Self-Enforced Isolation - Maitencillo and San Alfonso

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Heading Out of the City

In Chile we tried to do two things: Easter Island and Patagonia. We were unsuccessful at both. We had no interest in Easter Island until our friend Justin planted the seed. Then we spent about a month trying to get airfare, but Lan has a monopoly and can charge ridiculous prices for the five hour flight out into the Pacific. We hoped for some last minute fares, but it looked like it would cost about $1000 a person round trip for about a five to six day stay. That was just not in our budget. So, we tried to go down to Patagonia. If you have ever seen a map of Chilean Patagonia you will notice that about ¾ of the way down the country the road ends. It just ends. The rest of the country is lakes, rivers, fjords, and glaciers. We tried to book a cruise while we were in Mendoza and came up empty handed. Then we tried to book a ferry, which is just a nice word for a commercial transport ship that added a few rooms for tourists. We would need to take an overnight bus for about 14 hours from Santiago south, do five days on the boat, and then an overnight bus back. We just could not get this stupid ferry booked. We tried booking online, calling them, having them call us, and tried to book it through a hostel, all of which were unsuccessful. We thought we had it done when we were in Santiago and found a travel company that booked the ferry, so we went to their office in the morning. They were only open from 3-6 pm. We took it as a sign that we were not meant to board the Navimag.

Once we reached Valpo, after striking out on Easter Island and the Navimag cruise, we were looking for other options including going farther north to La Serena. But, I came down with a vicious sinus infection that left me unable to breathe about 23 hours of the day. After two days of that I did not want to board a seven hour bus to go anywhere. We added a couple extra nights in Valpo while we looked for something closer. We ended up with a recommendation to take a bus about 1.5 hours up the coast to a seaside community called Maitencillo. We booked a room with a view at a hostel on the hill and left on a bus the next day.

The first roadblock was getting the bus. We were told to leave the hostel in Valpo, walk down hill to the coast road and a bus would come by with Maitencillo on the sign. It would cost about $2 per person. It took us an hour to get the right bus. First we looked for the large bus with the bus company’s name on the side, but none had the right city name. After about a half hour I started flagging down any bus from that company, Sol de Pacifico, to find out the deal and to ensure we were standing in the right spot. I was told we were looking for a small bus, we were waiting at the right spot, and the third bus I flagged down, told us the bus we wanted would be along in 8 minutes. Finally, we boarded the minibus that would take us up the coast, after making about 100 stops along the way. Luckily we were first on and were able to find seats and a place for our packs, but they crammed people in line sardines. Once on the bus, we realized I wrote down the phone number of the place, but not the address and we did not print the map they gave. Oh well, it’s a small town, how difficult could it be?

After figuring out where to get off the bus we realized we had no idea where to go. I was hoping I would look up the hill and recognize the hostel from the pictures online. I tried to put my Spanish to use by asking around. I was asking for the hostel or an internet café so we could get more information on the place. We were told the “supermercado” had computers, but not only was it not a supermarket, but also the computers did not work. I asked about a public phone, because there was a sign out front, in hopes that they would just let us use their phone, but they were completely useless. We walked next door to a gift shop and they were much more helpful. They called the number we had and the owner told us to wait there and he would come to get us. He drove us through town, out of town, up a hill, and into a neighborhood to find the hostal. There was no way that we ever would have found it, and no way could we have walked with our packs.

Mom and Pop on the Hills

Hostal Maitencillo was easily THE definition of a mom and pop hostel. Pop, aka Clemente, picked us up from town in his beat up old SUV. It certainly was not a fancy car intended to drive the tourists around. When we arrived, we walked into a living room/dining room/kitchen area filled with seaside style knickknacks. We walked down a narrow hallway to our room, passing about four or five other rooms and two bathrooms on the way. We were not disappointed in the view. The corner of our room had two large windows overlooking the cliffs and the beach below. It was breathtaking. So much so, that we slept with the shades open to wake up to the view from bed. Lovely.

