Blog 2 - Santiago (Chi) to Iquique (Chi)

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Days 1 to 9 - Santiago, Valparaiso, Vina Del Mar, La Serena, Pisco Elqui/Vicuna, Iquique

Executive Summary (for VP's/Senior Managers and above)

• Status: Alive
• Current location: Iquique, Chile
• Notable incidents: Interesting re-immersion into backpacking life on first day in Santiago; best street name in the world (so far); foiled pickpocket attempt; breakdancing in the streets of Valparaiso, paying for two hostels in one night in different towns.
• Facial hair status: 3mm and itchy

Detailed report (for all others)

Santiago

So, last time you heard from me, I’d just arrived at my hostel in Santiago and it was 8am.

Well, to say that Hostel Don Santiago has an inconspicuous front would be an understatement - the only reason I figured I was in the right place was because I knew the address of the place (95 Avenue Ricardo Cumming) and I was standing on Avenue Ricardo Cumming and was outside a door with a small 95 over the top of it. So, I knocked on the door, no response. I rang the bell, no response. I stepped back and checked the number, it still said 95. I scanned my surroundings for any evidence of a ‘Hostel Don Santiago’ in the vicinity, nothing obvious. I repeated this routine of knocking, ringing, checking and scanning a few more times and on maybe the fifth set, I heard shuffling from behind the door. Slowly the door opened and a male, Hispanic face peeped round the corner, eyes almost closed and with a curly moustache drawn on his upper lip in what was unmistakably black marker pen. “Hola” I said. “I ‘ave a reservacione”, in my pigeon Spanish, which to be fair is probably pretty offensive to pigeons. He opened the door and I walked in to a pitch black room. I put my bags down and he said “No electricity, no beds till 11.30” then he pointed at a faux leather sofa at the end of the room and said “You sleep” as he turned away and entered a nearby room, closing the door behind him.

So there I was, standing in the dark. From where I was standing, the sofa actually looked pretty welcoming so I obediently crossed the room, stepping over a couple of prone bodies and lay down on the slightly-too-short-to-really-get-comfortable sofa - I was asleep in minutes.

I woke up at about 10.30am to the reassuring sound of a couple of Aussie accents (never thought I’d ever hear myself thinking that!) and as I opened my eyes, the moustachioed doorman from earlier that morning greeted me. “Hi Jules, your bed will be ready in half an hour. You want some breakfast?”. I peeled my face off the faux leather arm rest and went into the dining room where I was presented with a bowl of fruit and some scrambled eggs - not bad actually. Moustache man (Pato) apologized for the slightly vacant start to the morning, he’d been out till 6am, with the Aussies (needless to say) and explained that there had been no electricity when I arrived, hence the darkness, cos the downstairs fuse had blown - but was now fixed.

I struck up a conversation with one of the aforementioned Aussie’s, a girl called Nathalie who foolishly mentioned she and her mate were heading out to some hot springs and “Did I want to come along?”. Obviously she didn’t recognize the look of a man in day one traveller mode who would say yes to pretty much anything if it meant having a friend and not being the weird hostel dweller with no friends. So, an hour later, after a shower and a change, myself, Nathalie (23 - Perth - in between jobs) and Jackie (29 - Perth - travel agent) left the hostel with Pato’s instructions on how to find said hot springs and headed for the subway.

Between us, I think it is fair to say that our Spanish was amateur but we did manage to get the subway (very clean and actually pretty easy to navigate), make a connection (‘combinacion’), get another subway and then resurface to find a ‘collectivo’ (essentially a fixed route taxi - kind of like a bus - but it’s a taxi) to take us on the next leg of the journey. It was here that I had the first sighting of what is possibly the ugliest river I have ever seen. The Mapuche runs through the heart of Santiago and really isn’t a very pretty sight to behold - I’ll let the photo do the talking.

