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Comfy, soft spongy chair, 'ah...' I thought twiddling with the reclining button and getting the angle just right. Santiago sped by and I closed my eyes. Six or seven hours of countryside awaited, there would be plenty of time to look out windows. I felt a gentle prod on my shoulder and looked up. The young man dressed impeccably in a freshly ironed uniform handed me a pair of headphones. I smiled, 'gracias...; and closed my eyes. Moments later he was back, placing an unexpected pillow under my neck. Before we had left the city he returned carrying newspapers. 'El Dia?' I think he said in a hopeful tone, and I shook my head, smiling.
I had just switched on the iPod and was listening to David Kitt singing about park benches in Dublin when he returned again with a neat cardboard box of treats. Munching on a sandwich, having turned David off for a second, I came to the conclusion that there is probably no better incentive to learn Spanish than the films they show on long distance bus journies in South America. While the beautiful coast of this thin long land called to be looked at, so did
Iglesia Santo Domingo
La Serena - excellent belltower!'Pirates of the Carribbean III' and various other rom-coms. Alan and I both remarked how even though we hadn't a clue what people were saying (they were dubbed) somehow the plot in these films were easy to follow. Either that or we learnt Spanish by osmosis. I'd like to think that was true, but sadly it isn't.
Enough musing about the amazing buses of Chile, although if anyone would like to give Bus Éireann the money to send an exploratory team over to have a look it could do wonders for the Dublin to Kerry route. Or we would never hear from them again. Come to think of it, the bus system would probably improve drastically either way so maybe it isn't a bad idea.
La Serena is on the coast, a popular vacation spot for locals, but as we were arriving out of season the beaches were pretty empty. The weather was either warm or cold so we didn't spend too long on the beach, even though I did put my swimmers on one day only to discover sadly that the tides aren't the best for splashing. There's plenty to do in the town and around so
we booked ourselves into an evening of star-gazing in nearby Vicuna. They're real night-owls the Chileans, so it's no surprise that they have some amazing observatories. Well, that and the great views of the night sky they have. The observatory we went to was for tourists only, a lot of the bigger ones only deliver computerised views of the stars, rather than letting you see them with the 'naked eye'.
We were driven late at night to Vicuna by a very friendly driver who thoroughly approved of our Irishness, chatting about Irlanda with what appeared to be great enthusiasm. We nodded and told him that we liked Chile and then concluded our conversation due to not knowing much more Spanish. Luckily in Vicuna a German lady who was extremely confused and a little unsure of things got on and pestered him with lengthy questions about the destination, stars and whether he would actually collect us or abandon us at the observatory so he didn't get offended with us. At the observatory the lovely expert of the sky, Alfonso, separated the English speakers from the rest of the bunch and told us that he was going to show us the
Stampede!
Elqui valley 'espaaace' and 'neeeabulllaah'.
Alfonso, true to his word took us up to the 'eateleascooope' and carefully placing his shiny long brown hair behind his ears proceeded to puruse the night sky, quickly finding the 'ehmoooon' and we all got to peek through as he told us all about the nightsky. To me, an astronomical ignoramous, his information was fascinating and revealed all sorts of things I had never known. Looking at the moon was amazing, and I was shocked to find that some of the craters were hundreds of miles wide and even up to two or so miles deep. I know how dumb I am, but they look so small from here (Alan throws his eyes towards the moon at this...). He then showed us Saturn, Mars, Alpha (the nearest star to our sun) and Beta Centauri, cluuuustairs, and some neeahbulllaaaai. Alfonso relished saying clusters, nebula(i) and the espace so much that his voice became quite hypnotic and I nearly spent as much time listening to him as I did gazing upwards. Afterwards he took us to see a documentary all about the espace and the universe, which I thought was very informative indeed. It was after midnight
and I thought the tour was over, but nope, he then took us out to see another telescope and showed us as many of our astroloigcal signs as he could find and the southern cross as well as even more nebuli and clusters. He was terribly patient with our questions and let us ask every type of question you can imagine. At one point he turned to a girl and said 'ah, you are from Israel?...I once a knew a girl from the Israeel...' and gazed back up the telescope while all of the female members of the audience murmered amongst themselves and one even whispered, '...does that mean he doesn't know her anymore?' in a manner that indicated a 'personal' interest.
While some of us wanted to pursue THAT topic in greater detail, the German woman was very confused about the southern cross and asked about thirty questions - I was terribly impressed at how he was able to answer them all and stay patient with her, particularly when she tried to get him into an argument about not being able to ever see the southern cross in the northern hemisphere - which he said you can extremely
rarely see in the northern hemisphere except it is very low in the sky. Now, lads, I don't know whether you can or not, and a cursory look through google hasn't helped me greatly, but Alfonso thinks you can, from southern italy whereas the German lady doesn't. If anyone out there can enlighten us, Alfonso or the German lady, please do.
I'd thoroughly recommend the trip, it was great fun, informative and awakened a curiosity in me about astronomy. I've always been fond of gazing at the stars, particularly when in Donegal (where we visit a lot) as it's very clear up there some nights, and now I'm determined to learn more. Afterwards the driver made us coffee and it was lovely to have a hot drink. The German lady panicked somewhat at this point, convinced she was being abandoned at the observatory and even though we all tried to reassure her I don't think she relaxed until she was dropped off in Vicuna.