As soon as we checked in (which was a procedure where Pop gave us keys and told us he did not need to see our passport or take a credit card) we asked if lunch was being served in the “dining room” because it was around 3pm. Pop said “my wife is the cook, she cooks all the time.” So, we sat down to eat. We quickly realized that until we figured out how to get back to town, we would be eating all our meals here. The food was decent, if a little overpriced. Atte, the cook and Mom, reminded me of Eric’s mom cooking for all of us. She cooked everything to order, one meal at a time, in her kitchen off the dining room. Because the town was so isolated, and I saw the selection at the supermercado, it seemed that everything she cooked was fried and not too fresh. Bread and veggies were fresh, but the French fries were frozen, the mashed potatoes instant (they even warned us not to order them). I truly felt like we were guests at their house, other than the menu with the prices.

During lunch, we enjoyed the view from the dining room table over the cliffs. After lunch and a nap, we tried to walk to town. We were told we could climb down the cliff to the beach or walk through the neighborhood and down the road. It was about 6pm and we were afraid that if we took the cliff walk to the beach that we would not be able to make it back in the dark, so it would be wise to take the other way. After walking about 20 minutes we were just making it to the road down the hill into town. We realized we were not even close to the town, and saw nothing resembling a restaurant or minimarket anywhere in the immediate vicinity. So, we gave up, returned to the hostel, watched the sunset from the cliff side, and ate dinner in the restaurant.

After a late breakfast the following morning we decided to try a venture out to town again. We took the cliff walk down, which started nicely with concrete steps, even if they were overgrown with plants and flowers. I knew that eventually the staircase would disintegrate, I just did not know into what. A few minutes later the stairway became a dusty path, and then a 45 degree angle downward on sand and rocks until we finally hit the beach. From the beach looking upward there was no evidence of a trail at all. The hostel was truly on the edge of town, with very little else around. It was beautiful, but I would not recommend it without a car. After about an hour walk we finally made our way to town, ate some empanadas, picked up a bottle of water, and made the walk back. In the end, we were probably gone around 3 hours, with 2/3 of that actually walking. It was sunny, with a breeze, nice and cool, and led us each to get a little sunburn. We spent the rest of the day sitting out and enjoying the view from the hostel. It was very relaxing, with a beautiful view as promised by Pop. Our first night there I think there was only one other person staying there, and our second night we were all alone.

The mom and pop feel continued when we realized each night they turned off the WiFi at a certain time, as if it were our curfew and they were telling us to close down and go to sleep. They asked us what time we wanted breakfast since they would have to wake up in time to serve us. We told them no rush, around 10 or 1030 am. Clemente said we had no need to be out by check out time because it was just us with no other reservations. When we went to leave, finally, to make our way back to Santiago, Clemente, thank goodness, drove us down the hill to the bus stop. We waited for about 20 minutes for the bus to arrive and hoped back on the tiny little minibus for the crowded trip back to Valpo, and then onto Santiago.

A Love Affair With Mayonnaise

Thus far I have not spoken much about the food in Chile. I also have taken very few pictures of food. In Valpo we went to a few lovely restaurants, more high end fusion style. We had a lovely chicken and seafood risotto (not as good as our favorite seafood risotto ever, in Camogli, Italy). At our hostel we had a mariscal, which was a seafood and fish soup. I had something similar at a restaurant, a local cazuela, which was also a seafood and fish soup (I am not sure what the difference was between mariscal and cazuela) with a spicy Spanish chorizo. We had a set lunch in Valpo consisting of a decent salad and roast pork with potatoes, vegetables, and red cabbage in a red wine and mushroom sauce, with a delightful ice cream filled profiterole in dark chocolate sauce, for about $12 a person. It was of decent quality. We also took a trip about ten minutes north of Valpo to Vina del Mar, a ritzier beach area than Valpo, and stopped for margaritas and fajitas - that was a nice break, but did not compare to our Mexican hangout Cesar’s in Chicago. But, for the most part, the food in Chile is nothing to write home about. We had some decent and quite large fried empanadas, some with an onion and seafood mixture - the best of which was in Isla Negra. At mom and pop’s place in Maitencillo, we had a lot of meat and bread - steak and fries, and a sliced steak sandwich with tomato and avocado. Even the coffee is not so great here - there is some sort of fascination with Nescafe, so unless you were sure it was real, brewed coffee, the Lonely Planet suggested skipping it. I, therefore, drank a lot of tea.

