South America at last! 11 hours in a bus, an 8 hour layover in London and a 17 hour flight to Santiago……Whoa! The traveling part of traveling really sucks. But we have arrived.
The first day was basically spent doing as little as possible and trying to catch up on some well needed sleep. The next day however we reverted to exploration mode and with the help of a simple map (no GPS haha!) we decided to tour the town. Problem….Chilean’s don’t like street signs….very big problem. That made things interesting. Using our whits and some local landmarks we made our way to our first hostel. It was a friendly place with opportunities for meeting lots of other travelers, each with their own stories to tell. Pretty cool. There was also a nice representation of Kiwis too. Hell, they are almost Australian.
Santiago is cold though! Really cold. We decided not to hate but appreciate the cold and made a prompt two day ski trip booking at one of the local ski resorts called El Colorado. Picking the snowboarding option over skiing, we were chuffed with the deal we got. After leaving the shop we thought it a good idea to grab a bite of lunch. Holey moley! I ordered a pork leg with side dish for $10, and did I get a pork leg! All 2 plus kilos of it! I had to order a separate plate just to fit the meat I carved off! Pork poisoning is awesome! We decided to skip dinner that night for obvious reasons.
The next morning we left Santiago at 8:30am for the mountains. Arriving at the resort we were delighted to see only a few people and some pretty good looking slopes. With Dids as my instructor we set about learning the basics. I think I did pretty well for the first day but I did crash a fair bit. Apparently my face likes snow….. I had one really good crash in particular that had me seeing stars for the next couple of minutes. This ended my day on a bit of a downer. But the next day, nursing some aches and bruises it was back to the slopes and back to it. This day was far more enjoyable and with less crashes I found it far more relaxing. By the end of the second day I was able to turn however I wanted, easily traverse some nice steep slopes and even do a couple of little hops. I was well chuffed.
The end of the first day.....broken
Exhausted and broken we hoped back on the bus to head for home. Little did we know though, there was a big soccer match on that night and the bus driver was keen to get back to watch it. With the radio up full volume, the horn tooting like mad and the driving etiquette dialed to friggin maniac we made it home in a ridiculously short amount of time. People talk about the crazy drivers in this country but it is something to see it. Back in Santiago, the streets around the hostel were crammed with people chanting “Che Che Che Chile!” as they ran amuck. The passion is amazing but seriously, come on guys, it is only soccer….. You wouldn’t say that here though, they gladly proclaim to kill for their team!
Exhausted and broken we hoped back on the bus to head for home. Little did we know though, there was a big soccer match on that night and the bus driver was keen to get back to watch it. With the radio up full volume, the horn tooting like mad and the driving etiquette dialed to friggin maniac we made it home in a ridiculously short amount of time. People talk about the crazy drivers in this country but it is something to see it. Back in Santiago, the streets around the hostel were crammed with people chanting “Che Che Che Chile!” as they ran amuck. The passion is amazing but seriously, come on guys, it is only soccer….. You wouldn’t say that here though, they gladly proclaim to kill for their team!
After deliberating a bit on our travel itinerary we decided our goal should be to save some money. For this, Chile was not the place as it is the most expensive country in these parts. So a plan was formulated to travel to Bolivia where we had heard you could live very comfortably for around $20 per person per day. To do this we decided to travel from Santiago to San Pedro in the north of Chile. With a bus ride taking something like 26 hours we thought it wise to break this journey up. Our first stop was Valparaiso, 2 hours out of Santiago. Here we got to see some trademark South American housing, murals etc. Next it was on to La Sarina where we lay over for a night before moving to San Pedro.
Valparaiso hillside shacks
Some of the many murals all around Valparaiso. These led up to our hostel.
More murals
San Pedro was quite an experience. The town itself seemed like it had been lifted straight from a wild west movie with dirt streets, dusty lane ways and so on. It was a town however totally devoted to tourism which made the experience a little disappointing. It was a good place however for us to book a trip across the Salar de Uni salt flats into Bolivia. Unfortunately, unseasonal snow falls in the driest desert on earth (the Atacama Desert) meant that the tour itineraries had to be modified from their usual configurations. This meant a different, less trodden route which we were quite ok with. So tomorrow it is into some four wheel drives and onward ho into the great desert. Giddy-up, time to wrangle us some lama and pat some cactus's.
In San Pedro we rented two mountain bikes and road around the local desert canyons. Here a friendly local dog who we dubbed "Pete" followed us around for a happy half days adventuring.
and it about bloody time!
ReplyDeleteyou guys really seem to had a lot of fun there, i was also planning to spent my next vacation at san pedro with some of my friends, now after reading your post and looking at all those pictures i have made up my mind that i will definitely go this time.
ReplyDeleteSan Pedro de Atacama