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Our bus that was to take us to Santiago airport was booked and it was to pick us up from just round the corner of our hostel
at 7.45am. What we didn't know when we booked it is that at this exact time back home (were currently 5 hours behind) both our teams of Barnsley & Sheffield Wednesday were kicking off in their last game of the season, and both teams could be relegated in a frantic finale.
It was a long ride.
After the bus pulled up at the airport we ran down the stairs to collect our bags and legged it in the airport looking for a bar, to either celebrate or commiserate and a Wi Fi connection to find out how we'd both gone on.
I don't need to tell you how it panned out as I'm sure your all aware, so we hit the bar in the airport to start celebrating that for two days next season we'll be sworn enemies yet again. What a day.
We wobbled onto our plane for Santiago to be sobered up by the turbulence that we passed through for the first hour or so. It was like being
sat in a tractor! After that though it was plane sailing and the mountains of the Andes that we were passing over looked stunning.
We landed and got our bags and bought a 1.5ltr of dark Havanna rum to carry on our celebrations.
We got the bus to the area our hostal was in and walked the short walk from the bus stop to check in after we made our booking to stay that night online. We had to wait for our beds to be made so as Laura scoped out the hostal to see if it was up to scratch I asked the bloke working behind the desk where the best place was that we could carry on our party. He explained that the best nightlife in Santiago was an area called Barrio Brasil and it was just two blocks away. Laura came back to explain that she thought the hostal was a bit of a dump, but I explained that location was everything so we both got showered and changed and made a couple of rum n cokes before hitting the town.
Barrio Brasil really was a cool place, loads of people spilling outside of
bars and pubs and generally partying their socks off. I was amazed that news of Barnsley's triumph had reached so far. We went round the bars but decided against a club as we wanted to see other parts of Santiago the day after as we only had two days in the city. We were in one bar and after filling up our table of empty glasses got quite hungry after seeing another table near us have this massive pile of unbelievably nice smelling food plonked in front of them. We didn't know what it was but we ordered it. It turned out to be a classic Chilean dish called 'Chorrillana' you can get in anywhere at all, pubs, bars, restaurants, stalls in the streets, everywhere although some are better than others. Apparently the bar we were in we later found out was a really good place to get a nice 'Chorrillana' and when it came it looked and tasted immense.
Chorrillana is a mound of chips, covered with what tastes like a spiced tomato sauce with fried onions, chopped up chorizo, pieces of beef and then top it off two whacking fried eggs on top. Proper booze food! There
was easily enough to feed 6 and we eat the lot. We then finished up and headed back to the hostal to find the guy that was working behind the desk earlier that day still up and having a bit of a party himself with a few of his friends. I went to join in and Laura ht the sack for our big day of sightseeing the following morning.
That morning came and Laura woke up feeling quite good and ready to pound the streets, I felt like Mike Tyson had kicked my head in. After a lot of groaning and walking into the bathroom with my toothbrush in hand, then forgetting why I was in the bathroom, then walking back out to Loz shouting at me asking what I was doing, then replying that I didn't know, then remembering I had gone to brush my teeth, then explaining that I had gone to brush my teeth but had forgot why I had gone in the bathroom, then actually brushing my teeth and putting the same clothes on I had on for the last 3 days we were finally off.
After walking round in a rum induced coma
for a bit I decided I needed a coffee so we both sat down at this cafe place in one of the squares in the middle of Santiago. The waitress came round and Laura ordered a coffee after my failed attempt at Spanish (I thought I was getting quite good) then Loz went to walk round one of the markets in the square and I was going to catch her up when me brew came. Loz went off then another waiter came up and asked me what I wanted and I tried to explain that I had a coffee coming. Coffee? He said, I said 'yes, but no, I've got one coming mate' to which he replied quite cheerily 'Coffee!' I tried to explain again that I had one coming as he walked off. I was then sat for about, honestly, about half an hour with no sign of either of the people that I ordered a coffee from. My head was absolutely banging so I decided the best thing to do was to fall asleep. Just as I was nodding off these two long haired tits started playing guitars and singing at the top of their voices stood smack
at the side of me. I thought they'd stop after one song and ask for a bit of change then buggar off but they kept playing and playing, louder and louder with still no sign of me brew. I was about to just get up and stumble off when Loz came over laughing her head off. She'd been watching from the other side of the square for about ten minutes at me struggling to stay awake outside this packed cafe with the tits keeping my headache going. Loz asked why I'd not caught up with her after having my coffee and I explained that it'd not come yet. We decided to just leave when the woman who I ordered a coffee off about an hour ago walked over with a cup in her hand and said 'coffee?' Bout time! After spending about 3 seconds necking the coffee that took over an hour to come we then set off walking round Santiago.