But, even stranger than the love affair with Nescafe was the love affair with mayonnaise. Our first real meal in Chile was at a fast food joint called Doggis in Santiago. The default dog was an Italiano - tomato, avocado, and mayonnaise, so that the dog looked like the colors of the Italian flag. I ordered mine with no mayo and when it came out with the mayo I asked for them to remake it. You would have thought I tried to burn a Chilean flag. They were flabbergasted that I would not want mayo on my hot dog. My steak sandwiches in Maitencillo also came loaded with mayo a la Italiano. The biggest mayo mistake we made, though, was on a quick stopover in Valpo coming from the beach and heading back to Santiago. We stopped at a German restaurant and ended up eating hot dogs labeled as German salchicha. I ordered it Bavarian style with cheese, red sauce (grilled tomato sauce), green sauce, a fried egg, and mayonnaise. I was willing to take a little mayo with the rest of the goodness. It was huge. The top layer was white melted cheese mixed with a large glop of mayo and the green sauce, which seemed like onions and cilantro. I tried to scrape off most of the onions and mayo and was left with two giant piles of gooeyness on my plate. It was not appetizing. Eric ordered a fat sausage, which was two giant hot dogs sliced in half and placed on a large burger bun - twice the size of normal. It came with red sauce, sauerkraut and about half a jar of mayo. It oozed from every side. I encouraged Eric to scrape off some of it just to make it through his meal.

That night in Santiago when looking for dinner, Eric told me he did not care what he ate, but if it had mayo on it he probably would vomit. Everywhere we looked the pictures showed some sort of meat on a bun with mayo. We settled with McDonald’s. Cheap and easy. In most of the countries we have been to McDonald’s has some sort of sandwich for the local palate. There was a chicken tastuki in Japan, which was grilled with some sort of teriyaki looking sauce. In Chile, there was the McPollo Italiano, a fried chicken breast with, you guessed it, tomato, avocado, and mayo. We steered clear by ordering a Big Mac and Quarter Pounder. Eric asked me to ensure with the employee behind the counter that there was no mayo on the burger. At least they kept it traditional.

Concha y Toro

One more wine tour. We booked a little package out in the country that involved transportation and a tour of the oldest and most popular winery in South America - Concha y Toro. This was our 8th trip to a winery since arriving on the continent. Eric seemed a little done with the wine tours, but even at our last one in Casablanca I learned something new. So long as I kept learning something I was okay. When we arrived we realized we were totally underdressed for the weather. It was cold and grey and we were dressed for the day before. I had on Capri pants and sandals and the tour of the grounds made my feet start to hurt from the cold. First, we started with a marketing video, discussing how wonderful the company is. This company (I will say company and not winery) made Septima in Mendoza look like a boutique operation. I think I understood that it is even traded on the New York Stock Exchange. We saw the founder’s old summer house, which was like a small Italian palace set in the countryside. We saw the tip of the vineyards and the modern cellar. So far, I was not impressed.

Concha y Toro produces one wine in particular that is well known for - Casillero del Diablo. The story goes that the founder kept some of his best wines aging in his cellar as a special reserve for his family. He started to notice that some of the bottles were missing and was able to deduce that the townspeople were stealing his wine. Knowing the people to be superstitious, he spread a rumor that there was a devil hiding in the cellar and it kept the people away. No more wine was stolen. Their most famous wine has a stamp of the devil on it - el Diablo. It is the wine of the devil.

I began to feel that the winery was successful based on the lore and the marketing rather than the quality of the wine. This thought was amplified when the tour guide excused himself from the old cellar, turned the lights down and a “scary” voice explained the story to us. It was like Fright Fest at Six Flags. It was a little too much shtick for me. But, the other tourists seemed to get a kick out of it. I thought it was cool being in a cellar as old as this one, well over 100 years old. Some of the other tourists were more impressed than I was, including a young Chinese couple who we were convinced were there on some sort of corporate espionage trip. They videotaped everything, including the informational video and asked more questions than anyone else. The guide seemed put off enough to keep his answers short, sweet, and to the point. He was such a little devil.

