Chile: de Ciudad a la Costa y Próspero Año Nuevo.

Santiago, Chile is quite the place. Just getting there is a fun and exciting event. Kristen and I left Quito around 18:30, only to fly up to Bogota for a layover. Basically, we fly 1 ½ hours north before we had to fly back over Quito to Santiago. Given that we weren’t scheduled to land in Santiago until 0600 the next morning, I was under the impression we were to have a long layover in Bogota. Kristen was just utterly confused. I was hoping for a long layover b/c I was really looking forward to confusing U.S. customs when I arrive back in the states with a less than 24-hour entry into Columbia. I mean, come on, why else would I go to Columbia for 3 hours? The Bogota airport is an interesting place. The couple sitting next to us were trying to hide the fact that they were counting out $1000 USD bills. A whole stack of them. And the woman glared at me when I happened to look their way. As if counting that much money out in public is totally normal.

After we were on the plane, waiting for them to fix the cargo door, we finally realized why the flight seemed like it could easily fly back to New York, it was so long. Apparently Santiago is in an entirely different time zone than Ecuador. Two hours ahead actually. So instead of taking 7 ½ hours to get to our destination, it only took about 5 hours. Not so bad, right? Especially if you sleep the whole way J We arrived to a bright, 23 C day and were brought directly to our hostal, which really doesn’t even look like a hostal, at least not the ones I’m used to. This one has an wrought iron gate and two women were outside sweeping the entryway. Both Kristen and the driver had to convince me that this was the hostal where I would be spending the next four nights. I was practically pushed out of the van.

Although the country isn’t quite developed, Santiago is a developed city. The public transportation involves taxis, buses, and subways (can you believe it?!). The city is clean and tree-lined (well, the places I have been. I’m sure, like in any city, there are grungy areas that you just don’t go to) and reminds me of New York, but more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes (the have palm trees and many tree species that would make you believe you’re in California from the smell of things).

Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago

 Since we arrived on a red-eye from Quito, Monday was spent napping and then with a champagne-induced touristy-esqu tour of Plaza de Armas and the Metropolitan Catedral de Santiago (i.e, church) with Kristen’s friend Anna. Like always, people that live in South America don’t eat until late (8ish, maybe 9pm), so after a second siesta (come on, red-eye flight people), we met up with Anna and her boyfriend Michael for dinner. Because it was Christmas eve, the only place open was a bar owned by an Australian couple (random, right?). Nothing else was open because even though no one here really celebrates Christmas or New Year’s, they shut the city down anyway. Yet one more excuse to lay around all day taking endless naps. I lucked out; had my first real beer (an IPA-like Belgian) in four months, and I got to eat fish y chips and try an onion ring. Oh, delicious fried food. My stomach nor my pores where very happy with me after that. Being a little jet-lagged, gaining a few hours, and taking naps tends to leave people wide awake at 12am. No esta bien. Necesito duerme.

Random Fountain in a Parque. Hey, never said I was a great guide.

100,000 Chilean pesos isn't really as much as you would think. 

Although it's great fun when trying to pay for something. 

Christmas BBQ with great company and vino!

Tuesday being Christmas, Kristen and I were invited to a BBQ in the ‘parque’. This is no regular, plain jane parque. The parque is located on a mountain called Cerro San Cristobal, of all things. Who’s homesick for her island? Yeah, this girl, sigh. Cerro San Cristobal is a large mountain in the middle of the city with great 365 degree views. It’s also a great directional point if you’re walking around the city and you’re about to get lost.

Our wonderful hosts, Anna and Michael :-)

Cerro San Cristobal

Santiago

The food was delicious! Chunks of fresh carne y pork on the grill with yummy sides and endless vino, ahhh…I forgot how much I love to grill. Hours later Kristen and I landed ourselves on Anna and Michael’s roof where we attempted to sing the 12 Days of Christmas (somehow mockingbirds and/or hummingbirds replaced calling birds and who ever heard of jumpers jumping?) while watching the sun set over the Andes. Yet another late night in Santiago.

Christmas Sunset over the Andes

On Wednesday people went back to work, shops and restaurants re-opened, and Kristen and I became tourists yet again. We also learned that we’re within walking distance of pretty much everything. It may be 20+ blocks, but we can walk it. It’s safer that way too, because paying for things with Chilean pesos tends to mess with your mind and I almost left 15,000 pesos with the subway ticket lady. Better to walk. Another ‘mountain’ (more like a hill) in Santiago is Cerro Santa Lucia. This hill (hehe) has tons of stairs that wind around the hill, eventually taking you to the top for a view of Andean mountains and tall buildings.

