Practising our Spanish in Viña Del Mar

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Day 573 (22.10.08)

The first question everyone asks you when they hear you´re going to South America is "How´s your Spanish?" and today we were about to find out.

After getting packed up and doing a quick Spanish lesson from the iPod in the hostel courtyard we did what we haven´t done for quite a while and set off with our backpacks securely strapped to us. Having bought the van in Australia, settled down for a while and then travelled NZ with the luxury of a campervan and then a car it´s been about a year since we´ve really had to carry our own belongings. It felt surprisingly good and we were soon at the metro station buying tickets to get us to the bus station where we would catch a bus bound for the coast and the town of Valparaiso. The slightly daunted feeling we always seem to get when arriving in a new country/continent was starting to wear off after a good couple of days in Santiago and we were looking forward to exploring Chile.

Over the course of the day we tested our Spanish pretty thouroughly with Mark bravely attempting the words and phrases we´ve learnt from the CDs on our iPods (we´re currently on CD 2 of 8 not having got as far as we´d planned to prior to our arrival here!) and Chrissie dredging her memory for the little she learnt in GCSE Spanish way too many years ago to admit to. We were very proud at the end of the day to have travelled around all day on public transport, found and checked into a hotel for the night, got directions to the tourist office and public toilets and bought some food - all in Spanish. None of it was very accurate we´re sure but the Chileans, although looking slightly confused at times, patiently made the best of our attempts. We weren´t so good at understanding their extremely rapid responses but we hope we´ll get there!

We arrived in Valparaiso (or Valpo as its more commonly known) just after lunch and decided to use the afternoon to head a few km up the coast to the beach town of Viña del Mar. Whilst there we explored the pretty gardens of Quinta Vergara and looked over the gorgeous palace at its centre. We then headed off to the Cerro Castillo area where there are several castles and the presidential palace to be viewed (from the outside only). The view along the coast to the beach was lovely and gave us a chance to do a spot of pelican spotting as there were plenty of these massive birds hanging around on the rocks at the rivermouth.

We jumped back on the bus to Valpo and stopped off to buy some provisions at a large supermarket near our hotel. It took us ages to decide, still not sure how best to eat cheaply in a new country but we got there in the end and returned to cook up a feast and ´chat´ with the owner of the hotel who spoke only spanish. Our brains were aching by the time we went to bed but we´d had a great day.

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Comments

[marney]

world tour scam
allo harry and mary sorry i havent posted on your blog for ages.Ihave been in a maximum security dublin prison serving 12 months for impersonating a police officer(interpol) The charges regarding the sheep were dropped fortunately.BUT......I am back on your case now!SO.........your latest scam is that you are in south america eh.that old ronald biggs blog,the nearest you two have been to chilli is the spud u like shop in wrexham!We have now engagaed the services of an ex police sniffer dog(who i met in prison).I have given him the socks you wore in the mary poppins showcase and when he regains conciousness he will be on your trail BE WARNED.........the net is closing in on you!!!!!!

[AMY CARLINE]

Your jetting around so quick. At this rate your'll be home before we know i and we miss you so thats good for us. Really looking forward to you pics and commentary on Inca trail. Love me x

[james st james]

espanglish
great blog. i've really enjoyed it. i love completos too. whenever avocados are on sale, i buy hot dogs and go to town. good luck learning the language. don't worry about not understanding chileans. you see, you're starting your stumblings into spanish in what is likely the most challenging country to learn it. even native speakers from other countries have a hard time understanding chileans. chilean spanish is a branch unto itself. though it shares certain features from neighboring countries, a unique combination of factors make chilean spanish quite unique and distinct from any other. conjugation is different for informal speech, vocabulary is different, but most of all, chilean slang is peppered with unique slang and idiomatic expressions which no one outside of chile understands. they even dub tv-series when they are sent to neighboring argentina, which is the closest thing to chilean spanish. anyway, if you can't keep up with chileans, don't feel bad. it'll get easier in peru and bolivia (argentina has its own non-standard archaic spanish). cheers!