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Published: August 7th 2008
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Psychedelic cats
One of the wicked murals in Valparaiso, Chile Well, we're still alive. The record time period between the last blog and this has nothing to do with kidnapping, murder, being caught in bear traps whilst hiking, or turning on each other with swiss army knives in a fit of travel rage over who got the window seat in a 23 hour Andean bus epic. The explanation is far more economically based. Internet in New Zealand is freaking pricey.
For New Zealand is where you find us. I was intending to start this blog with the rhetorical question "where have the last 10 months gone?", but really, the whole point of keeping a blog is that I could quite easily go back through the last 60 or so entries and tell you. For the short of time, here's a summary: 10 months murdering a language, drinking identikit national lager type beers, being too hot or too cold, but generally falling in love with the place. Our time in Latin America has absolutely flown by, and is now very definitely over.
Our last South American port of call was the long stringy nation of Chile, a country so very very narrow that ten pin bowling alleys run north to
south so as to avoid border disputes with neighbouring Argentina over stray pins. We'd already been down to the very southern tip, and loved it. This time our journey took us from the Bolivian border to Santiago, somewhere near the middle, in order to make our long overdue exit to New Zealand.
All things considered Chile would not have been my first choice for my last Latin American country. It's unquestionably beautiful (Torres Del Paine is still my favourite destination of our trip so far), but culturally it's more like Europe than the rest of South America. Some friends we made on the trip described it as a 'Chavvy Argentina'. I'm not saying I agree, but here's a few cultural snippets:
* It has more fast food restaurants per street anywhere I've been (and this includes Houston, Texas folks)
* Our local shopping mall in La Serena was made up of nearly all Leisure Sportswear clothes shops and cheap jewelry
* The national beverage is a mixture of Fanta and lager, the national food a 'Completo' - a hot dog drowned in mayo and topped with avocado
The first stop then - San Pedro. We arrived badly
Soft Rock Dog, San Pedro de Atacama
or is he a new romantic? check out his neckerchief needing a good shower after a number of unwashed days in the freezing highlands of Bolivia. San Pedro is something of a tourist trap. Expensive accomodation and food, lots of pricey excursions, but thankfully at least it's rich with blessed OXYGEN! A night spent at nearly 5000 metres teaches you not to take it for granted. I won't say too much about the place as we hardly saw any of it, but it sure smells fresh.
Next up was La Serena. It's a pleasant enough, but fairly unremarkable town. The main draw for us being that it enjoys over 300 days of clear sky a year, and is thus home to a number of major observatories for star and planetoid gazing. I'm sad to say we somehow managed to engineer a visit on 4 consecutive cloudy days - which my rusty maths makes about a 0.07% probability. La Serena does have a nice beach, we went for some good runs, but the overriding memory was one of crushing metereological disappointment.
In retrospect it was a poor decision to wait about for the clouds to clear, as we fell in love with our next destination. Valparaiso is a town
Laurel and Hardy
Valparaiso, someone's garden! that has you wondering what the Spanish for "ramshackle" is. Its pastel shaded houses snake up the nearby hills, all vying for a sea view. It has fantastic cafes (the best food we had in Chile), beautiful murals and graffiti, and probably some other cool stuff we'll never know about as well, as we spent only a few short hours here. Our hostel, by the way, Luna Sonrisa, was absolutely amazing, with one of the best hostel breakfasts you'll get anywhere in the world. It helps that the couple that own the hostel also have their own bakery up the road!
Finally we could delay no longer and hit Santiago the day before our flight left. Santiago is no Buenos Aires, but it's a lively enough town with some impressive architecture. It also has some very peculiar traditions with regard to coffee drinking. The ladies serving coffee in this town (and it is all ladies) wear outfits that would have the staff of the Hooters chain walking out in protest. Skirts that fail to cover the ass, tight tops, and hair pulled back in the tightest of Croydon Facelifts. And this is just the high street coffee branches! According
Valparaiso
looking down from the hillside districts to our taxi driver there's a whole suburb devoted to coffee shops where the women are effectively topless. I'm guessing this town goes through a lot of coffee.
We got a bit tipsy (well, totally smashed anyway) to celebrate / commiserate our last night in Latin America, mooched around for a bit, then off we went. WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Si xxx
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barrygahan
Barry
I didn't think there were cloud sin La Serena!
4 cloudy days in La Serena, that must be a new record! I remember those coffee shops in Santiago, always felt a bit seedy being there but the coffee was great. Enjoy NZ.