Advertisement
Published: April 13th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Friday 31st March we arrived in Santiago on the bus and checked into a hostel we had booked. Unfortunately it was a bit run down for the price and the rooms were damp and we were kept up all night by the buzzer of the front door as other backpackers arrived late. We did go out for a nice dinner and saw a young couple dancing the tango on the street for money which was fun to watch. The next day we moved into a hotel which was closer to the centre and for only about £7 more much better value for money. We spent the day walking around the centre, getting information about posting a parcel back home, and going to the central market. On Sunday we went to the Palicio Cousino, a large mansion which was previously the home to a very rich Chilean family which had made lots of money mostly through silver mines, transport shipping and wine production. It was pretty incredible, full of imported European marble and woodwork, velvet covered walls, and curtains hand sewn by French nuns etc. It also had the first lift of Chile, which was quite funny, and lots of different rooms,
like a music room, a weapons room, a library, a games room, a couple of dinning rooms etc. It was difficult to imagine what it must have been like to live in such a house, with such wealth.
After this fascinating tour we went back to our hotel to wait for George and Em to come around, who had contacted us that morning to let us know they were in Santiago. They came round to our hotel in the evening, and we headed out for a pleasant dinner, after which we found a bar/café which was open late, and stayed their drinking until after 3.00 a.m. having a good night out.
The next day, Ruth was a little worse for wear, and feeling ill couldn’t get out of bed all day, so I had to go to the post office by myself, with my inferior Spanish, to try and post home all the souvenirs and items we no longer wanted. Unfortunately they only had small boxes for sale in the post office, but wandering a few shops outside I got lucky and was given the perfect box from a store. George and Em had by this time turned
Palicio Cousino
unfortunately we weren't allowed to photograph inside. up at the post office themselves, and helped me wrap everything up, and George, who is amazingly good at Spanish, helped me communicate. In the end the box weighed 15 Kg, a fair weight to be rid of, and cost 55,000 pesos, about £55. Fingers crossed it makes it home.
After that, George, Em and I went back to our hotel where Ruth was, fortunately feeling better, but still instead of going out we ordered pizza and stayed in, watching LOST on satellite in our room!
The next day Ruth and I and got an early morning wake up call and headed to the airport in a taxi for a flight to Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island. After five hours on the plane we arrived and getting off the plane were pleasantly surprised by how warm it was. Those tourists who had someone to meet them were greeted with a garland of flowers placed around their necks, in traditional Pacific Island style, which made me feel like we had definitely landed somewhere exotic. We checked into a relatively cheap family run hotel near the town, but also on the coast road, and managed to have a
scrambler motorbike delivered to our hotel within 10 minutes of arriving. The locals were Polynesian in their appearance, and spoke their own language which was nothing like Spanish, so we both had a feeling like we were on holiday again, after so long in South America. It also had the feel of the sort of place we normally like to travel, with the appealing laid back island life. Over the next few days we basically drove around the island checking out the moai, that’s the statues Easter Island is famous for, also going to a nice beach for a bit of sunbathing. We did have a little trouble with the motorbike(s), once the clutch went and I had to drive it back without stopping or changing gear, and with our second bike we got a flat tyre on one of the dirt tracks, but thankfully they just gave us a new bike each time. The restaurants were unfortunately really expensive, one meal set us back a whopping 28,000 pesos, about £28, after which we stayed in and cooked for ourselves in the kitchen at the hostel.
On our last night there, Friday 7th, we were fortunate enough that there
was a ‘traditional dance’ put on at our hotel, which we were allowed to watch for free, (lots of tourists came from other hotels and had to pay), and the sight of some local ladies swinging their hips in short reed skirts was pretty mesmerising. Those local kings of days long since gone, who had many wives, must have had a pretty good life out here! My first brief experience of the South Pacific was definitely a good one, and Ruth and I are both hoping to go to some other South Pacific island from New Zealand later on.
The guide book said that a few days were definitely enough to explore the island, but on leaving we felt we could easily have done with a few more. It would have been nice just to relax for a bit, and to have returned to some sites at different times of the day.
Saturday 8th April we flew back to Santiago for one night, and went back to the same hotel for a night, having another great dinner in the street near our hotel, in a lovely restaurant on a peaceful pedestrian street. The next day we caught a
flight for Rio de Janeiro.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 74; dbt: 0.0685s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb