Tuesday 3 August 2010

Not as chilly in Chile

Santiago was a nice city. Not as beautiful or as much to do as other big cities in South America but it was ample for a few days. There are a few really nice plazas surrounded with beautiful buildings. The main plaza was filled with street performers and really terrible artists displaying their wares, worst of all was a portrait of Leonardo di Caprio which looked more like Ricky Gervais.

There are a few sights to see in the capital of the Chile. One is the La Virgen del cerro san cristobal. Funiculars run up and down the hill, though they are quite scary, the view at the top is definitely rewarding. However the statue of the virgen on top of the hill was pretty tiny compared to the Cristo in Rio and Cochabamba. Smog and haze cover much of Santiago so you cannot see very far, it is one of the top 3 most polluted cities in Latin America, but on clearer days you can make out the mountains that surround the city.

Chile is famous for its hot dogs, a tradition I cannot take part in. However, some of the others did order hot dogs. These were no ordinary hotdogs, the Chile speciality is with avocado and mayonnaise, much to our amusement, they came with at least a whole avocado and a whole tub of mayo on them, it looked absolutely disgusting! They also love bread as do all South American nations, it is ridiculous, you absolutely cannot escape bread!

One of the coolest bar/restaurants in Santiago is The Clinic, it is also a Chilean newspaper and this bar is its offspring. It was pretty exclusive, and they served really good Tom Collins Cocktails. We wanted to have a big night out in Santiago but it was a Tuesday so it was difficult to find much that was going on. Thankfully due to the Chilean locals we managed to find a really cool little club called Clandestine, which just looked like a house from the outside, you could never tell it was a club. There was a band playing for a while, and then the dj served up classics like Dr.Dre and Rod Stewart. It was a brilliant night which ended in us being locked out of the hotel (it was after 4am) and me (apparently!) singing Radiohead High and Dry outside the hotel after it had played in the taxi. Obviously the hotel were more willing to let us in when they heard my reincarnation of Thom Yorke. I then proceeded to fall asleep on the end of the bed resting my head on my legs, comfy! All this amounted to a pretty messy hangover the next day.

Despite the hangover we did manage to see some more of the town. Santiago is host to a fabulous museum of pre-Colombian artifacts. It was a really great collection and also really informative.

One thing the Chileans have yet to master is the system of queing. You go into a shop/cafe etc and have to go to about 3 different desks and people to place an order, pay for the order, and then collect the order, it is disorganisation at its finest.

This was one of the only places I have experienced being ripped off in a taxi over here. We had to pay 4 times the price of the same taxi journey that we took at 4am. It was ridiculous!

The Santa Lucia hill was another sight worth seeing here, it was a short walk uphill, and is the place where Santiago was founded. It gives pretty good views of the city from the top. There was a pretty cool artisan market in Santiago and after stocking up on some more warm clothes for the salt flats in Bolivia it was time to head further north.

Next stop was La Serena, which is now Chile´s prime beach resort, and it is not difficult to see why, with several beautiful beaches after another. It was not really warm enough to sit on the beach or sunbathe, but after the cold we had been in, 14 degrees was pretty warm to us!

The hostel was a bit of a dive, with a carpet which looked like it had never been cleaned. It was also really cold. The breakfast consisted of one bread roll which says it all really.

The beaches were really beautiful and we just caught the end of the sunset there. The town in itself looked like any ordinary seaside town, full of tacky shops.

La Serena is home to a fair few kareoke bars and we blew the locals away with our rendition of Rick Astleys Never Gonna Give You Up! They absolutely love kareoke over here, they just sit round the table and sing it. I have to say though we may not have been the best, some of the people were absolutely dreadful, it became quite painful to listen to, and that accompanied by the djs shocking dancing made sure we made a sharp exit.

You can rent bikes in La Serena and bike right along the coastal road to the next town of Coquimbo. The bikes were a bit of a death trap, some where missing breaks, some gears, and some just looked like they would fall apart at any minute, but we all made it safely. It was a beautiful ride, right along the coast, and you can imagine the beaches would be packed with swarms of people in the summer. The highlight of the ride was at the port of Coquimbo where we saw the most gigantic sea lions in the sea, it was amazing to see them in their natural environments, but just hard to comprehend how massive they were!

