Day 333 to 346 (Dec 28 - Jan 10) Chile & Patagonia

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blog by Bronia







Happy New Year to all ! With Christmas now behind us and 2007 having well and truly begun, the countdown is on for our return home to London.

We entered Chile with 32 days left of our trip. Not much time to see Chile and Argentina and then travel home via a stop off in Portugal but we daren't complain to you all as we've already been spoilt with a complete year off to wander as we please.

Travel books, tour guides and apparently even Chileans themselves often quote the line about Chile that

It is an apt description as Chile is an amazingly diverse country from north to south. A thin sliver of a country, being only 200km wide and over 4300km long, it shares borders with Peru and Bolivia in the north and Argentina in the east. Chile is famous for its wine, for its poet Pablo Neruda, for it's modern author Isabel Allende, for its former dictator Pinochet (who died at the end of 2006, never quite making it to trial for his crimes against humanity), and for its amazing scenery - in particular Patagonia.

With a population of 16 million, its wealth comes from forestry, mining, salmon farming, and of course tourism. Its main economy however is the exportation of copper - the majority of which now goes to China for its burgeoning economy. In a recent article published by "El Tercera" a Chilean paper I picked up, it stated that 45% of its export economy comes from this copper mining, a staggering amount. The article also stated that Chile's economy faces a dire future if it cannot alter this balance. Copper, like any non renewable resource, will at some point in the near future, simply run out.

In the meantime however, Chile, relative to the rest of South America is doing well financially. It is visibly more wealthy than Ecuador and Bolivia that we have recently come through and its cities are more modern and European in style and feel. A sign of the country's relative wealth is how few beggars we have seen and the adoption of western clothing and consumerist lifestyles which contrasts against the Andean people and dress we have just seen in Bolivia.

Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of poverty to be found here. Many live in city slums or poor housing in the countryside with little or no sanitation, and the usual gap between rich and poor exists - but it is not as visible or as seemingly dominant as was the case in other countries we have seen this year.

December and January are the height of summer in the southern hemisphere and as such we are here during Chile's tourist high season when prices double and people flock en masse to places such as Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Chilean Lake District and the big cities. So we are here at the best time for the weather and the worst time for bargaining for hotel rooms. We found in fact during our 2 week stay that the budget you need for Chile is on a par with what you would need for Canada and the USA (excluding cities like New York of course) but in such an incredible country, you don't mind paying to see it.

So we began our visit to Chile by flying direct from La Paz, Bolivia to Santiago whereupon we then flew directly south to Punto Arenas.

Punto Arenas

Punto Arenas is one of the most southerly cities in the world. It is from here that you can get access to the towns of Ushuaia (even more south in Argentina), Puerto Williams and Puerto Toro right by Cape Horn and in the heart of Tierra del Fuego territory.

These are the most southerly cities in the world and it is from these cities that you can make expeditions to Antartica, which includes the famous rescue of the Endurance that Ernest Shackleton conducted in 1914. This is also where the famous author Bruce Chatwin came to visit and explore that inspired him to write "In Patagonia".

Punto Arenas is also the town you come to if you are going to visit Patagonia and Torres del Paine from the Chilean side (you can also visit the Argentinian side of Patagonia). Having only a week down here and desperately wanting to see the famous Patagonian landscape of mountains, rivers, lakes and glaciers we realised that our initial plan of going down to Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego and then going up to Patagonia needed some alteration as we simply didn't have enough time to cover all the territory that we wanted.

Once again we were greedily finding that a year just isn't enough time to see all that we want to see !

Deciding that Torres del Paine and the glaciers were our priority, we cancelled our plans to Ushuaia and spent a minimum amount of time in Punto Arenas before heading north into Patagonian territory.

Lying on the Straight of Magellan, where even in summer a cold arctic breeze blows through the town, Punto Arenas was originally a military garrison that grew in popularity as a stop off for ships heading to the Californian gold rush. It is now a town of 125,000 enjoying a new rush: the tourism rush. We were cold here, during the height of summer, so winter must be unbelievably frigid.

