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Published: December 11th 2010
Santiago Smog
Knew we shouldn't have had a full Scottish breakfast!So you might have noticed we're a little behind on our Blog - being that the last entry was from August and it's now December. So we're going to put up stuff about the here and now, while also catching up on what we've done before! Bear with us please...
Welcome to South America!
Had we been at work, a 40 hour Monday would have been pretty close to hell. However having a 40 hour Monday because you are crossing the dateline to head from New Zealand to South America just ain’t all that bad. In one delayed, but otherwise smooth, 12 hour flight we went from being 13 hours ahead of the UK to 3 hours behind.
On arrival in Santiago we were submerged slap bang into the famous South American atmosphere. A large party of female youths were crowed round the gate in international arrivals sporting banners, singing and cheering. Amazingly it wasn’t hearing about our imminent arrival that had brought them there however that didn’t stop them from giving us a hell of a welcome as we passed through.
This wasn’t just limited the to the youngins at the airport, as we went
for a stroll round the city that evening we found the city jumping, people everywhere, the pavements outside the many bars in the Bellavista area crammed with plastic seats, parasols and people enjoying decidedly large bottles of beer. There was a great buzz and it was a Monday night, the only thing I can compare it to is when you get that first sunny hot day in spring in the UK and everyone heads to the nearest beer garden for a drink after work. There was this same atmosphere in Santiago every time we were out and about no matter what part of the city we were in or what day it was.
Unfortunately our jetlag meant that we didn’t exactly leap into the spirit of things. This wasn’t helped by deciding to have a ‘lie down’ after breaky on our first morning and waking up 7 hours later! Not exactly the best way to get over jetlag, especially after managing to stay awake until 11 the day we arrived despite being bloody knackered.
After a couple of days in Santiago we jumped on a bus to nearby Valparaiso, a Port basically built on incredibly steep hillsides sloping
up from the coast. Our hostel was a 10 min stroll down but a strenuous 20 min one back up.
Valparaiso is a Unesco World Heritage Site because of it’s art and thought of as the cultural capital of Chile. This art doesn’t hang in galleries as would be the norm but adorns the buildings and walls throughout the city. The city is well worn, some of the ’art’ resembles schoolboy graffiti, a lot that in all likelihood is but some of it is amazing and with the steep narrow winding streets makes it a colourful and bohemian place.
While exploring the city we passed a load of school kids who were shouting ’Ricco, Ricco’ I thought they’d mistaken Xan for an ex Eastenders actor, but it turns out this means rich! Not a great label to be given in one of the only two Chilean cities highlighted in Lonely Planet as a risk for muggings but without dying Xan’s hair and getting him a serious spray tan, we’re always going to stand out here as being Foreign!
We also jumped on the metro to nearby Vina Del Mar and headed straight for the catchily titled Museo
de Arqueologico e Historia Francisco Fonk. Strangely enough it wasn’t the so rubbish it was brilliant display of stuffed animals that had brought us here (seriously they couldn’t have looked more fake if they were erm, fake) but the exhibit specialising in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) which managed to make us even more excited about heading there the following morning than we already were.
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james st. james
non-member comment
rico rico muy rico
rico can also mean "attractive" or "sexy" (for a guy, since rica would be for a woman). children shouting "rich" in the economic sense sounds highly unusual in chile. i would guess they were commenting more on your physical appearance than your net worth. feel flattered, not threatened. saludos.