Anyway, we found the collectivo we needed and set off. Our instructions were to get a collectivo to Esmeralda and then get a taxi the rest of the way to Colina but Nat did a sterling job and managed to convince the collectivo driver to take us all the way to Colina and the hot springs and negotiated what we all felt was a pretty reasonable price about $7 a head.

So about half an hour later we pulled up at a hotel in the hills above Colina, bathing suits in hand, and headed into reception. The lady showed us the price list and pointed us in the direction of the ‘bano termal’. Well, as I had had no part in the planning of the excursion, I really didn’t know what to expect, but what I saw is certainly not what I expected. There was a building with a load of what looked like swimming pool changing cubicles, each with its own bath, half filled with, at best, tepid water. We looked considerably underwhelmed but the little Chilean fella we had bumped into encouraged us to go in and have a look. We did, but this really wasn’t the natural rock pools with bubbling hot water we were all clearly expecting. Jackie then said one of the first sensible things I’ve ever heard an Australian say when she suggested we just go and get a beer on the terrace and consider our options.

After due consideration, we concluded that the hot springs we were hoping for were not here and ordered a taxi back to Esmeralda and on to the city. So, essentially we each paid about $15 and took a three hour round trip for a beer, but it’s all a valuable learning experience!

When we got back to town, I left the girls and took a detour through the central area, mainly to pick up a plug adapter, something I singularly failed to include on my list of things to pack, but also to just check the place out a bit. It’s a big city, not particularly beautiful, but has definite European influences in terms of some of the architecture, as you’ll see from the photos. The other thing that struck me was the dogs. The city is over run with stray dogs, they are literally everywhere, mainly sleeping. It reminded me a little bit of India, where the cow is king and can pretty much do what it likes without being hassled, including sitting in the middle of the road. Well the dogs in Santiago don’t quite go as far as sleeping in the middle of the road, but the pavements are certainly their domain and if you don’t watch where you’re going there is a very high chance of stepping on one. They don’t hassle the people at all and equally, the people don’t hassle the dogs, so I guess everyone’s happy?

Back at the hostel, I had a little sleep before making plans for the evening.

Courtesy of a work friend, Monica, I had been put in touch with a friend of hers called Fran who lives in Santiago and via email and facebook we had arranged to meet up that evening. So at about 9pm Fran rocks up and we head out to a different part of town, near to where she lives, for some food. We end up at a very surreal shopping mall complete with TGI Fridays, Tony Roma’s Pizza and Showcase Cinema - not what I expected but the food was good. I also had my first experience of a Pisco sour - the speciality drink of this part of the world - tasted much like a Margarita to me! After food we went round to her friend’s house where there was much Spanish spoken, and hence much listening, smiling and nodding on my behalf, and then on to a club, but alas the stressful build up to the trip and lack of sleep saw me run out of steam at about 2.30am and it was back to the hostel to bed.

(Now for those of you sitting at your desks with a big pile of reports next to you, an empty Starbucks cup that needs a refill and seventeen different IM/sametime/facebook notifications flashing at you, you’re probably thinking “OK, so far he’s only told us about the first freaking day and it took him 1,307 freaking words! I haven’t got time in my life for this!”. Well, be assured that I do not plan on being so verbose in future blogs, it was just that the first day was such a whirlwind that I felt like I had to write it down just to get it straight in my own head!)

The next morning I woke up at about noon (missed breakfast) and headed out to check out San Cristobal Mountain, a big hill just to the North of the city centre from which I hoped to get some great views of the city. Now, on the plane from New York I had cracked open the Santiago chapter of my trusty Lonely Planet and with my swine flu still not quite out of my system, I was alarmed to read that Santiago “has some of the worst smog in South America, which can make your eyes water and your throat burn”. Now as my eyes were already running and my throat already burning even before I landed in Santiago, I did have some concerns about my well being. But happily it really wasn’t that bad - certainly no worse than Shanghai.