Penguins, real Antarctic penguins, live in colonies along the coast here as well as sea lions and whales so there are plenty of wildlife excursions to do in addition to appreciating the beautiful surroundings. The town itself, whilst there are some interesting colonial and historic buildings to see, is not the attraction.

Most of the town, built predominantly of corrugated iron roofing and concrete, is comprised of low squat buildings built on a grid system that go down to the shore of the Straight of Magellan and is bordered by flat pampas lands where wild grasses, summer flowers and hardy low scrub brush bend in the strong arctic winds.

The land here is a contrast between the very, very, very flat of the Pampas lands, and the incredibly high and jagged peaks of the Cordillera de los Andes. The two extremes make for some incredible views and the sky seems bigger and wider than ever, as you feel you literally are on the top (or bottom, depending on your perspective) of the world.

This flat Pampas land, has for the majority, been divided up many generations ago into Estancias (enormous ranches) when farmers, seeing all this free and open farm land, set up home here with the dream of populating cattle and sheep on these plains and making a fortune.

Unfortunately for them, they did not realise the nature of the flat Patagonian landscape and that not much precipitation falls here as it falls on the Andes before moving across to the flatlands. This meant that the cattle and sheep ate the wild grasses and brush that grew there originally but as the soil was too dry to rejuvenate vast swathes of these estancias were not able to sustain the herds and so the land became parched and the farmers suffered.

The result was that many abandonned their estancias, some taking their herds, others leaving them to fend for themselves. Today there are herds of wild cattle that still roam these rances and fences still deliniate the territory that the farmers own but cannot use to their profit. Some estancias have turned to tourism, and offer stays on their property in the Patagonian wilderness which has been a profitable and relatively eco-friendly venture. Others persist with a few sheep and cattle which we saw along our bus journey, but much of the land is as it used to be: empty for the wildlife of birds, pumas, foxes and deer to return to and Pampas grass to grown once again and blow in the arctic wind.

Being so far south, and here in summer, the first thing that Dave and I had to adjust to was the long days of sunlight. 18 hours of sunlight in fact, which meant that it was still bright sunshine at 9pm at night. We found that this kept throwing off our body clocks as we'd suddenly find it was after 10pm and we still hadn't eaten dinner.

Fortunately, night life here in Chile, no matter how far south you are, goes on until late so there were always plenty of amazing seafood restaurants open, serving good Chilean wine and dishes of scallops, lobster, crab etc that were so cheap it was ridiculous. For the price of what you would get 5 small scallops on your plate for at home in a posh restaurant I dined one night on about 50 in a big pot with rich white wine and parmesan sauce. I shamefully have to admit I actually had to leave some.

After having enjoyed Punto Arenas and the surrounding areas, we hopped on a bus for a five hour bus ride through flat Pampas land extending as far as the horizon to our next destination: Puerto Natales and the gateway to Torres del Paine.

Puerto Natales

We arrived in early evening and checked into the Hotel Francis Drake owned by a Frenchman and with lovely views across the Seno Ultima

Our boat trip to see the Balmaceda & Serrano Glaciers

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Puerto Natales, Chile

Esperanza (Last Hope Sound) and the mountains in the distance. This was the first time in Chile that the Cordillera de los Andes and their famous jagged peaks in Patagonia could really be seen, and it was breathtaking.

Although we have seen the Andean mountains from their start in Ecuador, through Peru, Bolivia and down the spine of Chile neatly separating it with Argentina, every time we see them they are different. Dumping our bags in our room we walked straight to the waterfront to walk along the beachfront and gaze at the incredible 180 degree view of the snow covered peaks, the water in the Sound, the boats rocking gently in the harbour and the wildlife, including a colony of cormorants that have set up home on the pylons of an old jetty.

We spent a total of a week here in this small town, not because it's that great of a town to hang out in, although it does have a lazy small town charm, but because it is an ideal base for excursions. And what excursions they are.