Northern Chile is one of the best spots in the world to stargaze so we decided to go to one of the observatorys there. First though we went on a tour of the Pisco distillery (the local drink of choice), we saw how it was made, and got a couple of samples of the pure product, one was 65 percent strength and it was absolutely horrendous, it burnt my chest for so long afterwards! The mango pisco sour was much tastier.

The tour of the Mamalluca observatory was about 2 hours in total, it was really informative, the guide really new his stuff. We got to look through the telescopes at different planets (Saturn was definitely the coolest, it just looked like an image from a text book, not quite real) stars, and constellations. The milky way was incredibly clear, and was absolutely beautiful. I have never seen so many stars in my life, and it was great to see the constellations. Another bunch of Americans tainted the tour somewhat by reacting completely over the top whenever they looked through the telescopes, after a while it became quite amusing, and we decided to mimic them in dramatic style.

There was not much to see in La Serena but I imagine it would be great in the summer when the weather is warmer. After La Serena we headed even further north on a 17 hour night bus to San Pedro de Atacama.

The road was a pretty bumpy one, and I was quite uncomfortable, I did not manage to get a lot of sleep on this one, despite the fact that I am now a nightbus veteran. Yet again the bus served up a ham and cheese delight with a vacuum packed sandwich, I do not understand how they can eat so much ham and cheese, it is ridiculous.

The landscape dramatically changed as we neared San Pedro. Deserts and barren land as far as they eye can see. It was a cute little town though, the most expensive place in Northen Chile, and a backpacker haunt. The hostel was really nice, I thought it would be cold in the nights as it was made of adobe and straw but actually it was not cold at all, despite the minus 6 temperatures after dark.

San Pedro was where we really felt the heat again, for the first time since Brazil. It was probably around 20 degrees which was just perfect. The town is surrounded by many volcanos and there are tons of outdoor activities to be had.

I went sandboarding which is so much fun. It is effectively snowboarding on sand. We drove to some massive sand dunes, and after a quick lesson on what to do-basically on your heels to break, and go diagonal-we were off. The downside of sandboarding is having to walk up the huge sand dunes which is a killer on the legs, and after a few runs we just started going to the half way point and walking back up. It was pretty scary at the top for the first time, as the dune was quite steep, but once you were away, you could kind of get into the swing of it. The best part is when you fall-which was often in my case- it does not hurt at all as it is just sand, however, you do get sand absolutely everywhere! I think I will still be finding sand in my backpack and clothes for weeks yet! I would highly recommend it though, it was brilliant fun.

After sandboarding we drove to the valley of the moon to watch the sunset over the Atacama desert. It was truly incredible, once the sun set the colours of the valley and the salt plains just changed, it was so beautiful, surrounded by the most perfect landscape.

I thought I would be pretty sore in the morning after sandboarding but in fact I did not feel too bad, which was a good thing, considering I had booked onto a four hour hike through the desert. It was a pretty challenging hike and I feel absolutely exhausted as I am typing this. We hiked through the desert and down into a Canyon, of course the downside being getting back out of the canyon, we hiked right the way around it and at an altitude of almost 4000 metres the trek was quite a difficult one. Again though, it was worth it for the views and the perfect surroundings, it was incredibly peaceful as there was no one else around. Hopefully a high altitude trek will pay off for Macchu Picchu later on!

San Pedro is a cute little town to wander around, filled with little markets and shops, and really nice restaurants and cafes. I wish I had a little bit longer here, however, it is time to move countrys! I am leaving tomorrow morning for a 3 day trip through the Salar de Uyuni-the salt flats of Bolivia. Fingers crossed I will be able to get back into the country ok! I am really excited to finally get to do the Salar as it was something I was really looking forward to doing throughout my stay in Bolivia. It was apparently minus 30 there last week during the night, so I will definitely be wearing most of my clothes, which will make my overflowing backpack lighter if nothing else!

Brazil, Argentina-less so Uruguay- and Chile have been absolutely amazing, but they are no Bolivia. I cannot wait to return to the country and do everything I did not get to do last time. I am not quite sure what it is about Bolivia, but it just has something special, which I have not felt in any other South American country, I have completely fallen in love with it, and am so excited to return in the morning.

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