Leaving Latin America

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The singing has started, the sounds of what appears to a Australian Pavarotti is coming from the street outside and its getting louder, there are mere seconds before he gets in the door,. The hostel residents scatter to their rooms and the communal garden is empty, even the Vegetable Reich are keeping a low profile. He…has returned.

We have a new tour group staying with us now and it’s brought with it a rather special someone, he’s about 5, 9, mid thirties, Australian and appears to have his eardrums burst because he has the need to talk by shouting at maximum volume at all times. When there is no one around to talk to he has taken to singing opera to himself at all times, Pavarotti seems to be the favourite . While headache inducing, his singing does serve as an excellent early warning system.

We have meet plenty of Australians on our travels and all of them have been wonderful people but this guy looks like he’s straight out of “Carry on Australia”, a complete stereotype, his Irish equivalent would have fiery red hair, an old begorah accent and trot about wearing a green coat and a farmer cap.

Now hes not a bad guy at all but the fact that he seems to have a megaphone in place of a larynx means you have to avoid the communal courtyard like a plague , his penchant for opera as it turns out stems from the fact that he claims to have actually sang in the Sydney opera house..

Every evening he arrives back with 4 bottles of wine and proceeds to set up shop and engage anyone unfortunate to be within his line of sight in debate. A debate which consists of him roaring out his viewpoint at top volume and promptly disagreeing with your own rebuttal not by reasonable argument but by shouting NO NO NO THAT’S FAKING RIDICULOUS at the top of his voice. Naturally the courtyard clears rapidly upon his arrival and everyone hides in their respective rooms.

Thankfully, all the high volume and high wine intake means he generally runs out of batteries by 9 pm whereupon, room doors begin to open and people gradually repopulate the common areas. He remerges, every morning at 7am, singing Pavarotti and setting off for his morning run, comically clad in tight yellow spandex and a headband, singing as he jogs up the hostel corridor.



In our double room Niamh is reclined on the bed watching her second episode of TV on the laptop, we have been at loggerheads over who watches what on the laptop. Viewing tastes as compatible as tuna with cornflakes, Niamh watching the beautiful people in Beverly Hills on 90210 with my own preference for the re imagined series of V, a programme that deals with a reptilian alien race trying to subjugate the human race. The fact that megavideo only allows us 72 minutes a day, or one and ¾ of an episode means all sorts of tricks are employed to throw the other off balance, I have taken to skipping breakfast to get my morning sci-fi in while in the afternoon Blondie kindly suggests I should get a few beers up the shop and withdraw money from the ATM.

The beer idea of course never bores me and the latter being a necessity due to our fantastic banks at home coming up with new ways to make their customers happy. AIB have recently announced that all customers abroad are limited to withdrawals of 100 Euro a day, while spending 100 Euro a day is rather excessive for backpacking it causes all sorts of trouble when a lump sum for accommodation, flights, bus tickets or malaria tablets is required. It essentially means that you have to start pulling 100 Euro a day from the hole in the wall every day several days before the expected expenditure is upon you, handing over a good 5 or 6 Euro per hundred Euro withdrawn to the Chilean banking system and an as of yet unknown further handling sum to AIB with each transaction. You can of course get around this with the credit card but the bank fees are even heftier. While I am out on a beer run or giving 5% of my withdrawal of Irish money to Chilean banks Niamh quickly colonises the laptop.

When Niamh isn’t watching 90210 she’s googling such subjects as “Tsunami threat Santiago” or “Chile wave warning”. In fact she’s spending so much more time on CNN, Skynews and BBC these days then she is tracking celebrity whereabouts on Hollywoodlife.com that it’s actually disconcerting. We woke up one morning to see the absolutely spine chilling footage of the wave mercilessly flattening buildings and people on the sky news website, I felt like I had battery acid in my stomach and despite the heat in Santiago I shivered, mother nature can be a real bitch.

