South America (Part 3) - Chile

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So 18 days after surgery in Buenos Aires and 20 days after breaking my arm in North Argentina, Tracy and I waved goodbye to both places and got on a plane to Santiago, Chile.

I do like Buenos Aires and am glad we visited, we have spent near 30 days here in three separate visits, more than anywhere else on our travels. I would have probably liked it more if my day pack hadn´t been stolen in Retiro (and with it our laptop, ipod, camera etc.) or if I hadn´t broken my arm and spent 18 days of it almost house bound in a recovery state in fear of other people banging into me. Still that said I would visit Buenos Aires again, it has some beautiful buildings, good food and some of the nicest and most friendly people I have met anywhere on our travels.

Santiago

The flight across to Santiago (on LAN airlines) was like most others, pretty uneventful, it took two and something hours and only the last 20 or so minutes provided some interest in an otherwise dull flight. The views flying across the Andes into Santiago were amazing, really quite breathtaking seeing snow covered mountains as far as the eye could see going north and south as we crossed from east to west, I hear it is amazing crossing by bus from Mendoza through the Andes to Santiago, unfortunately having spent so long in Buenos Aires, Tracy and I are now up against it time wise so we will not be able to experience this journey this time round.

We arrived into Santiago on June 16th a few hours after Chile had beaten Switzerland 1-0 in their first world cup game and there was still a bit of a happy party atmosphere roaming. We later found out that it was almost a carnival atmosphere until the government rolled out the tanks (I am not joking) and fired tear gas to disperse the crowds around ´Parque Forestal´. I leave you to decide what you think about that. I since found out that this is a near normal occurrence and happened after each of Chile´s three group stage games, I am still in amazement at it.

We spent three days and four nights in Santiago. We stayed in a hostel called Pure Lounge in the Bella-vista area of Santiago. The hostel was pretty new and very nice, all the rooms were distinguished by colour as opposed to the usual system of numbers and looking the same, so the orange room that we stayed in was all orange, walls, bedsheets, lampshades etc. They had other rooms, blue, green, purple etc. where the theme was continued, quite a nice idea I thought. The only real drawback to the hostel was that the room was very cold and the heater provided was next to useless, but the kitchen, lounge room, breakfast and the staff were all first class and can´t be faulted.

The Bella-vista area has a very bohemian style/feel to it, the area has an abundance of bars and restaurants in it, including the obligatory Irish bar (called the Dublin, very original) and a great sushi restaurant right next to it which we visited, though I can´t remember its name. The whole area being in competition with each other offered some great happy hour beer deals too. The one thing about the Bella-vista area, and I have noticed this in other South America cities such as Buenos Aires, Colonia del Sacramento, Montevideo etc, is that there are an incredible number of stray dogs running round and I don´t understand why it is allowed. I really think is must be a South American thing as I have also seen it in Valparaiso and La Serena (cities/towns in Chile that I will come on to) but I don´t remember seeing it in any of the places we visited in Asia or in Oceania, strange because I think it ruins what are otherwise very nice cities/towns in South America.

On one of the days that I wasn´t watching England´s poor performance against Algeria, Tracy and I went and visited the Cerro San Cristobel. This is basically a big hill with a statue on the top of it of the ´Virgin de la Immaculate Conception´. You get up and down the hill by funicular, which kind of reminded me of the cable car in Wellington, New Zealand or the peak tram in Hong Kong. Apparently the Pope gave a sermon from the top of the hill just below the statue when he visited a few years ago. The purpose for our visit was the birds eye view of the city that you got of Santiago at the top of the hill, which was pretty impressive. The Andes in the distance looked amazing, but what was most incredible was the layer of smog that sits on top of the city, it almost looked like a forcefield or something had been erected to cover the city, trapped there by the Andes, it really was some sight but more worryingly, we and many many others were living in and below that smog.