Eric + Amber in Nature - the Makings of a Horror Film

After leaving our wine tour at Concha y Toro, our driver continued through the mountains into greyer skies to Cascadas de la Animas, a nature reserve set on the Maipo River near the town of San Alfonso. We were scheduled to have lunch at the restaurant, go for a hike to a waterfall, and do a zipline across the river. We were also scheduled to spend two nights in a rustic cabin. But, we were chilled to the bone when we arrived. I found either the owner or manager when we arrived, who spoke English thank goodness, to see if we could do the hike and zipline on one of the following days, in hopes of improving weather. In the mean time, we had our lunch and settled into our chilly cabin in the mountains of Chile.
The cabin was set on what, in my mind, seems like a children’s camp in the Catskills. There are cabins lining the gravel and dirt road on one side. On the other side has a playground, pool, picnic area, and the restaurant hanging over the edge of a cliff overlooking the river. Down the road was a large campsite. Reception was about a mile up the road at the entrance to the property. We had no car. We had no TV, radio, internet, or telephone. We felt pretty isolated especially considering it was midweek, somewhat off season, and grey and cold. The cabin itself felt a little older and definitely rustic. It had a small bedroom, a bathroom (thank goodness), and a wood burning stove. After lunch a guy came with a wheel barrow of chopped fire wood and kindling, so we could create some warmth. That was a good thing, because even after changing into pants, socks, shoes and a hooded shirt under my fleece, I was still shivering. At least Eric had something with which to keep himself occupied.

I was a bit worried about getting a little bit of cabin fever. I hoped the weather would be nicer and we could walk around, sit outside in the sun, walk down by the river, and generally enjoy the outdoors. Instead, because of the cold, I felt pretty house bound. We both had gone through all of our good books and were each reading books neither of us was too thrilled with. I could catch up on my writing, but what else. When we looked around the property and realized there did not seem to be too many other people staying here, I got in my head that we could be in a horror movie. It was the cold, mountain version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” - the one where they go to the Caribbean in the hurricane season and there are no other tourists there. I envisioned us getting into trouble and having to hoof it in the dark up to reception to find, what else, but that someone cut the telephone lines and all the employees were gone. With that thought I hoped that some wine, cooking dinner, and keeping the fire going would help us get through the night. I was praying for nicer weather in the morning.

Well, we did not have better weather the next two days. We ventured to the restaurant a few times but otherwise just hung out in the cabin listening to music, reading, writing, and sleeping. We slept until almost 11:30 one morning. I don’t remember the last time I slept that late. As much as I was disappointed in the weather and the cold, it was a good relaxing end to our stay in Chile. We returned to Santiago for our last night to catch and early morning flight, thank goodness, to warm and sunny Brazil. We were Rio bound.

Escape from Chile

We spent our last night in Santiago at the haunted hostel and woke at 5am to catch an 8am flight. We left the hostel at 5:15 to catch the airport bus at 5:30. We arrived at the airport at 6:00 for our Pluna flight. Pluna is a Uruguayan airline, so we had to stop over in Montevideo before our final destination. We knew it was a long day ahead of us. Pluna is also a “discount” airline. We checked in online to get a discount on paying to check our bags. I was hoping to carry mine on since it was less than 10kg, but we found out their restriction is only 5kg. Oh well, can’t win them all. We knew we at least got the charge down from $20 a bag to $10 a bag. The people in front of us in line were not as informed about the procedures.

When we arrived, there were only about 15 or 20 passengers ahead of us, with three employees checking us in. None of the passengers were aware of the bag rules and there was a lot of controversy and complaining. It took at least 10 minutes for each group of passengers to check in. I was not sure what the problem was, but once again I wanted to volunteer my time as an efficiency expert. We finally got to the counter and even with checking in online the guy still spent a good five minutes just punching things into the computer. We finally finished the process around 7am. The longest and slowest moving check in line ever.

We made our way to immigration and saw some Lonely Planet books for sale at the Duty Free shop. I saw a Portuguese phrase book. We had about $30 in Chilean pesos to spend and I almost bought the book, but I decided to just get through immigration and security and figure it out on the other side. We got to immigration and the line was pretty long but was moving fast. We commented that there were at least another 30 or 40 passengers behind us in the Pluna line and seeing the immigration line we figured there was no way we would make our 8am take off time. No way whatsoever. Then, we looked past immigration to security.

The line for security snaked around several times so that the end of the line butted up against the immigration department. When we finished with our passports we had trouble even finding the end of the line because the line was blocking the exit from immigration. We just looked at each other in despair. From the end of the line we could see the problem. Although they had five or six security gates, only one was open. There were two lines snaking through from either side trying to get through that one gate. This was ridiculous, not merely inefficient.