Our first one was by boat up the fjord of the Ultima Esperanza to see the mountain peaks and glaciers of Parque National Bernardo O'Higgins - named after an explorer who is presumably Irish in descent. Leaving early in the morning and returning at 6pm we had the chance to see Serrano Glacier and Balmaceda Glacier as well as an old traditional cattle ranch and some wildlife. It was a clear day with blue skies but bitingly cold. We bravely stood on deck with every thermal layer and warm covering we had in our backpacks and bravely braced the cold wind for the journey up the fjord. The scenery was fantastic. Around each bend in the fjord white mountains rose up from the water and the panorama that lay over the bow of the boat was stunning.

We passed an enormous colony of cormorants and then a short while later a colony of sea lions that had made their home in the eroded holes of a cliff side at sea level. As we passed the Balmaceda Glacier which poured from the mountain peak in a frozen river towards the sea the guide told us that 15yrs ago the glacier reached sea level whereupon it would melt when it made contact with the sea water. Now it has receded several hundred feet up the mountain. This is due directly to Global Warming of the planet.

It is worth noting that global warming and its effects is more apparent in Southern Chile than most other places in the world at the moment, and it is already significantly affecting the area of the country encompassing Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Here, the Patagonian Ice Field, which is the third largest mass of frozen water on the planet after Greenland and the Antarctic, is starting to melt at a rapid rate, changing the face of the land and it is predicted that long term this will be one of the areas most changed and affected.

It is also worth mentioning at this point the ozone layer down here - or lack of it. Thanks to our polluting ways the good old ozone layer has a nice big hole over Antarctica, also encompassing Patagonia and so sun screen, sun glasses and protective layers are essential for everyone. There are even in some towns "daily ozone danger levels" on street signs. The fact that such destruction exists and that it continues on a daily basis, in such a remote and beautiful part of the world is truly very sad.

With the melting of the glaciers, the warming of the Antarctic, and the huge whole in the ozone over Antarctica itself, this is a land that, despite its surge in tourism, will not be able to sustain itself long term as the place of beauty it is today. A parks official told us that here, hotels are springing up faster than there are facilities such as appropriate sewage treatment, environmental standards, wildlife protection programmes and infrastructure to preserve the future of this region. Coming here is a blessing for the tourism industry but a curse on the environment in many ways unless a way is found to address the balance.

Armed with this knowledge we stared at the receding Balmaceda Glacier in front of us, taking pictures, and felt a mixture of emotions when we realised we were staring at something that will not always be there.

The boat continued its journey up the fjord to the Serrano Glacier. Here we disembarked and walked along a narrow path that climbed up over rocks and through small glades where wild alpine summer flowers, fuchsia bushes in full bloom and red flowering cactus abound. We reached the Serrano Lake and before we could even see the glacier we could see masses of icebergs - some the size of a small car, some larger, floating on the lake.

The melting and breaking off of glacier ice to form icebergs on the lake is a normal occurrence, particularly in summer. It is beautiful and breathtaking to see and yet there is also something poignantly sad about it as you know that it is ice, hundreds of years old, melting into water that will never be glacier again.

A few more minutes hiking and we reached the glacier. Neither of us had been this close to a glacier before and the breeze that comes off the mountain and cools itself on the ice as it descends is freezing. We found a huge rock to sit on and spent the next hour fixated on the edge of the glacier looking at its alternating hues of brilliant white to deep turquoise and listening to the creaks and moans of the ice as it continually slides down the mountain cracking into the lake below.

Back on the boat we started sailing back to Puerto Natales. On the way we stopped at an old cattle ranch, still operational, where we got off for lunch. Dave and I brought a packed lunch with us so we found a log on the beach where fresh mountain water ran from a gurgling stream into the salt water of the fjord and sat down to eat. We sat for an hour as the clouds rolled over the mountains, a mother duck waddled along the shore with her ducklings behind her, and the water lapped on the smooth stones of the shore. Picture postcard stuff.