Although a lot like Buenos Aries we found Santiago to be a much nicer and cleaner place than its Argentinian bigger brother. Its surrounded by mountains and looks quite weird seeing skyscrapers with mountains in the background. We
walked up to the top of a castle that was in some Japanese gardens and had an amazing view of the city. We then got laid out on some grass in the sun and had some dinner. We had read that there was an old cable car that took you up to the top of one of the surrounding mountains and was a cool thing to do while the sun went down, so that's what we did.
The cable car seemed to clink and rattle up the side of this mountain forever and when it finally reached the top the view was incredible, I'll try and upload plenty of photos for you to see. We stayed up at the top until the last car of the night back down and got in a nice cheap little place for some food. We asked for two menus and was looking through when 'Golf Sauce' caught my eye. Golf Sauce?! We asked the waiter what Golf Sauce was and he didn't know himself! 'Itsa Golf Sauce, but I donta know what it is...'. After the three of us laughed for a bit Loz ordered some fish and I got some pork and
chips and thought I was putting vinegar all over my chips to find out it was cooking oil. Sound. Can't help but think though what would have actually come if we'd have asked for Golf Sauce....
The day after we headed for Valpariso a Unesco World Heritage town two hours north of Santiago on the Pacific coast. It's protected by Unesco as the town is known as the 'Rainbow Town' with every side of every house painted a different colour and with crazy artwork dotted all over the town. The most famous of which is probably the piano stairs, that we had both been looking at pictures of on the internet soon as we booked our tickets for South America.The towns protected by Unesco so that no one can build anything that sticks out like a sore thumb, which is what happened in the past when a large fishing company built their headquarters in Valpo' and the people of the town got quite angry and so Unesco came in. The towns fascination with painting came from the past when sailors that were painting their huge ships bright colours would leave the paint in the port when they'd finished, and
the locals then used to run down and nick it to paint their homes. I suppose the more colourful your house was was a sign of stature, but of what I don't know.
We got off the bus in the Valpo' sun after passing hundreds and hundreds of vin yards and as Loz was feeling a bit unwell I told her to stay with the bags in the station and I would run out and find where the taxis are and get some money out of the machine for us to save us doing all that with our bags on (they seem to be getting heavier!)
I legged it through the taxi terminal to the nearest bank which was across the road from this huge fish market and queued for the machine and put the PIN in for the machine to spit the card back out saying 'pin excludar'. I knew something was wrong as it had never done this before so I got back to Loz in the station and explained that there was something wrong with the card.She said there can't be anything wrong with the card and asked what PIN I put in and I
told her and that's when I found out that there was nothing wrong with the card, it was the wrong PIN that I put in. After she blew her top then calmed down we went to get a taxi as we have other cards with us that we could use until we phone the bank and explain my mistake.
We jumped in a taxi and told him we needed to go to Hostal La Vahja via a cash machine and off we went, stopping at every cash machine on the way trying all our cards with the machines constantly having none of it and spitting them all out. By this time the taxi fare was racking up and with no way of paying for it we were proper stuck.
We decided that we should see if the hostal could pay for our taxi and put the cost on top of our bill so the taxi driver headed for La Vahja. I've got to say though while we were going mental at each other in the back the taxi driver was dead nice and kept telling us not to worry. We pulled up at the hostal and I ran
in and explained the situation and the woman behind the desk paid for the taxi straight away no bother. The taxi driver again told us of to worry and if we needed a taxi anywhere else we should give him a ring! The woman behind the desk kindly said that we weren't the first people that it had happened to it and we'll probably not be the last, she would put the cost of the taxi on our bill and we could pay for it whenever we get sorted with the bank. I can not thank them enough, they could have just left us to sort it our ourselves with the taxi driver as really its nothing to do with them but they really did help us out.