The next day we went horse-riding, using a 'collectivo' for the first time - for anyone who is new to this it's a great system whereby you go and find a taxi with a
Cheeses!
A colourful roadside cheese stall near La Serena sign saying the nearest town to where you want to go (in this case Vicuna) and wait until it's full and then the driver brings you to the destination. Of course I only knew the word 'caballo' (horse) in Spanish, which somewhat confused the group of helpful drivers. When I mimed, I'm quite proud to say that watching The Holy Grail a number of times helped with this, although instead of coconuts I improvised making clicking noises as I bounced up and down, eventually the drivers understood, although two of them, our fellow passengers, Alan and some passerbys were rolling around the pavement in some sort of anguish, and even suggested that I do it again, just to be sure.
The collectivo driver was an absolute charmer, driving us up to the door of the stables and getting out to make sure we were in the right place, waiting until the lady running the place had practically saddled us up before leaving. The lady's father Oscar took us out on a two hour trek on gorgeous horses. I was surprised to see that we didn't wear helmets, and was quite jealous of Oscar's cowboy hat, which I wish he
would have lent me. We trekked up the side of a mountain, Oscar going a lot faster than we did. He kept urging me to kick my lovely horse but I felt a bit bad, the poor thing was wheezing under my load and the sun was beating down on him. Eventually when Oscar had schlapped him on the rump a few times I began to kick him a bit, but he knew that I was a total pushover and kept stopping. I didn't mind, the scenery was spectacular, loads of huge cactuses, some of which were flowering, goats, blue skies, hawks hovering looking for their afternoon tea. When we got to the top we had a beautiful view of the lush valley and the orchards and vineyards. Afterwards he took us to another viewing point. He didn't speak any English and my South American Spanish is less than my Spanish Spanish, but Oscar managed to chat away about his home and find out a little about our trip. Look, I'm sure he didn't have a clue what I was talking about and I only had a smidge of an understanding of what he was saying, but we had one
of those delightful conversations that makes sense at the time. In short, Oscar was a very nice man and intensely proud of his home.
We took the bus back to town and sat drinking Chilean wine in the grounds of our hostel, Hostal El Punto which is run by a German man and a great place to stay as (1) the breakfasts are delicious - lovely fresh bread, salami, cheese and jam all washed down with fresh coffee and tea, (2) there are loads of tables to sit reading, chatting or chilling at (3) the other travellers staying there are nice and (4) the rooms are very nicely bedecked and (5) excellent mattresses. The next day we went to the Japanese Gardens and strolled around town taking photos and stopping for coffee. We visited the Iglesia San Francisco and I really liked the interior, it was probably the nicest church I've ever been in, really bright, with exposed brickwork, making it both classic and modern, airy and very calming.
After La Serena we spent a couple of days in Valpariso, a town immortalised for us by Irish poet Pádraig de Brún in his poem 'Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso'
The Municipalidad, La Serena
With Iglesia Catedral in the background which we read when I was in primary school. Now, Google has just shattered my illusions of wee Pádraig sitting be the dock somewhere in Ireland as a ship docked all the way from Chile. Apparently the poem is a translation of Oliver Saint John Gogarty's 'The Ship'. Oh dash it all, I'm going to just pretend I didn't discover that as I'd often wandered down the docks in Dublin imagining a boat coming from a mysterious far off place. I guess that's what poetic licence is?!
Anyway Pádraig's poem had made Valpariso one of those exotic spots that we used to look at on our world map when we were dreaming up this trip and had said we must go to see. So there we were, in the port town that is full of houses built on steep slopes and winding streets. It felt really cool I have to say and we 'high-fived' one another repeatedly, shocked that we'd actually got there. That's the weird thing about this trip, the number of high-fives we've achieved, getting to see places and do things we dreamt of for years. Sometimes when you spend time dreaming of doing things, you're not
actually sure that you'll be able to pull it off and so when you finally do, the old 'high-five' is often the only adequate response, even if innocent bystanders on their way to buy an empanada aren't quite sure what you're at.
The bus station in Valparaiso isn't the greatest, sort of grey and messy in that universal bus station way, so it wasn't until we had wandered up into some of the barrios that we really got to see the beauty of this town. The buildings are really cool, and the best things we found were the rickety old funiculars, one of which we went on had a man sleeping in the control box who we had to wake up to make it run! They rumble their way up and down the hills, and some of them are very old, real authentic working relics from times past, amazing. We had a delicious coffee and cake break one day where a very friendly waitress chatted to us in her café slash bookshop. We ate apple kuchen, appreciating the German influence and bought a few groovy postcards to remember the town by. Walking around the streets was a real stop-start
Down colourful hill
Aoife on Templeman, Valparaiso thing, we took a million photographs of the amazing street art that compliments the crumbling elegant buildings so well. As we wandered into a funicular station we had this wonderful image of a ship coming out of the mist that made us wonder if Pádraig/Oliver's boat had just returned home. We made our way down to the docks and looked at the mixture of military ships and smaller boats, the sailors looking dapper in their uniforms and hats.
We left the street art, boats and funiculars to go back to Santiago for some more steak and wine before taking the bus across the Andes and the border to Argentina.
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Helen
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There's something magic about that place ..... Loved this blog so much I want to go there.....