Advertisement
Published: February 3rd 2010
Edit Blog Post
Santiago 1
View out of the nice Loft of my CS-Hoster. Well, well, again I will tell the story "out of my memory" (these days still have been part of the "lost" diary):
Returned from Rapa Nui and went with my back-bag directly to a CS-reunion at an Arabic-restaurant. It was really nice and funny and I met lots of people of the local group, all of them very nice and friendly. So we shared a really good meal and some Arabic-belly-dance. They also invited me to an CS-football-game the other day "Chile vs. the rest of the world". As an typical Austrian I had to refuse to show, how poor we are in playing football, but of course I joined to cheer for them. Again I´m hosted by Patrick, whom I met in Talca and at whom´s place I´ve already been before going to Rapa Nui. And again it was a great pleasure staying there - his hospitality is really great. The game was funny, but it was really hot at noon in the plain sun ... But this didn´t stop the passion of the players and so it was great fun. Of course Chile won (I stopped counting the goals ;-) and afterwards we went eating at the central
Football 1
A CS-Footballgame - Chile against the rest of the world! Guess, who won ... ;-) fruit-market. At this point I have to disprove a common prejudice: "Chile en general is expensive and food too". Well, yes, Chile is in some things more expensive, but not that much compared with Argentina AND you can get a good and cheap meal - for example at this market you can get a meal consisting of soup and main-dish for 1.000,-- Pesos Chilenos, that's about 1,35 Euro - this is as cheap as you can get it in Argentina. We´ve been quite a big group (about 10 people) and I did get to know a lot of new people and one of them offered me to show me round in down-town the next day - que bueno! :-)
So the next day I went with my "personal guide" John to see down-town. The nice thing about this is, that a local person can show you also the places not touristic, but very nice and beautiful and also knows which places are save and secure. We spent all the day exploring the city and also went to a traditional peña and I tried a "Terremoto" (earthquake), which is a drink made of "young vine", coffee and vanilla-ice-cream - really
Football 2
Let's get organized! delicious (but after a few I think you will recognize why it´s called earthquake ;-). The other day we went with some other CS to see some museums what was really nice and then sat in the park drinking vine (I know this is not allowed, but everyone is doing it and it´s just about hiding the bottle, when the police walks by ;-). The CS-group of Santiago is in general very active, so that every day we did something different - really great. One day we went to a sports-centre, where you can try different types of sports, for example climbing. I also found a cutlery-tool, to substitute my "lost" one :-)
It was there, when I also had a frightening experience ... I was sleeping one night (innocent & brave, like usual ;-) at the Loft of Patrick at the 5th floor, when all of a sudden I got disturbed in my sleep at 4 in the morning - first I didn´t know, what was going on and thought, I´m still dreaming, because I had the strange feeling, that someone was "shaking" the building and I heard an frightening, "cracking" sound, until I realized, that the building
really was "shaking" - an Earthquake! The first in my life and I was really scared! My heart was beating fast and my first clear thought was "The 5th floor - no chance to get down in time!". So I stayed in bed, hoping that it will end soon. This all lasted only a few seconds, but to me it seemed like a very long time. Finally it was over and I was thinking: "Hm, shall I be afraid now? Will there be more?". But because it was 4 o´clock in the morning, my body decided to say "Shut the hell up!" to my awakening brain and did the only useful thing: fall asleep immediately :-) Patrick the next day said that he recognized it too and should have asked me, if everything is fine, but was to terrified to make a sound, lying afraid under his bed :-))) But of course this was a joke and I suspect, that he was just sleeping calmly :-) The interesting thing is, that the people here are so used to this "temblores", that they don´t really realize it any-more and don´t even speak about it ... all the local people I asked
about it the next day, said something like: "Oh yes, really, there was a tremor at night?" ... ... ...
After some really nice days I finally left Santiago de Chile to go to Vallparaiso - another special place in Chile! It´s a small town, build at the mountainside of hills, in parts that steep, that you have cable-cars, connecting the different parts of the city! And this all at the shore of the sea! Really impressive. I stayed in an old hostel at one of the hills, with a great view over the town. I went to see the pre-screening of the new X-Men-movie - not bad, but I didn´t really like it too much (sorry, in general I like stories like this, but this one was a little bit "dumb" ...). I also went to see the neighbouring-town of Viña del Mar, which is also very nice. All in all I spent some pleasant, calm days there and I enjoyed it a lot.
Finally it was time to leave Chile once again and return to Argentina to explore the north. My starting point for this will be Mendoza and already the journey to there was exciting
- but this is another story ;-)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.12s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0754s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb