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Published: April 23rd 2009
Next up we headed to Chile. It was a very impressive trip to get there, with some spectacular scenery, driving through the mountains. There were also some pretty dangerous roads. Just after entering Chile we went from the very top of one mountain all the way to the bottom on a road with about a hundred corners and no guard rails (see picture). It had to be done very slowly on a double decker bus! It took our bus nearly two hours to clear customs between Argentina and Chile. One hour for all of us (Susie got a bit of a scare when they searched her bag, thinking that she was trying to smuggle fruit into Chile. She had an interesting time trying to explain that the round things that showed up on the x-ray were not apples, but poi juggling balls.) and another hour for some girl to be interrogated about some mystery items in her bag.
Our first stop in Chile was Valparaiso, a port city north of Santiago. The first person we met there was an Australian girl who was a bit of an odd unit. She told us, 'This place is f**kin crazy man! You could
get f**kin lost in this place.' We were given all sorts of warnings about how dangerous Valparaiso is and how careful we should be, but we had no problems. We had a great time wandering around and checking out some of the various sights. Valparaiso is incredibly hilly, so much so that they have cable car/elevatory type things to get up the hills. We decided not to use them and just walk everywhere, which turned out to be a bad move, as we trudged up the hills, with 80 year old women powering past us, and woke up hte next morning with the world's most painful calves. Valpraiso was a great place to take photos (although we were a bit reluctant to get our cameras out), with thousands of houses packed into the hills at odd angles. There's a lot of cool graffiti. And, like all of South America, hundreds of stray dogs and cats, although there seemed to be some sort of gang system going on, as every second animal looked like it had ben mauled.
We had a very interesting lunch at a small cafe just near our hostel. They seemed to be surprised to have people
in for lunch, especially non-Spanish speakers. They quickly recovered, however, and mustered all their best English to tell us we would eat chicken and salad. It seemed as though everyone in the restaurant/street/whole town came in to check us out and present us with various reading material (in Spanish). The resident guitarist, who was a dead-ringer for Kamal, proceeded to serenade us with his finest tunes - some Spanish ones, some Beatles and the entire Simon and Garfunkel collection. Some of the other men wanted to know what music we listen to in Australia - did we know Olivia Newton John?
Next up we got a bus down to Santiago. I bought my ticket separately from Tucky and Susie and was wondering why mine was cheaper (and why the women selling the tickets seemed concerned that I was traveling alone and insisted on seating me at the front of the bus, right behind the driver, and why the conductor kept checking with Tucky and Susie if I was traveling with them) until Tucky pointed out that they'd given me a kid's ticket...oh well, at least it saved me 400 pesos, all of $1.
We had a quick visit
to Santiago, only one day there, so we just had walk around the city. We walked up the top of Santa Lucia hill to look out over the city, and then got the 'funicular' (a train type vehicle) up the top of another hill in the National Park area to go and visit a giant Mary statue. Then we stayed up all night as we had a 6 o'clock flight in the morning to Peru, which is where we are now.
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Elise
non-member comment
Nice flanny, bogan!! And since when did you choose the option to climb a hill rather than take a cable car??!!!