As it started to rain we headed back on to the boat and a short while later we were heading back to Puerto Natales. The end of a fantastic day.

Torres del Paine

From Puerto Natales our second major excursion would take us into what is widely renowned as the finest park in South America - Parque National Torres del Paine. This is the place that makes all the flights and bus journeys worthwhile.

On the way we first visited another major attraction called Cueva del Milodon. This enormous cavern was created by a lake during the last ice age when glaciers covered most of the land and the water levels were much higher. The cave was discovered by a German explorer in 1890 and it gets its name from the remains of a huge ground sloth (Milodon) which were found here. In fact, evidence of several of these 4 metre tall animals were found, as were some early human skeletal remnants.

The enormous cave in the hillside was fascinating and a nice diversion on the way to the main event. Incidentally the original find of the sloth skin has somehow ended up in the hands of the British.

As we arrived in the park, the Torres del Paine was shrouded in mystery - and cloud. We could see size of the distant mountains of the Andes but most of the famous peaks, that you see on all the postcards and posters for this region, were sadly obscured. These spectacular granite pillars,actually a part of the Cordillera de los Andes stand at 2800m high and sit between the summit of Paine Grande and the black tipped points known as Los Cuernos (the horns) which are 2200m-2600m tall. Their angles and peaks are so sharp and jagged that they reminded me rather of jagged bits of glass, the kind you see stuck into cement on top of walls to keep intruders out. They are simply amazing.

We continued on into the park, undaunted by the lack of clarity in the sky. There is so much to see here apart from the mountains that there was no way we could be disappointed. Around every corner there is likely to be a milky blue glacial lake spreading off to the horizon or another part of the snowy Andean range to savour.

There is also an abundance of wildlife here to spot if the landscape should become monotonous. Inside the boundaries of the park there are birds such as Rhea (like Ostrich), Flamingos, and Condors. The main predator here is the Puma or Mountain Lion and there are also two types of fox. Of the largest mammals by far the most abundant is the Gaunaco, a member of the llama family, which we saw with regularity throughout the day.

Our bus wound its way along a track that took us alongside several superbly blue lakes, and some other marvellous scenery, but we always had the Torres in view wherever we were. Or nearly in view because they were still shrouded in cloud. But not for long. Someone was smiling on us again with the weather, because within the space of an hour the cloud completely disappeared leaving us a close up and crystal clear view of the famous Torres del Paine - what we had hoped to see.

This unobscured, jaw dropping view remained for the rest of the day as we trundled from one magnificent "mirador" (view point) to another, snapping our cameras and soaking up our good fortune. Once we had enjoyed our lunch,sitting on a picnic table by a turquoise glacial lake, in the shadow of the awesome mountains we made our way toward Grey Lake which formed by the gradual melting of the Grey Glacier.

Nothing had prepared us for the sight of the huge glowing blue icebergs that lay beached in the shallows of the lake. These huge sections of ice break off the main glacier, become icebergs, and then float the length of the lake until they beach themselves and slowly melt on the shore. The wind howled as we stood on the lake edge and we struggled along the beach into the freezing gusts that were coming through the glacial valley. The view was incredible and we were unable to stop gawking at these pieces of bright skyblue ice the size of buildings just metres away from us.

After reaching the farthest end of the lake shore we were able to clamber up a small hill which extended out into the water in order to allow a view of the monstrous Grey Glacier's front face in the distance. Once more we tried to absorb these amazing sights, realising how lucky we were to be standing in such an amazing part of the world before heading to the bus for the journey back.

Hopefully the pictures below do justice to what we experienced, it seems only fair that we should try to share it.

El Calafate - crossing into Argentina

El Calafate is the town located just over the border in Argentina which basically exists (and growing rapidly) as the stopping over point for everyone that comes to visit the Parque National de Glaciers in Patagonia on the Argentinian side of the border.