I walked to the foot of San Cristobal mountain full of good intentions to walk up to the 897m peak, but alas, when I got there and saw how high it looked and how efficient and effortless the funicular looked, my laziness got the better of me and I bought my ticket. The top was nice enough, good views of the city, including the smog, which looked much worse from up there, a large white Virgin Mary statue and stray dogs sleeping (obviously!). I hung around at the top for half an hour or so before getting the funicular back down and exploring some more of downtown. My impressions from the day before solidified, some nice colonial buildings, some ok statues a very nice park (Parque Municipale) and lots of stray dogs, but the thing I noticed this time was the road names including maybe my favourite road name of all time - “Avenue Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins” - which is one of the main thoroughfares through the city! This guy intrigued me so much I googled him and found out that he was born in 1778 as Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme and he was one of the commanders who freed Chile from Spanish rule during the Chilean War of Independence which lasted from 1810-1821. His somewhat unusual name comes from the fact his father was Irish, born in County Sligo in Ireland. At the same time I also googled Ricardo Cumming as my hostel was on Avenue Ricardo Cumming but all I could find out was that he “fue un comerciante chileno. Partidario del Congreso en la Guerra Civil de 1891.” (that particular Wikipedia page didn’t have an English translation).

Anyway, back at the hostel, I chilled for a bit and spoke to Sim and tried to coordinate where we are going to meet (her departure from Seattle was delayed due to some dog welfare issues). She is flying into Lima on the 21st and we were originally going to meet in La Paz on the 22nd but that was when my departure date was still May 1st, which would have giuven me three weeks to get to La Paz. Now with my arrival delayed by two weeks to May 14th, I think even if I had got on a bus on the first day, I would only have just made it to La Paz by the 22nd, so we had to rethink.

I also composed my leaving email and sent that out before heading to an Irish bar across from the hostel called ‘St Patrick’s Day’ and had a few beers before retiring to bed.

Valparaiso & Vina Del Mar

On Day 3, I got up, packed up my stuff and headed to the bus station to get a bus to Valparaiso (or ‘Valpo’ to the seasoned traveler) about two hours west of Santiago, on the coast. I had reserved a hostel in advance -. Hostal NuevaMente - and one of the selling points of the hostel was that it was ‘only 500m from the bus terminal’. As such, my thought was that I could walk there and avoid the expense of a taxi. The bus arrived in Valpo somewhat unexpectedly - I had expected the bus to take two hours and we were actually there in just over one and a half - so I was a bit flustered, only making it off the bus just before it pulled away again. Anyway, I was there, all my bags were with me and I was ready to go. I loaded up - two on the back, one on the front - and headed out onto the street heading in the direction of the hostel, or so I thought. After about 5 minutes of walking, I decided I was going the wrong way so turned round, went back to the bus terminal and took a right. Another 5 minutes went past and again, I decided I was going the wrong way so I turned round, went back to the bus terminal and took another right i.e. I was now going in the opposite direction to my first attempt. It was about 8 minutes this time before I decided I was still going in the wrong direction so I turned round and headed back to the bus terminal. Now picture the scene if you will. Tall, white guy, loaded up with backpacks, map in one hand, phone in the other, walking past the bus terminal for the third time in half an hour - I don’t actually think I could have looked any more ‘idiot backpacker’ if I’d tried - well actually maybe zip off trousers and some sort of ethnic bag or top would have set the look off completely, but still I looked pretty naïve. So it shouldn’t really be any surprise that the next thing I felt was a hand reaching into my left pocket, grabbing at my phone. Fortunately my Warrior instincts kicked in and I got my hand down just in time to foil said pick pocketer so no harm done but it certainly made me laugh later on that evening, and as I write this, to think back at how appetizing I must have looked to senor pickpocketer.