La Moneda, the presidential palace is an interesting place. It’s large, but not grand style-wise; fairly plain actually. The guards/policia won’t let you walk in front of the building, but they’ll allow you to cross the street and walk within the ‘fenced off’ area, while there’s a policia between you and the fence that’s on the opposite side of the street from the palace. Exactly what is this fence protecting the palace from? The grass and trees in the parque behind the fence? Or are we, the people, protecting the palace from the policia? Hmmm…one can only imagine.

We found out later this is actually the backside of the palace. The only difference is that the front has a fountain.

Ketchup! Who knew?!

For lunch we went to the Mercado Central, a huge fish market inside what looks like an old New York City bus station. It’s filled with tables that are owned by different restaurants and the waitstaff try to convince you into sitting down at one of their restaurants tables to eat. When we finally did get talked into sitting down at a table, we ordered a local bottle of sauvignon blanc; I had the corvina and Kristen the camarones y ajo. The corvina came with papas fritos (french fries, which is not arroz!). Since papas fritos are usually accompanied by ketchup, I asked the waiter for salsa de tomato (this is what Ecuadorians call ketchup). He had no idea what I was talking about, and when I pointed at my papas fritos, I was asked if I wanted ketchup. Hmmm. It seems this metropolitan city may be a tad Americanized. Paying for things with Chilean pesos is a whole other adventure. Our meal cost 24,900 pesos. That’s a lot of pesos. Also, now we have to calculate a tip into our bill, which we didn’t have to do in Ecuador. Our waiter, not to mention a patron sitting nearby, got quite a laugh at the two gringas counting out all their pesos to pay the bill.

There are a few things about Santiago that I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, well, at least not for a few more months. First of all, you can drink water from the tap and you won’t get sick! Who knew this was possible! It’s like I’ve entered some sort of strange land. I tested the water when we arrived by drinking a whole cup and then waited three hours with immodium in hand just in case. So far nothing has happened. I think I’m safe. Thankfully we’re going to Chile next, where you definitely CANNOT drink anything but bottled water. I look forward to some normalcy. Second, I’ve been informed that you can throw your used toilet paper in the toilet while in Santiago. Now, that just seems like a bad idea to me. I will probably never through toilet paper in a toilet ever again. Third, it’s light out until almost 10pm! What a way to throw off your internal clock! No wonder people eat so late and stay up past midnight. At 9pm you think it’s 6pm! It seems that you can only tell time through the position of the sun in the northern hemisphere. If you attempt to do that here you’ll be at least two hours late for everything. That’s a lot worse than Ecuatime.

On Thursday we attempted to take a bus to Isla Negra to see Pablo Neruda’s house. Unfortunately, there really are times that you have to look things up in a city unknown to you, or you may not get to your destination. Our plans were put on hold for another day and we spent the day lounging in a park, drink local sauvignon blanc and eating churrasco sandwiches. Next best thing to a beach on San Cristóbal, I guess. Of course, any good day is followed by an afternoon siesta, so we napped (i.e. I passed out) until 1900 and then met our friends for sushi. As it stays light for much longer in Chile (almost 10pm), you tend to wake later, take your siesta later, and eat dinner later. Everything is later.

Vina del Mar

Friday we left Santiago for the coast. We chose Viña del Mar because we were looking for a small beach town (Santiago is very overwhelming for me after spending a considerable amount of time on a small island, not too mention its in a valley and my allergies are so bad I can barely breathe). The bus ride was easy and short, and significantly more comfortable than a U.S. domestic airline. Now that’s a seat that reclines! The coast is no more than a 2 hour drive from Santiago, depending on what “town” you want to go to. Let me tell you, Valparaíso, which is just south of Viña del Mar is the second largest CITY in Chile after Santiago. So if you think you’re going to get a sweet coastal town to relax in for a few days, you will be sorely disappointed. Viña del Mar reminds me on South Beach in Miami. One benefit of being here is that you literally can spend 12 hours on the beach if that’s what you want to do. It’s always bright and sunny here, sin clouds.

La playa a las ocho y media de la noche

A Moai from Easter Island; brought to
the mainland in 1951 

Only 2207 Km to Machu Picchu! 