Why cross to Argentina when we could see Patagonian landscape and glaciers from Chile? The easiest answer is that it is the Argentinian side that boasts the Perito Moreno Glacier - part of the massive ice fields that lie on that side of the border, and that particular glacier is the easiest for tourists to approach and get a really good glimpse of. So off we went.

Our journey there from Puerto Natales, began with a mad dash to the bus depot at about 8am. For once, we weren't fully laden with the usual weight of all our things as we'd decided to leave all our surplus kit at the hotel for a couple of days and just take small daypacks with one change of clothing, and basics such as a toothbrush and guidebook.

The bus was acceptable by Chilean standards which made it positively luxurious by Asian ones and we settled down for the five hour trip with all the other Gringos staring out the window.

About one hour into the ride we had to disembark the coach at the Chilean border where we got our passports stamped before clambering back onto the bus, and then repeating the process about 500 metres down the road at the Argentinian border. Other than that we enjoyed a perfectly smooth journey through the most amazing landscape. The flattest longest most featureless pampas plains would stretch away to the distant horizon one one side of the bus whilst the other side would be a window onto the barren lower foothills of the Andes and white tipped peaks. Quite a contrast.

Driving through this desolate landscape meant that it was a surprise to us when we pulled into the town of El Calafate and found leafy suburban streets lined with outdoor cafes, souvenir shops and restaurants. It had seemingly been dropped from the sky in this otherwise uninhabited and uninviting area of Argentinian Patagonia.

On checking into our hotel we were mildly disappointed to find our room was exceptionally basic without any furnishings and with a kind of log cabin feel to it. Our higher expectations were based on what we had paid which had seemed a sufficiently large amount to have earned us some creature comforts. After five minutes trying to find some positives about the place and reassuring one another that it would be "ok" we both felt a drop of water hit the bed, then another. There was water (we think and hope it was water) coming through the ceiling onto the bed from the room above.

No sooner had we complained about our "waterbed" than we were being transferred into a luxurious new wing of the hotel where our room now contained a TV, a fridge and PC with free Internet. That was more like it !! The need for comfort became especially clear when later that evening I succumbed to a stomach bug and couldn't venture outside the room leaving Dave to forage for food and drink in the town on his own.

Thankfully by the following morning the bug had subsided a little, at least enough so that our plans were not in jeopardy. We had come all this way to specifically see the famous Perito Moreno Glacier and we had booked an organised tour with the hotel in order to do just that. It was a little over an hour away and on the way a guide explained everything about the glacier to us as well as the history of the area which is always great as it provides context to what you are seeing. Once again the weather was smiling on us with a gloriously clear and sunny day.

As our bus came around a mountain curve and allowed us our first glimpse of the glacier we were truly dumbstruck by its size. The first viewpoint we pulled up at overlooked the southern face of this huge wall of ice. We were a considerable distance from it and could have been mislead by the scale of everything but we could see boats in the water that gave this amazing natural wonder some perspective. There were icebergs in the lake where pieces of the glacier had crumbled off which in themselves were dwarfing the two-storey passenger ships nearby.

The full size of the whole glacier seems inconceivable. There are 4 small-ish ice fields that start up on the top of the mountains which merge together in a trough and form the larger Perito Moreno. The length of this continuous ice flow is 27km and its face is about 5km wide in total by the time it is at the lake level.

The average visible height of the towers of ice is 60m (about a 15-20 story building we were told) but this is only a tiny portion of the actual size of the wall as most of it remains below the surface of the lake (some 180m underwater). To complete the incredible fact-file, the glacier reportedly slides down the valley at about 2 metres a day, which is why large sections continually crash off the front of it and into the water. The glacier is simply mind-bogglingly huge.

We hiked down some woodland trails which brought us to several viewpoints, each one closer than the last to this magnificent spectacle. This walk culminated in a truly memorable view of the glacier at very close range and from slightly above so that the path of the huge ice field was clearly visible. We spent at least two hours at this spot alone, just watching the glacier, and listening to it. There was a constant background soundtrack of grumbling, grinding, cracking and exploding from within the expanse of compacted snow, and when a large piece of the glacier face crashed into the water it made a noise like thunder. It was thrilling.

