Advertisement
Published: September 20th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Santiago loomed as another big city, albeit one we had enjoyed before. Being the forward thinkers that we are we had booked an apartment in the centre of town for a week. This would give us time to have a good look around, do a day trip or two, and generally have a break from having a holiday (it's hard work, this not working gig, let me tell you).
There were a couple of small hassles with getting in once we got there due mainly to the brand of Spanish they speak in Chile – really frickin fast. Basically we ended up sitting downstairs for half an hour wondering where the owner was, while they sat upstairs in the apartment wondering where their tenant was. As you do. Still, if they'd have thought to give us the apartment number at the outset...well, just saying.
The apartment was excellent, if a little...cozy...for the four of us. With a lovely view of the pool, and behind that an abandoned lot full of squatters. It was close to everything, certainly. Like the fish markets, where we bought cheese. We bought fish too.
A strange system they had in the deli –
make your order at one place, pay another person, then give your docket to a third person. Rigmarole, just give me the cheese, please! The fish markets though – awesome. Stinking, yelling, exciting organised confusion. And more succulent seafood than you could wave a weird looking blue veined sea creature that I assume was tasty at.
Somehow we fought our way through the good-natured pushy throng to score ourselves some criminally cheap fresh salmon for the evening's dinner. Then, the supermarket. I love foreign supermarkets – it's like the “exotic food” section at Coles has taken over the whole place, it's delightfully bizarro world.
Here, though, it was fairly normal, except for returnable plastic bottles. Made of much heavier duty plastic than the standard, these contained everything from coke to beer to tomato juice, and could be returned and reused many times over. Top idea that.
And queuing. What's that? Yeah, exactly. I love this continent, but they could take a few things on board. One – if there's already somebody there waiting they were probably there first. Two – bread can be, indeed
should be, baked without sugar. And three – a broom head should have
an angle on it, FFS!
And, another thing. Driving on the right. Not normal. One of the things we hadn't made it too last time was the Maipo Valley – one of the premier wine regions of Chile and only a short distance south of Santiago. And, since red wine gives me a virtually instant headache, I was elected driver for the day.
We duly hired a car – you know the type; “Opel Corsa or similar”. And it always ends up being the or similar? Well, this day it was in fact an Opel Corsa, just not the one in the picture. A 15 year old Opel Corsa in fact.
We picked the car up at the airport. If what followed was, at times, stressful for me, it was probably close to harrowing for the passengers. At least on the way
to the wineries. From city driving in a major Latin American city, to suburbs, the hood, to the country, to highways to mountain roads. It was like some sort of f****d up driving test, complete with screaming passengers as I drifted to the right constantly, my brain striving to place me in the normal (for
me) driving position. I only actually hit one thing – the kerb as I was leaving the airport – but many other things came perilously close. The GPS we hired for the day was temperamental - the 44km detour driving along a winding mountain road, slowly leaving Santiago's smog, it looked promising for the first half an hour, until the GPS made us do a u-turn and head all the way back.
We made it to the winery region more or less intact and sane, and ended up visiting only one winery after all that. The big one – Concha y Toro. Apart from being sponsors of Manchester United they're known as the makers of the famous Casillero del Diablo.
It was a big operation, and we did the obligatory tour. We bought our tickets for the English tour and waited for it to begin. Another two hours, great. So we did the Spanish tour instead – let's be honest, winery tours are always much the same, there being only so many different ways you can make the stuff. Still, it was worth the money. I could understand it, and the others got most of it. They were
only really here for the vino anyway.
We dropped the car off, with no small relief on my part. The car was so dusty that they failed to notice the white overspray all over the front of it, picked up when we drove past a road crew gleefully spraying paint all over the joint as they touched up the white lines in the middle of the highway.
Back in town students were protesting as students are wont to do when they don't feel like studying. Which means they protest a lot. Their grievances seemed pretty standard, but the Plod had some pretty serious gear ready – shields, dogs, squads of horses, at least two water cannon trucks, They outnumbered the small student gathering at least 2 to one. Saddening to see they hadn't forgotten the lessons of Pinochet.
And the dogs. There were still tons of dogs. Klaire made quite a study of it. Apparently it's a cultural thing – the Chileans, with their Latin machismo feel it wrong to remove the balls of male animals. It must make running cattle a fun job.
From here, though, it was time to part ways for a time
with the older travellers. They were to head off to Ushuaia to see where the world ends. Us, having already been to Ipswich, decided to hop the bus and head on down to the island of Chiloe.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0333s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb