment at the thought of not being able to peer into the lava bubbling crater was, to be fair, matched by joy at the idea of being able to crawl back into bed about 20 minutes after our 6.45am rendezvous. But sadly, the plan, in spite of the fact that the cows were practically swirling around our ears, was to go to the foot of Villarica, just to make sure. And sure enough, the gale that was about 100km an hour in town, was about 200km an hour on the hill. By this time we were awake, and so disappointment set in again, especially when we saw one foolhardy group set off to give it a go anyway. It was a shame, but the reality was that with that kind of wind, there was a high chance that someone would get blown off by the crater and into the lava below....hang on...that sounds pretty cool to me.

Hey ho. We had to settle for a hot spring instead, which we're beginning to realise is the not-so-intrepid way to enjoy volcanic activity. Highlight of the hot springs; wallowing in a mud bath in which the mud had the texture, consistency and sulphurous smell of a slurry pit. (Dad, you know when you had pig that slipped between the slats in their pens and you had to climb into the slurry pit to get them out? It was a bit like that but in swimwear.) It was alright, but not as cool as climbing a proper, smoking, lava spitting cone of a volcano...

There was no time to try again, even though the next day the smoke from Villarica rose in a gentle, windless straight line, we would be forced to view it from the windows of our bus south, for we were heading to the even more dramatic climes of Patagonia. True South America awaits. The familiar shops and fat kids of rich central Chile have disappeared and as I write, we are waiting to set sail on the good ship Navimag which will lead us though the icy waters of southern Chile and deep into the Patagonian wilderness. It's probably wise at this stage to warn parent not to watch Titanic or Into the Wild over the next couple of weeks, as we aim to plod the empty plains in search of something like wilderness...until then...

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Photos

Empanadas
Empenadas are about the only Chilean food around. Most of the time people scoff Completos (hot dogs) of plates of chips, chorrizo and fried eggs which have a name but I can't remember it.

Biking
This was just before the pain really set in

Candles
Fork handles anyone? Ahem.

Cat and hot tin rooftops
A cute balck pussy looks over the roof tops of Valparaiso

Cliffhanger
This is a defunct Acensor. These are perilous lift things, about 100 years old, which haul people up hills all over Valparaiso. Lots of fun, and a bit scary.

Giraffe Door
Loved this door.

Big Hills
That's a steeper hill than it looks, with Villarica in the background

Hungry Pelicans
This guy was gutting fish in Puero Natales, near Valparaiso, flinging tit bits to the pelicans

La Biciclette
Home for 10 days, with Jen in the window.

Big Lake
This lake was at the top of all the hills on our bike ride. Sort of worth it.

Mary
She doesn't know, she just doesn't know. And neither do the others.

Pucon
Volcano Villarica loomed over Pucon like a great big steaming tit