Just before we left to return home we took a boat trip, from one side of the glacier face across the width of it, to the other and back again. This was another brilliant experience that left us both flabbergasted at the sheer magnitude of this natural creation. We were constantly being reminded of how large everything was as we weaved our way through the immense fallen blocks of ice. Its also worth mentioning that the colour of the glacier is unlike anything elsewhere in nature. The clarity and luminescence of the pale turquoise blue is something we'll never forget.

Apparently the intense blue colour comes from the pressure that the snow creates from above. The snow gets compacted, forcing out all the oxygen, and causing the refraction of all colours, except the brilliant blue. The less oxygen left within the packed snow, the bluer the colour of the glacier.

The journey back to El Calafate was spent checking the camera to make sure we had captured everything clearly, and once we were back in town we just enjoyed a quick shower before heading out again. There was time for some souvenir shopping, which included some fabulous chocolates for our consumption before we had a lovely pasta dinner and then retired to bed satisfied and content.

Back to Puerto Natales in Chile

We were back in Puerto Natales for only a 24 hour period. Enough time though to once again enjoy the spectacular scenery just outside our hotel door and some good hot soups and warming food which we found in the small streets of private restaurants that border on the town square.

A day later we were once again on a bus, this time for five hours, back to Punto Arenas. Having already visited the town on our way in the week before we chose to get dropped off at the Punto Arenas airport at 11pm at night along with a handful of other tourists.

All of us were on the 03:55am flight to Santiago, and it seemed we all had the same thought that there was no point in having a hotel room in the town half an hours drive away to have to be at the airport at 02:00am.

Dave and I plodded into the airport, tired and hungry, expecting to find a cafe where we could have a hot drink and snack as we'd missed dinner. We should have known. Punto Arenas, despite being a beautifully modern airport, is still a small local airport with only a few flights per day. As we walked in the sliding doors the only people in the whole building were a couple of security guards and a floor cleaner. All the lights had been turned off, including the toilets. That's okay, we thought - we're used to camping and we can manage without sleep and food for a few hours.

Feeling very much the true definition of hard core 'budget' travellers we found a row of wooden chairs in the check-in hall and lay on them but they were hard moulded wooden chairs, not designed for sleep, so Dave ended up sleeping on the tile floor. The heating went off in the building so we both wrapped up and I attempted something close to dozing with gloves, scarf, two sweaters and a woolly hat.

Periodically we would both sit up, stretch out our limbs, shiver, check our slow moving clocks and glance around in the darkness at the other passengers attempting to sleep. One girl had full camping gear and padded mattress to sleep on and had it all set up next to the check-in desk. We were jealous ! I don't think we have ever been so glad to check in for a flight as we did that morning.

Santiago

As the doors to our plane opened to the city of Santiago warm air rushed inside. It was only 07:30am in the morning but already there was a marked difference in the climate compared to Patagonia.

After getting a taxi into town we checked into a hotel down a street called Londres at an intersection with a street called Paris. The street names fit with the overall European feel of this little quarter with leafy trees shading grey cobble stone streets, and colonial buildings with wrought iron balconies and shuttered windows.

Shattered, we fell asleep on top of the bed covers still wearing our clothes. Awaking early afternoon and feeling much refreshed we set about exploring the city.

Santiago is beautiful. Modern and yet with a mixture of Spanish colonial architecture and Chileans own sense of style it is a wonderful city to explore on foot and, as we both agreed, a great city for someone to live in and study (we were staying near to the University of Santiago).