Then we had to phone the bank and figure out why none of our cards were working which was a MASSIVE task in itself. As none of our cards would work we couldn't put any money on our phones or Skype to call the bank. Loz put an SOS message out on Facebook and luckily our prayers were answered when Becky the lifesaver offered to put some money on our Skype
for us. Thanks Becks!! We then found out after being put through to literally about 12 different departments that because I had entered the wrong PIN they had blocked that card for 24 hours, and there was nothing wrong with the other cards, we just had insufficient funds! In mine I thought at a cheque that had gone in would have cleared but it hadn't and Laura had thought that she had transferred some over but didn't, so all we were to do was transfer some money from the blocked account for a day or so and we'd be back to normal when the PIN would be reset. Phew!
As Loz was still feeling a bit unwell and we'd had a bit of a nightmare day we just chilled in the hostal that night, I ventured out to get us a bite to eat for tea but that was about it.
The day after we were to hit the beach but it was really cloudy so we decided to just walk the streets of Valpo'. The place is class and we took lots of pictures that again I'll try and upload for you to see, loads of mad
paintings in narrow winding alleyways and on the sides of buildings. We had a plan of going to the big fish market to buy something for our tea but got lost on the way but did come across a smaller market where we bought a kilo of mussels for about £1.30 and of course some red wine.
We headed back to our hostal to find the piano stairs were just round the corner from where we were staying so got some cool pictures then went back and cooked up a storm in the kitchen and stunk the hostal out!
The day after we got in touch with our American friends who we met on the W trail and arranged to meet them on the beach in nearby Vina Del Mar. Vina Del Mar is a another coastal town about 20 mins up the coast so we were to get the bus over from downtown. As we jumped on the bus we had no idea at where to get off and was helped by this massive trampy looking fella whose legs were absolutely huge. At first I thought he was just another tramp on a bus rambling nonsense but
he could speak perfect English and was pointing things out on the map that we ought to see and genuinely was really nice. He explained that his legs were gigantic after he touched the back of a poisonous frog in the amazon and it had infected his blood. It really did make me feel bad about my first impression of him.
We met up with our friends and had a laugh at the beach and went for some tea at a nice pizza place that had an old juke box that we had a bit of a tune off on. One of the girls that was with our American friends had said that on our way to La Serena from Valpariso we should go to a place called Valley de Elqui as they did a star gazing tour we wrote the pace down in our books so we could check it out when we were up that way. As we're on a bit of a tight schedule to meet up with our friends in Bolivia we had to leave Valpo' for La Serena that night. So we bid farewell to our new friends and headed for the bus station
in a taxi that had David Bowie on full blast.
We arrived in La Serena station after a 7 hour bus ride
at 5am and had to wait until we were able to check into our hostal
at 7am , so we sat in the bus station and bought two grande coffees and a massive slab of cake. Our hostal was a 10 minute taxi ride away so
at 7am we set off, got checked in by the nice little lady that owned it and went to bed. After we woke up we did a big shop at the supermarket, took our clothes to the laundrette, practised our Spanish, made a banging spaghetti bolognaise then went back to bed!
The morning after we hired some bikes and rode right along the coast to another town called Coquimbo. Along the way we saw signs saying that the place was a tsunami hotspot and directed you where to go if one occurred. Being in a country like Chile you sometimes forget that it's actually near-enough built on the Andes and things like tsunamis and earthquakes can be commonplace. Also as we were riding along we saw a what looked like a vulture or
a condor take out a seagull and start eating it on the beach! There was blood and feathers all over as this great big ugly thing was tucking into this seagull. We passed fishing boats bringing in their catch for the day and setting it all up on stalls all types of fish, mussels and clams all being brought to shore by the sack full to sell. As we got further round towards Coquimbo we saw a gaucho honing his horse riding skills on the beach, it looked brilliant and we stopped and watched him for ages. On the way back we stopped in a bar and watched the sunset then picked up our clean washing and headed back to the hostal for tea. For tea Loz made a broccoli and pesto pasta and its a good job that no one was in our dorm that night as we both spent the whole night farting!