Now, just as an aside, I’ve never knowingly been pickpocketed before and must apologise to the pickpocketing fraternity as I clearly have stereotyped them as four foot nothing, street urchin types and while I didn’t expect them to wear top hats a la The Artful Dodger, I did expect some sort of guile, stealth and showmanship. Well maybe Oliver hasn’t made it to Chile and they clearly can’t have seen Slumdog Millionaire cos my pickpocketer was about 6’5” and wearing a very snazzy Pringle jumper - although the cut/ripped off trousers and bare foot look did rather give him away for something other than a golf pro. His technique was more rudimentary than I would have expected as he came up behind me and stuffed his hand in my pocket grabbing what he could. Not even so much as a tap on the opposite shoulder for distraction purposes. Fortunately my shorts had very deep pockets and not even this 6’5” goliath could reach in far enough to claim the prize.

In hindsight I think there really is scope for someone to come in and give these guys a few pointers - PickPocketing 101 - around some of the nuances of the pickpocketing game - I reckon I could set up a nice little racket!

Anyway, at the fourth time of asking I found myself going in the right direction and eventually found the hostel, which as advertised was about 500m from the bus terminal, although I’d probably racked up a good couple of kilometers finding it. Thankfully, I had written down the address on a piece of paper, because if I’d been relying on the hostel having a big sign outside advertisng itself as such, I’d still be walking. Another non-descript door and another 10 or so minutes of knocking, ringing, checking and scanning passed before ‘Gustavo’ came and opened the door. He was extremely friendly and suggested how I might like to spend my two days in Valpo. So with bags dumped in room and map in hand I headed off to the junction of Colon and Uruguay and caught the number 612 bus up into the hills.

Valpo (literally ‘Paradise Valley’) is one of the country’s most important ports and a pretty city to behold. It is set around a horseshoe shaped bay and is surrounded by hills with lots of windy roads and precariously positioned domiciles. It’s pseudo-famous for its street art which is what I was in search of. I got off the bus in Bellavista - well actually I got off the bus about 3 stops after Bellavista after miscalculating the scale of the map - and spent a good 3 hours roaming through the streets of a picturesque town that is clearly wealthy in places but also extremely poor in others. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the street art, but it was a real mix of stuff that was pretty good and stuff that was … erm … shit.

I walked back to the hostel through the main downtown area, caught some sort of ceremony where a load of different school bands were parading past someone who looked like a pretty important military type dude, and picked up a six pack of Heineken (for $5 - not as cheap as I had expected) before getting back to the hostel.

The next day I decided to go for a walk along the coast to Vina Del Mar - another city just along the coast which has grown rapidly just like Valpo such that the cities are now almost joined together in one seamless conurbation. It took me a good two hours to get there along a very nice coastal path and it was worth the trip. Vina was pretty, less industrial than Valpo and evidently more wealthy as evidenced by some of the properties on the hill overlooking the seafront area.

Now, as I have mentioned previously, to call my Spanish rudimentary would be a huge overstatement so what I am about to say may be entirely untrue, but it is what I took away from a big information board on the seafront entitled “Castillos de Vina Del Mar” (“Castles of Vina Del Mar”). I had noticed at least three castle type structures on my walk to Vina but had noticed that none of them looked that old. Well according to this information board and my interpretation thereof, during the late 1800s and early 1900s lots of wealthy people who were making their money from shipping down the coast in Valpo began building large flamboyant residences in Vina - many in the style of castles, being a traditional symbol of wealth and power. There are now 12 such ‘castles’ in and around Vina and all are still private residences except one which is open to the public.

(Note: If this were a Wikipedia article it would definitely say “citation needed” all over it!)

After checking out Vina, I got the highly efficient Metro back to Valpo in search of some more street art. While there’s a real mix of good and bad it certainly adds colour to some of the boring concrete walls. As you can see from the photos, some of the ‘tags’ inspired my inner bad bwoy and I felt the need to express myself via the medium of breakdance.

I also discovered that Valpo has excellent ice cream.

That evening I channeled my inner backpacker and made my own dinner - a ham and cheese sandwich - before heading out with a group of fellow hostel dwellers to play pool.