We explored the city centre, doing a Lonely Planet guidebook tour of the key buildings and plazas whilst learning the history of the city. This walking tour was once again conducted by the now familiar company of Mannings Tours with which we have been acquainting you with over the last few months. Armed with guide book in hand, Dave guided us through the streets with a and a and waiting patiently whilst I played the role of the tourist and snapped away with the camera. (see pics)

Grabbing a cold drink and seeking the shady side of the streets to avoid the midday sweltering heat we then wandered off the walking tour route and through the streets past a row of university cafes and bookshops, past the imposing facade of the Museo de Bellas Artes, through the park Parque Forestal, across a bridge over a fast rushing brown river that looked decidedly unappealing despite the heat, and into the district of Santiago known as Bellavista.

Like London and her districts of Chelsea, Camden, Docklands, the West End and Vancouver with her Kits Beach, Yaletown, East Side, West Van; Santiago is no different with her districts with names such as: Bario Brasil, El Centro, Providencia, Las Condes and Bellavista.

Bellavista is the artists quarter. Originally it was an industrial area which over the years, due to low rent, attracted the artists, bohemians and musicians. Today it is one of Santiago's liveliest neighbourhoods by night with restaurants, bars and nightclubs amongst apartment buildings and artist studios.

You can tell you are in an artists quarter because the buildings and decor are quite different from the more conservative and traditional El Centro district where we were staying. Painted every colour of the rainbow walking down the leafy green avenues was like walking through a paint department. Visually, it was beautiful as each building front was brightly painted, and many of them had professional graffiti art splashed across their shop fronts, expressing everything from political slogans and imagery, to the classic outlines of dancers advertising a local dance school.

Our main point of walking through this district was to visit La Chascona, the Santiago home of the late Pablo Neruda. Neruda was a fascinating man and one I had studied at university and had grown to love his immense collection of poetry from his famous beautiful and evocative love poems to those about food, i.e."Ode a un tomate", and his famous "Ode a las cosas" (Ode to things).

Neruda (1904-73) was both a politician as well as a poet. He travelled extensively, worked for various political efforts and parties and churned out his poetry throughout it all. He was famous for both his roles; poet and politician during his lifetime, receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in his latter years. He last worked as Chile's ambassador in France for Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1969 (It was Allende who was eventually overthrown by Pinochet during the 1973 Military Coup d'Etat)

Neruda's house in Santiago, named after his mistresses messy and crazy hair La Chascona was fascinating. It is one of three houses he built and owned (the other two are in Valparaiso and Isla Negra) in a crazy style of architecture and furnishings. He loved the ocean, despite always suffering from seasickness, so all his homes have nautical themes, portholes for windows, old figureheads from ships, and watery themes and colours.

He collected coloured glass and believed that wines tasted different depending on what colour glass you drank from. He mixed equally well with politicians such Salvador Allende (whose niece Isabel Allende is the famous modern day author that regularly hits the bookshelves of Waterstones, Chapters with titles like "House of the Spirits" and "Daughter of Fortune" etc.) as well as having strong friendships with artists including the Mexican muralist and activist Diego Rivera (married to famous artist Frieda Kahlo).

During the rest of our stay in Santiago we had the chance to visit the plush and upmarket area of Las Condes - another district in Santiago - where we had to visit the office of British Airways to organise the final details of our flight home. We passed a few hours wandering amongst lovely apartment buildings with plants, trees and vines spilling over the balconies and sitting in a park where we watched nannies of the wealthy, dressed in uniforms of blue and white, push prams round the park, or walk purebred poodles and chow chows.

From there we took the metro to Providencia, another district of shops, malls and restaurants with apartment blocks in every direction but not as upmarket as Las Condes: more middleclass. It was from here that we organised our bus tickets for the next leg of our journey and then sat in a street cafe under bright yellow umbrellas shielding us from the sun and ate baguettes washed down with cold drinks.

With the short time we had left in the city we spent most of it in El Centro, visiting other amazing buildings such as the Palacio de la Moneda and walking through the financial district with beautiful baroque and gothic architecture. We bought ice creams along with the many other tourists on a pedestrian shopping street and stood watching the street entertainment of music, magic tricks and the globally common "silent statues". You know the ones I mean? They paint themselves all in silver, or gold, or white and only move mechanically when you drop some coins in their hat? I'm never quite sure if that qualifies as talent?

