Advertisement
Published: December 14th 2022
Street food in Santiago
Supermarket trolleys don't end up in the river here!Independent travel isn’t always easy and we were reminded of that in the first 24 hours of our trip. Firstly, Qantas decided to schedule maintenance on one of their airplanes and it took longer than expected, so we got to spend an extra 4 hours wandering around Sydney Airport. Isn’t the airline industry doing well post-pandemic? Oh well, at least they remembered to put our bags on the plane with us.
This brings me to our second issue. Because the plane was late, before leaving Sydney, I did the right thing and notified the owner of our accommodation that we would arrive at a later time. And when we got there, at the new time, we found that the apartment had been given to someone else because we didn’t arrive on time! I showed him my messages on booking.com and then he decided to get his phone out and have a look too. Suddenly he realised that he had stuffed up, but there was nothing he could do. Back to booking.com and we were in a nearby apartment within an hour. It really made me wonder why I bothered booking a lot of our accommodation in advance. I guess I
was nervous about what the world would be like in the aftermath of COVID. We have always managed well and enjoyed flexibility in the past.
A few good things came out of the accommodation debacle. One is that I’ve discovered that my ability to argue in Spanish has improved significantly! Analía, my teacher, would have been proud. And another is that we stayed in a place closer to some of the things we wanted to see and do.
So, what is Santiago like? The first impression is from the window of the plane where you see snow capped Andean peaks (only a little bit of snow in summer) stretching as far as the eye can see North and South of Chile’s capital. The ground is quite brown and dry. In this part of the world, la niña has different implications to the floods we’ve seen in Eastern Australia. On the ground we caught a bus from the airport to the centro and Santiago looked a lot like other large Latin American cities, with vendors selling their wares on the ground at bus stops and rubbish piled up around bins that need collection. But Chile regards itself as a
developed nation and I do see some differences. The streets are wider and drivers follow road rules more closely than they do elsewhere. For instance, one can cross the road when the green man indicates to do so and you won’t be mowed down by a motorbike or bus!
People live in small apartments and the one we stayed in would be similar to many Santiaguinos homes. We were on the 15th floor without air conditioning. I saw signs in the elevator advertising a Christmas gathering for residents in the building, so there must be a sense of community amongst its residents. There are parks and near our apartment there is a long pedestrianised street. These facilities are used as communal spaces, especially at night. Restaurants and bars flow onto these areas and on street corners people come out with mobile hot dog, hamburger and arepa stalls. On Friday and Saturday nights these places are busy. It's summer here and the nights are warm. We saw roller bladers practicing their skills and Salsa dancers enjoying the atmosphere. This is where people walk their little dogs too. They probably couldn’t fit a big dog in their small homes.
We
View of Andes from the summit
Just a bit of snow remains on the highest peaks also caught a funicular up and a teleferico cable car down a large hill, Cerro San Cristobal. From its summit, adorned with a religious statue and church, you take in views of the city and Andes. Beneath the surface Santiago is charming and I warmed to it in our two day stay.
From Santiago we went to a large island, Chiloe. That’s right the island is called Chiloe and the country is Chile. Not confusing, is it? We had the choice of a 16 hour bus ride or a 2 hour plane. It wasn’t hard to decide! Chiloe is in the south where it’s much cooler and greener. I feel that this relatively quiet place is developing at a rapid rate. The main town of Castro (we stayed a few km out of town) is always one big traffic jam. That will change when the bypass is finished. The reason for the development of Chiloe is the number of tourists that come. Mostly from the spanish speaking world and Germany according to a waiter we talked with. He said we were the first Australians he had met on the island. There is a German connection to this part of
the world. It was settled by Germans centuries ago, and the houses look a bit german. They are mostly wooden with shingled walls and colourfully painted. Then there is the music we heard on the radio. Imagine latino music with piano accordion. It just keeps coming, song after song. One time we walked out of a cafeteria because of the man playing piano accordion and ate lunch next door. It’s just not our thing!
A peaceful stroll along a beach is one way to pass the time here. We were doing that when we met some Chilenos on vacation. They were harvesting a bucket full of shellfish which they were going to eat for dinner. Having walked past many private residences we took a path away from the beach and up through some private cabañas. When we got to the road, we were blocked by a gate and started looking for buttons and sensors to open the gate. Eventually we were caught out by the owner of the place and we asked nicely if she could let us out. She walked over to the gate and slide it with her hands, smiling at us, and no doubt thinking, “stupid
Arepas
Like a small pita bread with your choice of filling. I had chicken and guagamole gringos”.
Chiloe has no spectacular feature to draw tourists in, but rather a rural setting, with interesting buildings and a few natural attractions too. We like the little cabaña we call home for four nights, with its wood fire to keep us warm. Even though it's not very cold here in Summer, I can imagine how important heating is for most of the year. Our host, Manuel, was very kind to us. We hired a car, which was very useful, so we could see various parts of Chiloe. There is a beach up north with good views from the shore and atop the headland to Islotes de Puñihuil. Penguins live on the rocky shores of the islands. We walked across a long narrow bridge to Isla Aucar, with its church to honour sailors during an annual festival that takes place in September. We visited a good waterfall, Tocoihue. Today we drove to Cucao and weren’t very impressed by the beach on the Pacific Coast.
It has been restful here and tomorrow we head to Argentina by bus, where we expect the country to have gone completely mad as their team is in the world cup final.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.329s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0602s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