On another day in Santiago we did the Lonely planet walking tour that took in the main sights of town centre including Plaza de Libertad, Plaza de Constitution, Plaza de Armas and the magnificent Cathedral there. It also took in the Cerro Santa Lucia which again is another hill offering panoramic views of the city but is far more pretty with its gardens and old castle walls than Cerro San Cristobel and it is also where Santiago was founded in 1541 by the Spanish. The Plazas we visited were pretty traditional in that they housed statues of founders and past presidents etc., however the buildings within the Plazas were pretty spectacular to look at. Plaza de Armas was extremely busy with entertainers and people trying to sell you stuff. The entertainers with the people all stood round watching reminded me very much of Covent Garden in London right outside the market and the Punch and Judy pub. I might on this occasion have stayed to listen to the entertainers if only I understood Spanish.

We finished of our walking tour by visiting the Mecardo Central, which basically is a big indoor market selling all sorts of goods but mainly food such as fish and meat, not so gruesome as some of the markets we visited in China, but interesting and quite busy none the less.

With approximately eight days before our flight from Santiago to La Paz, Bolivia, Tracy and I decided to head a little bit north of Santiago, whilst staying in Chile, and so visit the towns of Valparaiso and La Serena. We might have considered going east towards Mendoza and the wine region in Argentina but it had just snowed on the Andes and the pass was closed, plus the last thing we could afford with our flight coming up would be getting over to Mendoza and then not being able to get back because of more snow. More annoyingly with all this snow it would have been a perfect time to consider going skiing in Chile as some of the people in our hostel did actually do, of course my broken arm put that idea to rest, so instead it was Valparaiso and La Serena for us.

Valparaiso

Valparaiso is Chile´s idea of a seaside town or at least where people from Santiago can at least head for a day trip as it is only two hours east of Santiago right on the Pacific Ocean. The bus trip across was very easy and pleasant on ´Tur Bus´ and our hostel (Casa Verde Limon) in the Cerro Concepción area was equally nice and pleasant if not a little cold though. The town of Valparaiso struck me as a place trying to reinvent itself. It was once a port facility and indeed we did see quite a sizeable port area when we visited Cerro Artileria along with a couple of Chilean military ships, it deteriorated as a port town when the Panama Canal opened and has since tried unsuccessfully I think, to become a seaside town.

We basically spent our two days in Valparaiso just wandering around taking in the sites like the old prison known as ´Cerro Carcel´ now a site for graffiti artists and a number of pretty spectacular buildings such as the Turri Clocktower and a number of churches. The thing about Valparaiso is that it´s all hills and narrow streets and this is its true attraction. It prides itself on being a very bohemian area attracting artists and tourists just wandering round for the sake of it stopping at some of the many small niche style shops offering paintings and textiles etc. whilst drinking and eating in the many small restaurants and coffee shops. In this way I quite liked Valparaiso as it felt quite chilled and relaxed, however it was a bit on the cold side (I guess it is winter in the southern hemisphere right now). As a result this deterred us from visiting the town of ´Vina Del Mar´ in favour of staying in the hostel and watching the world cup, which in hindsight was probably a mistake, as this is the main beach area of this area of coast and I am unlikely to see it again. What can I say, its the World Cup, it only happens every four years, plus its winter and we could see the beach area from many spots in Valparaiso on the hills and it didn´t look too busy and inviting to me.

La Serena

Having not really achieved too much in Valparaiso, similar to England in South Africa, on Tuesday June 22nd we got the seven hour bus journey to La Serena and arrived at our hostel around 6pm. The bus was pretty comfortable to be fair (Tur Bus again) and the journey north up the coast of Chile was quite interesting from a scenery perspective. On the left hand side for much of the way you could see the pacific ocean crashing into the shore line and some little towns on the coast. Whilst on the right hand side you could see the snow capped Andes in the distance, with hills and smaller mountains in the foreground with many types of cacti growing, some far bigger than my 6ft 3in frame. This journey with the cacti and desert at times and Andes in the distance really made me feel like I was in South America probably more so than I have than at any other time so far.

So as I said, having not achieved too much in Valparaiso we were determined to make more of our three full days in La Serena before the eight hour journey back to Santiago on Saturday. England was playing Germany in the last 16 on the Sunday and we were flying on Monday morning to La Paz, so the travel had to be on the Saturday (you have to have priorities in life). So our plans were take in the town generally one day, to visit the Humboldt Penguins (amongst other wildlife) on the Isla Damas island (we know who´s idea that is), watch Chile vs Spain on the Friday and see if Chile can qualify for the last 16 of the world cup (we are in Chile after all) and take in Cerro Mamalluca.