After a bit of waiting someone came out and made a rapido announcement in Spanish that I could not understand. I found someone nearby to explain that there was a strike, air traffic was informed, and the planes would be held. Fun. That explains CNN Chile and another news station out front filming. It took us another hour to make our way close to the front of the line. During that time the natives started to get restless. Some of them started yelling out in Spanish “Open the Door” meaning open more security gates. There was a lot of random clapping, not because anything good happened, but to express something: anger, support for labor, who knows? Several people even tried to go up to the gate to talk to a person who may have been a labor representative to argue with him. We were not sure what they were trying to accomplish, but the people in line supported their actions. There were one or two airport police but they stayed in the background and I had no trust that they could prevent any sort of violence that could ensure. For the most part, however, the people in line kept orderly and just reacted vocally. Including me.

Once the front of the line was in sight, I saw an older white gentleman with grey hair and two tall Asian men cut the line. They walked out of immigration, paused at the end of the line, and then tried cutting a few people in front of us. I don’t know if it was because my blood sugar was down, or I was egged on by the intensity of the crowd, but I got my Irish up. I started saying loudly, in Spanish, “Excuse me, Senor, No. We are all waiting in the line and then end of the line is over there.” He just stared at me and the Asian guy looked astonished that I would try to stop him. I repeated what I said and the tiny young Mexican ladies who were standing in front of us in the line the whole time looked at me with a thank you. No one else in that part of the line wanted these guys to cut in. After my warnings the Asian guy barked back at me, in English, “I don’t understand” to which I responded “Oh, you speak English? We have all been waiting in this line for a long time, and I saw you try to jump the line. Go back to end.” He responded “What’s the big problem, don’t worry.” That outraged me. I think he was an American and felt like he was above standing in the line with everyone else. Well, we waited and so should he. “Of course there is a problem, we all waited and so should you.” I sort of forced myself in front of the three of them to let the line continue without them. He said to one of his buddies “This is crazy.” I turned and barked “It’s a strike, they are holding the planes, deal with it.” They just stood in their places as the line continued, but at least until I was at the security gate, no one behind me in line let them in. I felt at least a little vindicated, but I am sure they eventually cut in and got what they felt, as Americans, they deserved. I, on the other hand, needed food.

We made our way to the gate and there was no update on when we would actually leave. We had no idea when we were going to board, so I quickly tried to spend my last pesos. I bought two bottles of water for the flight and ran to the bookstore. I grabbed the Portuguese phrasebook and three candy bars to finish it off. We boarded the flight right away, but then sat and waited, and waited for the rest of the party to board. About an hour into the flight I had a thought. I took a look at the book I bought and realized it was a Portuguese - Spanish dictionary, not Portuguese - English. Oh well. I think most of the words I would need to know I already know in Spanish it just might take me a bit of time. I looked forward to the challenge.

When we landed in Montevideo, we were over one hour late. I am surprised it was not more. An announcement came on that only those passengers whose final destination was Montevideo should leave the plane. The rest should stay. We were unsure of what the situation was, but eventually they called the Rio passengers. This was the one good thing that Pluna Air did. We boarded a bus and they drove us across the tarmac directly onto our next flight. It kept the passengers focused and not wandering around the terminal leading to further delays. We took off a few minutes later. In the end we were only about 25 minutes late to the airport in Rio. It felt good to finally be there. Like Chicago before the trip, and our last day in Mendoza, I truly felt that Chile was giving us the old big boot in the butt telling us to hit to road and leave the country. We were thrilled to leave the cold weather in Chile and head to the tropics. When I got off the plane, the hot and humid weather hit me in the face and I loved it.

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Photos

View From Our Room
Not too shabby.

The Hostal on the Hill
That is our house on the left, with our windows on the right side of the house. And, this is the cliff we walked up and down to make it back to civilization.

Paragliders
Outside our window in Maitencillo - sometimes they looked like they were heading right into our room.

Pelicans
We spent a good deal of time checking out the pelicans waiting for scraps from the local fisherman.

Fish Heads
Can you see the fish head thrown to one of the lucky pelicans.

A Hawk
They were everywhere.

Eric's Gooey Hot Dog Catastrophe
I still can't believe he ate it. At least he had the sense not to finish it.

Eric Builds a Fire
I gave him an awful British chick lit romance novel I picked up at a hostel and could not get through 10 pages of. He used it as kindling.

Our Fire
We were so proud.