Then, before we knew it, our few days in Santiago were over and it was time to be on the move again to our last stop in Chile; the nearby town of Valparaiso.

Valparaiso

Valparaiso is a one and a half hour bus ride to the south of Santiago. We caught the bus and arrived there in early afternoon checking into our hotel and then once again setting out to explore - and hunt for food. It was well past lunch time and our stomachs had been growling for a while.

Named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2003 it made its fame and fortune when the Californian gold rush meant that there was a demand for Chilean wheat to feed the masses and with the completion of the railway the population soared from 5000 in 1818 to over 100,000 in 1880. When the gold rush fell and the Panama Canal opened (stopping the long journey for boats round Cape Horn) the city fell into a decline, that only now, with the rise in tourism and its new found Unesco status is beginning to rectify.

Valparaiso is divided into two main sections. There is the flat bit known as El Plan that runs along the shores by the main docks and where many old colonial buildings stand amongst the modern day shops and businesses. This is the economic heart of the city. Rising up from the flat El Plan is the other area, known as Los Cerros (the hills) which is just as its name says. Steep hills rise up from the shore with houses perched everywhere and winding streets and steps that make your calves ache and your heart pound. Around every corner are stunning views across Los Cerros and down to El Plan and the ocean where huge freighters and war ships lie anchored just off shore. There are a series of 15 ascensores (funicular railways/elevators) that were built between 1883 and 1916 to service the plazas and streets up high.

We spent a couple of days simply walking, and walking, and climbing and walking up and down the steep steps and streets of the Cerros looking at the amazing architecture which in some cases looks no more stable than a house made of cards and yet, miraculously, shelters families for generations. Many of the houses have walls of corrugated iron that is the painted the most fantastically bright colours of pink, purple, green, orange, yellow with contrasting window frames and bright geraniums or bougainvillea to add even more vibrancy. It is a photographers dream as every corner yield another view or angle begging to be snapped.

Up the top of one of the hills we climbed one morning, overlooking the flat "El Plan" and the sea, is another one of Pablo Neruda's homes - this one he called "La Sebastiana" named after the architect who designed it. It was the second of Neruda's three houses we visited (we never managed to visit the third one 1.5hrs south in Isla Negra) and although it still had been decorated with his artistic and somewhat eccentric style, it had a totally different feel to it. Particularly stunning was the large round living room looking out to the bay and a circular pot shaped fireplace in the centre of the room.

Again, this house is a maze of corridors, stairways and uniquely shaped rooms with paintings, maps, books, furniture from all over the world, and the constant theme of the ocean, stained glass, fish and his relationship with both politics and art appeared everywhere. Interestingly, Neruda didn't spend as much time here as he did in his other two homes, but he always made a point to watch Valparaiso's New Year's fireworks from this home - and visiting it today you can imagine the view he must have had.

No description of Valparaiso would be complete without a mention of its dogs and cats. Dogs and cats are everywhere. In doorways, in windows, finding shade under cars or under trees, running down alleys, staring down at us from walls or balconies, blinking in the sunshine on cobbled streets; simply everywhere we looked. It meant for us as pet lovers, frequent stops, greetings and sometimes long chats to this furry characters who alternatively ran towards us to greet us or slunk away too shy to come out.

Although we did spend time exploring the flat area of El Plan, as well as having a Mannings Walking Tour round colonial libraries, justice buildings, financial district and the rather odd British Arch (something akin to the Arc de Triomphe) we preferred the character of the winding streets in the hills and so found ourselves coming here to find food in tucked away little restaurants with funky coloured cushions and background music, chocolate cake in an old converted butchers shop, and wine on the terrace of an old mansion overlooking the water. Just idyllic.

And now we hop on a bus to cross the border into Argentina - our last country in South America before we fly back to Europe ......

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