I’m on my way home from the local shop and I’m trying to get in the front door of the hostel without Green Gestapo spotting me. The whole plastic bags are bad for the environment still hasn’t caught on in Chile and the baggage handlers love to wrap every item with at least three bags. The hostel has several warning signs prohibiting bringing plastic bags back from the supermarket and strongly suggests you buy there own green bags for 15 Euro. Such a rule is not actually enforced but breaching it is frowned upon and if you get caught by the extreme vegetarians they give you looks that could make a small puppy whine and pee itself, on this occasion the resident in house veggies are distracted attempting to make a lasagne “without cheese or meat”( I couldn’t figure this out either!) so I run down the corridor toward the room, unnoticed. Sneaking in the plastic bags is like sneaking 5 or six bottles of Alco pops into your house in the Irish college and to be honest on some days in Santiago this is exciting as it gets.

Chilean baggage handles have made our room a death-trap for small children, there are literally plastic bags everywhere, but of course with Mother Nature causing all sorts of havoc and destruction over the pacific in Japan im feeling a bit less guilty about out plastic bag collection doing her any harm at this point of our stay then I did earlier in the week.

While that seems a bit harsh it’s just because we have been in this city a week too long. We took an hour long stroll to the museum quarter the other day and found every single museum closed for renovations, shame as the natural history one looked absolutely massive. We ended up contenting ourselves with a crepe, it being pancake Tuesday and then heading home to bicker about who used up all the minutes on megavideo.

Another day we decided to go up through Bellavista, the nightlife area and take the funicular, a sort of lift, tram hybrid up to the top of the hill overlooking the city. Atop the hill is a monument to the immaculate reception and an extremely impressive statue of the Virgin Mary, speakers hidden throughout the summit pour out all kinds of religious hymns and all throughout the landscaped gardens lots of wild dogs lie out sunbathing taking it all in. After the whole frantic buzz of the city, it’s lovely to chill out in the peace and quiet for a while and take in the view. Niamh advised at this point that she was feeling all holy and religious so naturally I didn’t want her lingering there too long.

We managed to find a coffee shop as well that sells real coffee called “Starlight”, yes its like that other well known coffee chain you know only they dropped and adjusted some letters along with their prices. Despite Columbia and equator growing some of the best coffee in the world trying to find decent coffee in Chile is trying to spell the name of the capital city of Iceland backwards. The stuff on offer looks like coffee, smells like coffee but unfortunately tastes like something produced by the human body of the same colouration. This brings me to the other thing one notices about café shops in Santiago, a lot of them have their windows blacked out due to the dress code, or lack same, adapted by the barista’s. Coffee with Legs is what you call these coffee houses and it caters for Chilean businessmen, you go in and get your 8.30 latte and it’s served to you by a female barista wearing nothing bar lingerie. There are dozens of these all over the capital and they trade extremely successfully. For all you ladies who feel offended by this apparently someone did try to start up something for the ladies called “Coffee with pecs” but allegedly it just didn’t do the business.


On the way down the funicular we were given the option of checking out the Santiago Zoo, a stop we decided to forgo after hearing the low-down from Tom and Laura. The zoo is proud to show its visitors its animals in their “intimate enclosures that let you get right up to interact with them”. According to Tom and Laura what the zoo brochure suggestively describes as” intimate enclosures” are little matchboxes and the animals look about as happy as 5 year old boy in a Nike factory. The tiger enclosure is so undersized you can nearly reach in and pat the thing; hopefully this means that the poor big cat can supplement his meals by eating a few guests.

The only exciting thing we saw upon our return from the blessed Mary was two homeless men fighting over the contents of a wheelie bin, the owner of the said bin brandishing an iron bar while the invader making all sorts of threatening body language while clutching a flick knife, we crossed the road rather then watch how events unfolded and I kept thinking to how the feral dogs are provided with chained in place kennels in public parks the cities down and outs are left to sleep rough.

On the plane now and en route to New Zealand, had a bit of drama at the airport when LAN told us they overbooked the flight and offered us 2 nights in the Sheridan and 500 dollars spending money, We were all pumped to take it but apparently the situation resolved itself. Going to try get some shuteye and I’ll upload this in NZ

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