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dancing tango
Entertaining the crowds on a saturday morning Never been scared of flying before but taxiing onto the runway at Auckland airport, we started to get a little nervous. The weather was bad - but that wasn´t the problem initially. The plane was creaking and clunking quite a lot although it was brand new - just kept telling ourselves that someone had forgot to oil the mechanics and of course there was nothing seriously wrong with the plane!
Takeoff was pretty traumatic because the whole plane was just shaking, seemingly uncontrollably, the luggage compartments looked as if they were going to fall off their hinges. Then suddenly, as if that wasn´t bad enough, there was an explosion and a bright white light, all the lights in the cabin went out and everyone was very very quiet. You could cut the air with a knife.
We carried on like this, the plane shaking, all the passengers pretending to themselves that everything was OK and what had happened was no big deal - we were still airborne, so everything must be OK.
Half an hour later, with thoughts of crashing onto a deserted island inhabited by giant polar bears racing through our heads, the captain came on over
the intercom and casually informed us that we had been struck by lightening but there was nothing to worry about! Wish he´d told us that straight after it had happened - would have prevented half the passengers cacking their pants!
Well we arrived safe and sound in a new continent, having travelled back in time and unable to sleep (wonder why).
Neither of us spoke a word of Spanish so we though it would be a good idea to learn a little to help us in our travels around South and Central America. We had booked a 2 week session at a language school in Santiago and we were delivered straight to our host family. The school is called
Latin Immersion and we thoroughly recommend it to anyone who´s thinking of learning Spanish in South America
Edmundo, Cristina and their son Leonardo were to be our family for two weeks and they welcomed us with open arms into their home. Edmundo and Cristina are two of the funniest people we´ve ever met with fantastic senses of humour.
We arrived three days before classes started so we were worried that we would not be able to communicate at
Our adoptive family
Me, Edmundo (dad), David, Cristina (mum) and Alex all. Not to worry they did speak a little English, although we thought they spoke more than they let on! We spent the weekend mostly trying to catch up on sleep and learning very useful phrases such as ´´perro caca´´, and drinking lots of red wine. David, another student at the school was also staying at the house. He had been there for 2 weeks already and had another 2 to go. We had a ball at Edmundo and Cristina´s. Dinner time was always full of laughter (and more red wine). A lot of the laughter was due to me teaching Edmundo words and phrases in my fine northern accent and Alex trying hard to correct the pronunciation.
We started classes on the Monday after our arrival - beginning with a placement test at 8am. We looked at the questions, all of which were in Spanish, looked at each other, and put our pens back down. We did manage to write our names in the correct space though after realising that ´´nombre´´ means ´´name´´ and not ´´number´´!
Needless to say, we were to be put in the beginners class! Our teacher, Rodrigo, explained to us that our lessons
would be totally in Spanish and he would only resort to explaining something in English if we didn´t get what he meant after the 10th time of saying it in Spanish!He said ´´ What´s the point of you all travelling here and paying all this money for me to speak to you in English?´´ He was brilliant. Although everything was in Spanish, we were surprised at how much we did understand when he spoke. If we didn´t understand something, he would act it out or mime it - anything to refrain from speaking in English.
We were to be in school for 4 hours a day and, we hadn´t realised this, but we were given homework every night plus we had to revise for a test every morning! We didn´t get to do much sightseeing in Santiago!
We visited Chile´s second capital Valparaiso for a few days to get away from a stressful first week at school. It is a very beautiful place that surrounds a port and goes back into the hills as far as the eye can see. It is full of the old charm of a bustling sea port and navy town. Spread around the
Acensor Valparaiso
British engineering at its best hills are a type of train that is pulled up and down by a pulley system. These modes of transport have been in use for over a hundred years and have survived numerous earthquakes. They were originally designed and built by British engineers in the mid 1890´s and have stood the test of time. The first day was a wash out due to torrential rain so we found a bar and had a hearty lunch washed down with 2 bottles of great Chilean wine. The two meals, two bottles of wine and two coffees came to 8 pounds!
In the evening, after dinner, we found a cosy little bar where we proceeded to down another two bottles of red wine with sounds of Rick Astley, Jimmy Sommerville, Roxette, The Bangles, Erasure and just about all the hits from the eighties in the background.
We bought ski passes through our school and decided to give snowboarding a go for the first time. We had been told many horror stories about the first day, bruises everywhere and a sore arse as you spend most of the time falling over. It was all true. Another student at the school, Patricia, came
along too. She went skiing and we caught up with her later on in the bar having a beer - to relieve the queasiness of the high altitude - that was her excuse anyway!
Week two of classes was a little difficult as we were so tired after a busy weekend. Monday was a public holiday so the school tagged an extra hour onto each of the following 4 days we had left. So yeah, that was very considerate of them. So longer school days and more homework and a exam at the end of the week. We haven´t had this much structure in the last 7 months and it was difficult getting up at 6:30 every day to go to school and do homework. At the end of the week we recieved our certificates and we were pretty pleased with ourselves as we could get around places with basic Spanish. We are now unleashed on the rest of South and Central America to practice our Spanglish on the locals.
Remember Phill and Deb? - christmas in Vietnam, wedding in New Zealand (we think they are secretly stalking us actually!) - they turned up at our host families
house when we were not there (told you they were stalking us) and they came to our graduation. They´ve also booked a course in Spanish so we look forward to meeting them again in Peru and Bolivia to practice on them too.
On the last saturday of our stay in Santiago we decided to give snowboarding another go - we spent the first 2 hours watching a piss poor performance by England - and we were the only English people there along with Rupert (a student at the school) and the locals felt sorry for us. Needless to say we were down in the dumps and headed to the slopes for a little snowboarding which we were alot better at 2nd time around. Unfortunately, I pulled a groin muscle getting of the ski lift so I struggled down the slope, took four Advil (kindly provided by Patricia) and proceed to drink two bottles of wine to further ease the pain with Patricia and Rupert.
We left Santiago the following morning. Saying goodbye to Edmundo, Cristina and David was rather sad but we hope to see them all again one day.
We headed up to the border town
of Arica which is 2000 kilometres from Santiago in one trip of 30 hours. The bus was luxurious and very comfy. Of the 2000 km we travelled, 800km was in the world´s longest and driest desert, the Atacama. In some places it has never had any recorded rainfall. We arrived in Arica, spent 1 night there, and headed into Peru on an old train through the desert.
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Paul
non-member comment
All you seem to do is drink wine. And more wine!