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Published: February 5th 2007
Valparaiso 30/12/2006 - 03/01/2007
According to the guide books Valparaiso or Valpal for short is Chile's most interesting town. With it's steep hills crowed with a jumble of multicoloured clapboard homes, a mixture of wooden shacks & weather beaten mansions & it's many rickety old acensors carrying people where it is too steep to build a road. All the books say that the city has seen better days, is a bit rough around the edges but will weave a spell on you & you will love it .... and we did, with bells on!
We spent our days riding the acensors up to stunning viewpoints, riding the rickety old trolley buses, wandering around the maze of narrow streets in the old town, we took a boat trip around the harbour and generally just mooched about, winding down after our overland trip & really enjoying ourselves.
We had some lovely food while we were there, lots of seafood & even sushi. On our first night after wandering around the town we saw an old restaurant which looked full of character. I was sure that I had read about it in one of the guide books so we
went in. I ordered salmon but Andrea was more adventurous & ordered the house special which was a pork dish. When it arrived to And´s horror it was wrapped in what must have been a large rectangle of what we think was boiled pig skin. And´s bravely tried to unwrap her meal but it was to much for her so she shut her eyes while I unwrapped it and lifted it off with my knife and fork to our used starter plates. It never made it as the slippery bundle unravelled it´s self & flopped onto my plate completely covering my dinner. Yuk yuk yuk, YUK!!!!! By this time we were in hysterics & had somewhat lost our appetites & when the man on the table next to us ordered the same meal & started to eat it all (gelatinous lump of skin & all) we couldn´t control ourselves so we got the bill & made a run for it. It wasn´t until a few days later that I found the restaurant in our guide book. El Cinzano came highly recommended as a place to go for the atmosphere as if we had stayed for a little while longer we
would have been serenaded by a ancient band of old school tango singers. It seems to be quite the place to be on a Saturday evening, which is exactly when we were there, no mention of pig skin though ...... never mind!
While in Valparaiso stayed at the Garvipalo B&B where the owner Uberlinda, welcomed us with a complementary pisco sour. Even though she only a few words of English she & her family made us feel incredibly welcome & relaxed from the moment we arrived.
On New Years day we spent most of the day nursing our hangovers after our amazing night at Cafe Turri. In the afternoon we settled down to watch Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire on the TV while drinking our complimentary new years eve champagne. Luckily for us almost all films in the cinemas in South America & most of the films on television are in English with Spanish subtitles. Ubi came into the lounge, started to watch the film with us & chatted to us (in Spanish of course). When she asked us what we do for a living I pointed at Potter & said "that". She got very excited
especially when I pointed out the shots I worked on & she insisted we sit through the credits to see my name. For the rest of our stay there, she made a great fuss of us, giving us another bottle of champagne, plying us with drinks & feeding us cake at every opportunity ... even for breakfast. So much for our new years resolutions of eating healthily & not drinking too much! To my embarrassment she introduced me to her family as "Famousa" & insisting that I write in her guest book that I worked on Harry Potter (ye gawds).
On our last evening in Valpal we walked up a steep hill to the cemeteries hoping to take photos of the old town from there but to our disappointment they were all shut & locked up. We managed to get the attention of one of the guards & to our surprise & delight he let us in so we were able to wander around the tombs & have the views all to ourselves.
Our last morning was spent visiting the house of Pablo Neruda, Chile´s most famous poet. he had an amazing house high in the hills which
is now a museum. We caught an acensor up then walked through the most beautiful street we had seen so far, full of multicoloured houses. Then snooped around the lovely quirky house which gave us the best views of the city we had had so far. A lovely way to finish our time there. Then we wandered back to the B&B said fond & sad farewells to Ubi & her daughter & took a cab to the bus station.
Puerto Montt 04/01/07 - 05/01/07
We travelled from Valparaiso to Puerto Montt overnight with TurBus, a Chilean coach company. We had paid extra to book executive seats which would recline back a long way & had lots of leg room so that we could get a good nights sleep & felt lucky that we managed to get the last two seats on the coach. When we got on though we discovered that our seats had much less leg room than all the others making it very uncomfortable, the toilet was right next to us and it absolutely reeked & that where we were sitting was so hot that we felt like we were cooking but the rest
of the bus was cold so the air conditioning was switched off as soon as we left (of course there were no windows you could open either). So we didn´t exactly get that good nights sleep after all!
We checked into the Tren del Sur Hostel when we arrived and were delighted to find out that we had a bath. Oh the luxury of a hot bath after three months of cold showers & a stinky sweaty bus trip! The staff there were very friendly, Especially the sweet but obviously loco lady who had found a baby bird outside & kept shoving it under our noses & kissing it. No matter how much we told us otherwise she seemed to think the little thing would survive in a cardboard box with a saucer of water (she was very weepy the next morning when it hadn´t)! Even though we were exhausted from the night bus we went for a walk to the port to stretch our legs & get some lunch in one of the wooden shacks there. Later we decided to meet up with Andrea´s university friend Claire who was staying in Puerto Varas, the next town. She came
to meet us at the hostel then we all caught a cab along the coast to a wonderful italian restuarant. Were we had a great night catching up with Claire & getting more than a little squiffy. When we got back to the Hostel we discovered that the gates were locked so we couldn´t even get to the door to ring the bell. And amazed me by turning in to spider woman, scaling the tall fence with ease and we were in.
The next morning our Hire car was delivered to the hostel. It was a nice shiny new Toyota Yaris & everything looked great until I asked for the permission papers were for us to take the car accross the border into Argentina (which we had ordered & paid for in Santiago) & the delivery man just looked blank. He then said it would take a week to organize them which was obviously not at all ideal. After half an hour of trying to work things out (& trying not to panic) I noticed that the papers the confused looking man was holding said First Renta Car which was odd as we had booked our car through Hertz.
The day before we had tried to call Hertz to make final arrangements but instead of letting us talk to them the bird lady had insisted on calling & speaking for us but she called the wrong company & ended up ordering us another car for a month. Luckily the First Rentals man was understanding & he left with out a fuss which was good but still left us with no car but as we rushed to the phone to call them the man from Hertz arrived with Argentina papers in hand.
Our new car was a not so shiny extremely chipped & scratched white Toyota Yaris. This was actually quite a relief as the road we were about to head down is notorious for being a 1000km dirt & rubble track so we hoped any chips and scratches we might get would be hidden amongst the mess.
We were too late to make our ferry connections that day so decided to stay an extra night, to organize flights to Ushuaia where our Antarctic cruise will depart & get more organized for our road trip then we drove over to Puerto Varas to have dinner with Claire &
hit our favourite Chilean supermarket Jumbo for some extremely late night shopping. Then it was of to bed both of us excited & nervous at what we were about to attempt the drive down the Carretera Austral ........
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Mum & Dad A
non-member comment
Long hair!!!!!
Cor' you two hasn't your hair grown in the last 3 months, it was lovely to see Claire again albeit in a photo and your adventures are still continuing ! enjoy yourselves