La Serena, Pisco Elqui & Vicuna

On Day 8, I was on the move again, on a bus 7 hours north to La Serena where I stayed the night. The next day I got a bus a few hours inland to Pisco Elqui in the Elqui Valley for two reasons i) to do a tour of one of the Pisco distilleries (Pisco is the local liquor) and ii) to do some stargazing at the local observatory.

I arrived in Pisco Elqui at about 2pm and checked into one of the cheap hotels. The distillery tour was my first stop and it was ok but it was all in Spanish, so my understanding of the whole production process maybe somewhat inaccurate. One of the things I did understand was that they used to use treated cow’s udders to transport the partially processed Pisco from the disitillation room to the fermentation room (see photo).

At the end of the tour I got chatting to a German couple, Friederich and Astrid who were 3 months into a 6 month tour of Chile and Argentina in their Volkswagen van they had brought over from Germany. I mentioned I was going to do the observatory tour and it was going to cost 15,000 pesos (about $30) for the round trip tour from Pisco Elqui. They looked at me in horror and said they had done it the day before from Vicuna (the town right next to the observatory) for only 5,000 pesos and by luck they were going to drive past Vicuna right then on their way back to La Serena. They suggested I get a ride with them to Vicuna (zero pesos) and they would drop me at the tour place, I could do the 7pm tour (5,000 pesos) and then get the 10pm bus back to Pisco Elqui (1,000 pesos) thus saving myself 9,000 pesos - like $20!!! So before I knew it, I was in the back of a slightly strange little red VW van on my way to Vicuna with two lovely, but slightly strange Germans. One interesting point to note is that once I had got in the back, I was slightly alarmed to see Friederich tightening a big strap around the door I had just come in through (and my only means of escape!). I stayed calm but when Friederich did get in the front I casually dropped into conversation a question devised to ascertain the purpose of the big strap that was sealing me in. He explained that I shouldn’t worry, it was just needed to stop the water tank on the roof from falling off - OK!

Anyway an hour later, at 6.45pm, we arrived in Vicuna and, as promised, they dropped me at the tour place and, as promised, the sign outside said there was a 7pm tour and, as promised, the advertised price was 5,000 pesos - excellent. So I bade farewell to my new German friends and headed in to purchase my ticket. Alas, the 7pm tour had already left - the tour started at 7pm but it started at the observatory at 7pm and actually left Vicuna at 6.30pm. I enquired as to the time of the next tour - 8.30pm, finishing at 10.30pm, with an ETA back in Vicuna at 11pm. This was fine’ except the last bus back to Pisco Elqui was at 10pm. Hmmmm there was a decision to be made … a) get the bus straight back to Pisco Elqui now and miss the observatory tour or b) do the tour and find somewhere to stay in Vicuna for the night - thus paying for both a room in Pisco and a room in Vicuna. I decided on the latter but decided food was in order first.

I found somewhere that looked ok and ordered a steak sandwich that was not only dreadful but also took ages! So long in fact that by the time I had paid, I didn’t have time to find a hostel before the tour started.

So, why the observatory tour I hear you ask? Well, Chile is actually world famous for its stargazing. This is for a number of reasons i) Chile is very dry and hence not much water vapour in the air (which apparently is good for stargazing) ii) It is relatively unpopulated so there is not much light pollution (also good for stargazing) iii) It is very hilly so it’s easy to find a good hill on which to build an observatory.

The tour was two hours and was actually really interesting. I’m a sucker for stats and facts and I don’t want to bore you with too many, but here are a few that struck me.

