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Published: October 10th 2006
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La Serena
Us in a Japanese garden in La Serena, strange but very peaceful. Even had a Koi pond! Photo kindly taken by Renya's handbag. Hi everybody,
Oh my gosh, I hear most of you say - 'you mean they are still alive and didn't disappear in the deepest darkest corners of Chile where we last heard from them....'
Well yes, we are still alive and kicking (yay we hear you all say) and have ashamedly been avoiding the blog like a plague due to first being too busy to update it, then it felt like such a big job we kept saying that we needed to allocate a big amount of time to it... and then we didn't have a home computer... etc - you get the drift, we're lazy. Anyone who knows us well, would know that we are the kind of people who always leave things to the last minute - so here goes - our travels in retrospect, with photos and then we can be up to date and start all over again. Anyway enough jabber and on with the story:
We last left you in La Serena....
Absolutely beautiful town and by far our favourite in Chile. We really adored the little house that we were living in, even if we couldn't understand our host's husband at all
On the way to Valle del Elqui
Our small tour of 4 dropped of here to show us the various cactii and a view of the dam. (the curse of Chilean Spanish) and spent a lot of time trying to work out what the other was saying through sign language. La Serena was exactly as its name implies - so serene and beautiful - the valleys actually reminded us so much of home and our wine growing regions. It' s no wonder that their wine is taking the world by storm! The area has clear bright blue skies for approx 300 days and nights of the year, so there are 4 observatories in the valleys - the most famous of these is Mamalluca. Unfortunately while we were there it was cloudy every night so we didn't get a chance to go witness the magic of Mamalluca - which was a real disappointment as this was one of the main reasons we chose to stop in La Serena, but hey we would never have discovered La Serena! Hang on, there is a pun for this - every cloud has a silver lining hahaha... yeah well we couldn't stay around to wait for clear skies as we were already running a little late for our set date to meet up with Francisca (family friend) in Santiago.
Francisca lives
in this amazing suburb called La Dehesa, which seemed like the Peppy Grove of Santiago. The house backed on to a golf course and the street that she lived on was covered in trees than had turned various Autumn shades of brown and orange - absolutely stunning! The house was amazingly beautiful as well (espeically to us tired old backpackers) - Francisca is an artist and all the walls were just covered in artwork, both hers and collected pieces, plus the entire top floor of the house was this amazing art studio with the best views over the neighbourhood, oh and of course the Andes perfectly situated behind! The most bizzare thing about this stunning neighbourhood is the fact that to enter the suburb you have to go past a security gate complete with tough looking guard! Francisca was telling us that even with these security measures she has had her purebred puppies dog-napped 3 times!
It was really special to live in somebody else's house while you are travelling because you really get an idea of how people live their lives and get to ask all sorts of questions about why things work the way they do. We
Lovely church in Pisco Elqui
Beautiful stained glass windows, in a serene small town in the heart of Valle del Elqui. especially got on well with her 4 children - particulary with Charlie, a very funny 13 year old, who spoke really good English for someone who has lived his whole life in Chile. When we asked him about this he said the reason was that he hated watching all the good tv shows and movies in sub-titles, so it was better to speak English! Gotta love that logic 😊 He also was a huge Nintendo fan, so he and Luke got on really well.
We also got on particulary well with the nanno Martin, who was from Peru. He didn't speak a word of English but because he spoke Peruvian Spanish, we could understand most of the things he said, even if he kept laughing at our attempts to answer all his complicated questions. Peruvians, just like many South Americans, place extremely high value on family and mariage. So his most questions went along the lines of... Are you married? Why not? Do you want to get married? How many children do you want? How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had? He was completely astounded when we told him that between us we have 4 fathers, 3 mothers, 8 step
sisters, 2 step brothers and only one real brother. He just kept laughing, so we showed him the photo of our family at the airport and he thought it was fabulous. Such a nice guy - but I think we kept occasionally offending him because we have never lived with a servant before and we kept trying to clean up after ourselves.
Living in this beautiful paradise meant that we didn't really spend too much time in the city itself. Santiago itself was just basically a very big city, with an American feel to it, but much less of a nightmare than we were expecting (though we did encounter the beginnings of the student riots that ended up being rather serious a week or so later). We climbed a small park hill in the middle of the city, which had nice views but it wasn't, say, breathtaking (which might have been nice with the pollution around), but its always nice to look out over a city. The metro system there is fabulous, so quick and easy, however at peak times it becomes a little like a tin of sardines with everyone squishing in wherever they can fit. Plus everytime
The wall of the Gabriela Mistral
Chile's first Nobel Prize winner, an accomplished writer and poet was from the region. A love heart well spotted by Luke to woo Renya... we got on the 'subte' everyone in the whole carriage would stare at us for the entire journey - particulary because Luke stuck out from everyone else by being 6 niches taller 😊 This was really strange at first till Francisca explained that Chileans like everything and everyone to be exactly the same, and us in our back packer gear really stood out! The Chileans had great fashion sense and style - much different to home... and us😊
The other great thing about staying with Francisca was that we got to experience a real Chilean fiesta on our last night there was Francisca´s bday and she threw a huge party for a hundred or so people. Fantastic party that went untill 5 in the morning - complete with DJ, Martin cooked a feast, plenty of Chilean wine and there was even a complete leg of prosciutto ham which the guests just carved away at. The music was so funny - they have even dubbed famous songs into Spanish, like the Jackson 5, Dusty Springfield etc and then we think we embarrassed ourselves by dancing to Blame It On The Boogie, because while the movements are the same for the
lines ´don´t blame it on the sunshine, moonlight ...´, the movement for ´don´t blame it on the good times´ is waaayyyyy different. Maybe because it's a Catholic country? They were all doing spirit fingers while we were, ahem... hilarious.
Anyway, after three days staying with Francisca we really needed to start getting a wriggle on and back into backpacker mode so on Francisca's recommendation, we caught the day bus over the Andes through to Mendoza in Argentina. So glad we took her advice and took the day route because the scenery was just absolutely gosmackingly beautiful. We sat looking out of the window in awe for most of the 7 hour trip - although barren views in one sense, the changes in scenery resulting in a grand finale of imposing, snow capped mountains made it an excellent experience. We were so dazed by it all that when we reached the border crossing (right on the top of these beautiful Andes surrounded by snow and freezing cold air) we almost forgot to go through customs!!! We lined up and waited and waited but didn't realise that all the stamping and typing and writing was just for the Chilean customs (taking even
longer because the 2 customs officials were sharing a solitary pen!), we were then supposed to join another queue to check in to Argentina... in our defense there were no signs or guidance to let us now that we had to do this. So when we got back on the bus the drivers announced that 3 people didn't go through customs and we scoffed at those stupid people... till we realised that it was us!!!!! Ooopsies- just when we thought we were getting good at all this 😊
So there is Chile finished - now time for Argentina...
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