Well we had pretty decent success, unfortunately the thing we didn´t see were the Humboldt Penguins at the reserva national at Isla Damas. We tried, twice, and on both occasions the tour was cancelled due to rough seas apparently. We did however take in a tour of the town, as planned, in what was spectacular weather, very warm at near 20 degrees (it is winter don´t forget) and saw the ´Íglesia Catedral´ at the ´Plaza de Armas´ square, both were impressive on the eye. We also took in some of the other many churches that La Serena has and walked down the quite pretty Avenida Francisode Aguirre boulevard.

As we now had a spare day due to the tour being cancelled we ended up trying to plan our route going forward in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador with the intention to finish in Quito in mid August to catch a flight to Bermuda. Unfortunately due to time constraints this means we have sacked the idea of going to Columbia and our South America travels will finish in Quito, though I am disappointed it´s good to get a plan together.

We did take in the Chile game, get this, in a shopping mall with what I think must have been a couple of thousand Chileans. The atmosphere was pretty impressive, not quite a football stadium, but there were plenty of Chilean flags flying and football songs sung. The screen was enormous (cinema screen size) which is why we went, that and the fact we were flying in a couple of days time and its recommended not to drink before flying to La Paz due to the altitude. No idea why all the Chileans congregated there but it made for a great atmosphere. Well as we know Chile lost but due to Switzerland´s dire performance against Honduras they still made it through to the last 16 and didn´t we know it. There was plenty of celebration in the shopping mall and out on the roads with just about every car waving a flag and beeping its horn which seemed to go on for hours, thankfully no tanks and tear gas here like in Santiago.

Whilst travelling through New Zealand one of the things that we didn´t manage to achieve, much to my disappointment, due to adverse weather conditions, was to take in the night sky in the form of stargazing at an observatory. Now, not that I knew this before arriving in Chile, but due to favourable weather conditions Chile has some of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. Unfortunately people like yours truly don´t get to look through those but we did visit the site of Cerro Mamalluca. Here the public can stargaze through a couple of relatively small telescopes but still offering pretty powerful magnification. The tour was pretty good and I would recommend it. It started with a introduction and explanation of space and telescopes, we discovered that the biggest telescope in the world is being built by Europe no less in Northern Chile and should be up and running by 2015 I believe.

As for actual stargazing, we got to look at the moon, a nebular and Saturn. The moon being so bright (as it was nearly a full moon) dominated the night sky to the detriment of other stars. Still the view of the moon through the telescope was extremely impressive, you could see the craters on the moon quite clearly and when you took your eye off the telescope you felt almost blinded for a minute, such was the brightness of the moon through the telescope. Saturn unfortunately was a little less impressive, this no doubt due to the fact it´s millions of miles away and the telescope was not that powerful, still it was good to see all the same.

Back to Santiago

So on June 26th, Tracy and I made our way back to Santiago on the Tur Bus which took approximately eight hours. Having already been in Santiago a week earlier we had no plans to do anything other than watch the England game the following day and then catch our 6am flight on the 28th to La Paz.

We did exactly that, watched England´s pretty dreadful performance against Germany on a computer. For some unknown reason though Chilean TV has bought the rights to every world cup game, they have decided not to show them all in favour of day time TV I guess, I don´t understand it as they showed all the group stages games but not the knock out stages. Anyway we watched it on a computer as I said, though England were hard done by with Frank Lampard´s goal and it could have been different if it had been allowed, I thought England were pretty woeful throughout the whole tournament. Decisions go for you and against you sometimes, that´s the game and I thought the overall result was fair.

That was pretty much it, we did catch the Argentina v Mexico game too and other than that just generally chilled on the 27th and so on June 28th, 2010, day 284 of our travels, we left Santiago at 6am in the morning and flew to La Paz, Bolivia, at approximately 3,600 meters or over 10,000 feet above sea level and I will let Tracy bring you that chapter next time.

Cheers
Patrick

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Photos

View from Cerro San Cristobel
Note the nice layer of smog over the city

Patrick liked this mural...
Along the river through Santiago

The moon through the telescope at Observatory Mamalluca
Was a bit difficult taking the picture with the big camera through the lens, one of the times a compact would be good!