As the marine layer filled the sky on Saturday, Kristen and I walked around town, got halfway to Easter Island thanks to the Fonck Museum, and found out how many kilometers we are from Machu Picchu and New York. Because the wine here is soo good and cheap ($3.50/bottle!), and it seems to cure my allergies, we spent the afternoon (after 5pm, remember it’s light out until almost 10pm) reading and watching the funniest youtube video of a parrot signing ‘Let the bodies hit the floor’ (Youtube: Parrot Let the Bodies Hit the Floor). If you know the original song, this one is pretty funny. These days, well, ever since I’ve been in Chile, I tend to sleep 10+ hours per day. Kristen says I pass out the minute my head hits the pillow and then sleep or a good 8+ hours. During the day I tend to take a 2-3 hour nap, whether at the hostel where we’re staying, at a park, or on the beach (and sometimes at 2 of these places in one day). I realized during our walk along the boardwalk in Viña del Mar that I’m somewhat depressed and going through culture shock. Staring out over the Pacific Ocean makes me miss the one place I feel comfortable and free enough to call home: Galápagos. Of course, I had to connect with a group of islands (well, one in particular) that are not only somewhat difficult and expensive to get to, but I’m only allowed there for 90 days every year. Kristen told me that I should be grateful I have found such a place, because people can search for years for a place where they feel comfortable enough to call their home (I believe the saying goes ‘home is where the heart is’). As for the culture shock, these cities I am visiting in Chile are more American than Latino, and coming from a small island they are incredibly overwhelming. I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen when I arrive in NY to snow, or even better, have to drive a car (haven’t done so since I left NY in August).

Our hostel: Little Castle

 Although overwhelming at times, Chile is a great place, and traveling with Kristen has helped ease the culture shock and the whole experience is more enjoyable (and fun!) because of her! I wish we had less time in cities and more time in the deserts up north, as I feel they would have helped ease my way back into mainstream society instead of being tossed back in without any real warning no one's fault). I think I’ll appreciate Peru much more now after my experiences in Chile, and I’m really looking forward to heading north. No matter where I travel, my heartstrings are being pulled by Ecuador. Everywhere I go I’m reminded of the wonderful country with amazing people that I had to leave. The metro in Santiago had a stop named ‘Ecuador’, there’s a street named Ecuador that’s just down the street from our hostel in Viña. I miss the culture, the food (who would’ve thought?!), the music, the islands and their inhabitants, and someone in particular who’s very special to me.

Our plans were to leave Viña del Mar on Sunday and hop a bus south to Isla Negra, another coastal town and the home of Pablo Neruda. If you’ve done this before it’s really easy. Of course, if you have difficulty understanding the Chilean dialect (jaja, oh wow), and have absolutely no idea how you’re supposed to get to Isla Negra (the large bus companies don’t stop there), it can be an interesting experience. As Kristen believes I can understand the Chilean dialect (and maybe even Spanish in general) better than she can, my brain works on overload to try to attempt to understand the directions people are giving me. Here’s a hint: always ask an older generation than yourself. Their education was better (i.e. they read more books and whatnot), so their dialect is less extreme than those from, say, my generation. This nice older gentleman told me where to get the bus (and I actually understood 90% of what he said! Woohoo!), which was actually the bus that would take us to Valparaíso to get the bus to Isla Negra. We got there, no big deal. We also found out that the local bus drivers don’t seem to care if you pay the bus fare or not. I’m going to leave that open for interpretation. Did we or did we not pay the bus fare? Once we got on the BIG BUS to head south, life seemed really good. Normally, when you’re on a bus in a foreign country that you really know nothing about (or how far it’s supposed to take to get to your destination), it may be a good idea to be aware of surroundings, distances, approximately how long until your stop, whatever. I pass out on buses (and really any sort of moving vehicle: cars, boats, ect.) so when I awoke an hour or so later and asked “where are we”, Kristen had no idea either because she had also been sleeping. It just so happened that Isla Negra was the next stop. Lucky.

The owner of the hostel in Viña del Mar hooked us up with a place to stay at his friend’s house, which just happened to be right across the street from Pablo Neruda’s house along the coast. Well, Freddie didn’t really seem to happy to be having guests in his house and when I told Kristen there wasn’t any hot water I could see her eyes bug out of her head for a split second. Not having hot water isn’t a big deal for me; I’ve come to see it as a privilege after not having it for the first month in the Galápagos. But for someone who’s never gone through that experience? I can see how that would be difficult. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see Pablo Neruda’s house because the tours were all booked up, so we sat on the ‘beach’ for an hour or so and made plans to head back to Santiago that very same afternoon. We had been carrying around a great bottle of carmenere (that only cost $3.50 USD!) and we asked the manager at a restaurant to open the bottle for us (smiling also helps) sin cork fee. Our plan was to drink the bottle on the bus ride back to Santiago. What a good plan it was! The ride was smooth with minimal people because most were heading to the coast.

With the New Year upon us, I realize everyday how much I have to be grateful for. Traveling throughout Ecuador and living in the Galápagos has been the best experience of my life; I have become a more laid-back, environmentally conscious, fun loving (and traveling), and all around better version of myself. I don’t always have to have a plan (jaja, lost that control freak edge); and I’ve learned that giving my all, even if it means not getting anything back in return, is the greatest gift of all.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!