• Our galaxy is the Milky Way and it has approx 100 billion stars and 8 planets
• Pluto used to be classified as a planet but recently got demoted cos its orbit is the wrong shape or at the wrong angle or something
• The sun is the closest star to Earth and is 8 light minutes away i.e. light that leaves the sun takes 8 minutes to get to Earth
• The next closest star after the sun is 4.5 light years away!
• The next closest galaxy, the Large Magellanic cloud, is 180,000 light years away i.e. when we looked at it through the telescope last night, the light we were seeing left the stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud 180,000 years ago. Or to put it another way, if one of the stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded today, we wouldn’t know about it for 180,000 years!
• In 1997, the Hubble Space Telescope ‘saw’ an explosion from a star 13.5 billion light years away i.e. it saw an explosion that actually happened 13.5 billion years ago but was only seen by us in 1997 - that left me pretty dumbfounded I’ll be honest!
• We also saw Saturn, which really does have rings!

I still think that to be an astronomer you have to be a bit sad, but having said that I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and hadn’t seen so many stars in the sky since I slept in the Australian bush near Uluru.

On the way back to Vicuna I shamelessly befriended a French couple, William and Nadia, who were 9 months into a 12 month trip, and were kind enough to take me back to their hostel and William even used his excellent Spanish to plead my case and negotiate me an excellent rate for a room for the night.

The next day I got up early and got the bus back to Pisco Elqui, picked up my backpack, which had had a very comfortable night in a room to itself, got back on the same bus back to Vicuna which raised a few eyebrows from the driver, and then got another bus back to La Serena. In La Serena I had to go back to my hostel and pick up my flip flops and computer power lead, both of which I’d managed to leave there two nights before. Then it was off to the bus station to get on the bus for 18 hours overnight to Iquique to meet Sim. The bus was actually extremely civilized - I went for the Premium seats ($40) which recline fully flat (see photo) and actually enabled me to get some pretty reasonable sleep.

To be honest, so far on the trip there has been some pretty amateur backpacking - losing my cap on the flight over, getting a taxi from the airport instead of public transport, the whole hostel search/pick pocket incident, the Pisco Elqui/Vicuna hostel debacle, the flip flop/computer lead near disaster and obviously anything that has required me to converse in Spanish - all the years of Limolink, Marriott and Seamlessweb has obviously had a bigger effect on me than I imagined - but the street breakdancing, making my own dinner, playing pool at a super sketchy pool hall in Valpo and befriending random Europeans and using them to my advantage has certainly made me feel like I am getting back into the backpacking groove.

Iquique

So here I am in Iquique. It’s a beach town in the north of Chile and seems cool from first impressions. The beach looks good and the massive sand dunes look like a lot of fun could be had! Weather forecast is for sunshine and high 70s for the next 5 days 😊. Sim’s bus is due in a few hours so hopefully she will make it in one piece from Lima!

Adios Amigos

J (&S nearly)

This week’s top likes (Sorry to James and Marissa for flagrantly steeling your idea!)

• The looks on some people’s faces as I pulled some very ‘white’ breakdance moves in front of their graffiti - somewhere between pity and disdain.
• Chilean bread - it really is excellent
• Fran’s very kind hospitality in Santiago - although I’m still not sure why one person needs an apartment with three bedrooms and three bathrooms!
• Chilean buses - really rather civilized
• The weather - so far so good!
• French and German people (!)

This week’s top dislikes

• The ‘thermal baths’ in Colina
• Chilean pool tables - bigger than American pool tables, with the same size balls but way smaller pockets! All I can say is that can be the only reason for two games of pool taking over an hour!
• Chilean pickpockets - come on guys, take pride in your trade!
• Chilean mayonnaise - only available in big sachets not in bottles - weird!

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Comments

[James]

You seriously need an editor
... or I am going to have to schedule an hour every week to keep up with you. Also, if you think Chile is over run with stray dogs, you just wait til you get further north. In fact the whole continent is overrun with them, with the exception of Brazil. Enjoy enjoy enjoy.

[Marissa]

I might have to quit my job to find time to read your blog!
Jesus Jules, isn't there something in between the exec summary and the detailed report?!!!

[Lisa]

Smog?
Really not sure where that little Shanghai - smog comment came from. I'll have you know I am currently looking at a very clear blue sky from my balcony!! P.S. I'll have a penis teapot please!