The day after we went to Valley de Elqui to do the star gazing tour. Valley de Elqui is only an hour away from La Serena but the weather is about 15c warmer. It was mad hot as we stepped off the bus and
as this day was F.A cup final day we walked round the whole town looking for a bar that had it on but to no avail. We sacked it off and went to look for a hostal to stay in. We stumbled upon one called Donde Rita's and were met at the gate by a frail old woman with a right spring in her step who said that she had room for us both for the night. We checked the price and was sure she said $3,000 pesos each for the night. If that was right that would make it the cheapest place we've stayed in South America by a country mile. We said 'Si?! $3,000?' And Rita said 'Si'.' So we snapped her hand off and went to book us on the star gazing tour that night. On the way to book the tour I was going on to Loz about we must have e price wrong for the hostal, it's one of the nicest places we've stayed and at a fraction of the cost to all the rest. Loz was going 'Shut up Mike, we both said €3,000 and she said yeah' I was saying that we should
go back and ask her to write the price down as it had to be wrong but Loz assured me that this was the correct price. 'But it's got a bloody pool!' I kept saying, 'shut up Mike' was the reply.
We got booked on the 3.5 hour tour that left
at 7pm that night and went back to Donde Rita's to make some dinner round the pool.
7pm came and we jumped in the back of this 4x4 with 3 French travellers and we headed to the top of one of the many mountains surrounding the town.On the way up our guide was saying that we've come at exactly the right time for the tour as there was hardly any moonlight which is perfect as the moon hinders the light from the stars so we were due a decent showing. The town is in a valley that's renowned for its crisp clear skies and it happens that it sits underneath one of the clearest atmospheres in the world. Even before we got to the lookout and got the telescopes out we were amazed at what we could see. Unfortunately as we don't have a tripod taking pictures of
the stars wasn't going to happen, you'll just have to take our word for it that it was absolutely brilliant. Through the telescope we could see things that blew our minds, like when looking at the sky normally you think you see just one star, through the telescope it's actually thousands and thousands of stars called nebulas (google a 'nebula' to see what we were seeing!) we saw other galaxy's and shooting stars and space centres, it was fantastic. We learned all about the constellations in the Southern Hemisphere and how to find your way south but the best bit was being able to see Saturn through the telescope as clear as a bell. Even the guide was getting giddy when he was looking at it as it was the perfect night to see it. Again, google image 'Saturn' and that's what we were looking at, rings and all, Saturn has 6 moons and it was that clear we could see them aswell. They had to ask me and Laura to stop looking so they could give the French guys chance to look! Unbelievable, if your anywhere near the area you have to do it.
The morning after we
had to check out of Donde Rita's as there wasn't any room for us that night so we asked to pay the bill and low and behold it was actually $13,000 EACH! (Just shy of £20! We've been paying at the most £9!) By far and away the most expensive place we've stayed in! I couldn't help but laugh as Laura was chuntering to herself. No wonder Rita had come bounding up to let us in at the gate! No wonder she could afford a pool!
That's it for now, we've just checked out of Donde Rita's and are now planning to go camping for the night under the stars before working out how best to get to our mates James & Laura who are in Bolivia. James and Laura have been travelling for around 12 months and when we knew we were coming to South America meeting up with them was the one and only thing we were bothered about, all the rest was secondary to hanging out with our best mates. The thing is their travels are coming to an end so we need to really rattle through Chile to get to Bolivia where they are finishing
their trip to get to see them before they go home. Fingers crossed our route to them is nice and easy as we've heard that it can be a massive hassle doing anything in a rush in South America...
Again, we hope your all well and thanks very much for reading this, let us know what ya think
Mick n Loz
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Peter Rickards
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That beard's coming on luv, could be a full one by the time you get home !! Your's aint bad either Michael !! Keep them blogs coming there brilliant !! Make sure you back your photo's up on a disc, just in case you lose your camera, they are fantastic !! Just been snowing here in Durham, YES SNOW !!!!!! Take care xxxxxxxxxxxxx