Loose End In LatAm

Where the hell have I been?...A quick summary

Easter Island - amazing big heads:

It´s a very strange, spiritual place that has an atmosphere you find very rarely and is impossible to describe. Thankfully it isn´t too over commericalised, except for overly long organised tours which accompanied with endless uncoroberated speculation about the who-what-why of it all. Instead I took an unofficial tour, with an unofficial guide: a french man who just said "I don´t know but no one does" a lot whenever I asked him questions.
(photo courtesy of Tone and Poe)

Jerome moved to the island after he met his wife, an islander, whilst on leave from the French Army stationed in Tahiti - she was the airstewardess on the areoplane over. That sounds quite romantic but then he told us that the guy he flew out with married her sister, and then his brother married another islander... and then you just start thinking it smacks of some strange kind of colonisation.

If you ever come to this part of the world...
...you only need a few days really. I had 6 days there which was a great relaxing time for me, but I´ve met people who have booked two or four weeks there, and you´d really run out of stuff to do, unless you try to build a moai yourself I suppose.


Valporaiso - Pablo and Pisco

This is one of the places a guidebook can never do justice to. Some people hate it, I love it.
Up the road is Viña Del Mar, Marbella 6000 miles out of place, and if Viña is the flamboyant, rich nephew, Valporaiso is the old maiden aunt: colourful, excentric and sometimes a bit smelly.
On the flat of the "Plan" the grid of streets buzz with the port traffic and hubub of urban life, while the old town is a cluster of multicoloured corregated iron buildings, stacked on top of each other up the hillside, where you either have to hike up the winding streets and alleys or take ancient finiculars that trundle up and down the steep slopes. I stayed in a great hostel, Casa Aventura. An easy walk to various fabulous cafes and bars, awash with Pisco Sours.

Pablo Neruda (Chile´s beloved poet) loved this area also and built two houses, on in Valporaiso and one an hour away at Isla Negra. On the way back I noticed a burger bar call McCola - all the world´s evils into one outlet - and a shop with a sign outside that just said "Hay cosas" ("There´s things" - there´s also a magazine here call Cosas, a bit like Hello, but they didn´t sell it).



Santiago - Spanish learning curve

The homestay was odd. Uka the Bruka, my landlady, had a stream of odd people wandering in and out and seemed more interested in practising her English than helping me practice my Spanish. However the school was great, with wonderful staff and fellow students alike. My Spanish has deffinately improved, but there is an awful lot more work to be done!

In the weekend in the middle of my course we trundled off to La Sorena and the Elqui Valley. This area is known for is amazingly clear skies as well as the national drink, Pisco. We visited an observatory and looked at the stars. From there you can even see the Magellen clouds, our nearest galaxies, without the aid of telescope... it was nothing less than awesom. The weekend also included many drinking games involving pisco and my room mate, Brad, waking me up a 5.30am for a couple of piscolas... it would have been rude not to have joined him.

Santiago is a fabulous city, and while many people that visited found plenty not to like about it, (it is huge and rambling, has it´s fair share of social problems and it´s nasty tourist areas, and a lot of smog), coming from a big city I found it very comfortable and felt very at home there.


Púcon - Just call me fat face:

Climbed a volcano, went fishing for trout (and caught some) - sorry to any angling enthusiasts but I´m not really sure what all the fuss is about - stayed on a farm with cows, pigs, ducks, sheep and all sorts wandering around, and washed my clothes in the stream: a rural delight...

...except I got an infection in my mouth which meant I got a hugely swollen left side of my face, so I also got to experience the Chilean medical service at first hand! Was slightly discouraged when I returned from hospital and the people at the farm generally agreed that I should have gone to Temulco German clinic instead of putting my faith in the good doctors of Púcon, that said I´m all fixed now.

If you ever come to this part of the world...
...stay at Kila Leufu just outside Carrawahue: absolutely idyllic


Matt - I can´t lose

I can´t mention Santiago and Pucon without mentioning Matt, who lived in the bruka´s house and travelled south with me too. A really great guy, all 7 ft of him, who only caused a problem when we tried to climb the volcano for the first time: We had to cancel because they didn´t have boots big enough for him!! His favourite phrase seemed to be "I can´t lose", which roughly translates as "I don´t mind what we do", which made such easy travelling.



Puerto Varas - Reina de Rosas

If you ever come to this part of the world...
...stay in Puerto Varas, Puerto Montt is horrible!
It´s as easier a place to visit all the local stuff and plan onward journeys

Puerto Varas is a prettty little town, with amazing view of Volcan Orsorno, and a huge casino and another one being built up the hill. And this year is was the Region´s captial of tourism, which basically meant there was lots of things going on in the town for the summer: concerts, firework displays, and one evening the final of the Reina de Rosas, the local beauty competition.
The whole thing was very odd, all of the six finalist seem to win some sort of prizes, were then smothered in kisses from a rather rancid looking man and weighed down with vast bunches of flowers... the eventual winner gave a tearful speach almost to the extent of mimicking Paltrow´s "and I´d like to thank my dead cousins" Oscar acceptance speach. I´m not really sure what she excelled at to win, but my hopes weren´t high for it being anything too challenging: the teenage girl in front of me said "I can spell her name better than she can". Ah well so much for feminism in Chile at the moment.

Puerto Varas was also a deciding point for me... I spent a day being drenched in a very rainy Chiloe, to the extent that I just got on the bus back to Puerto Montt - I asked a woman what the weather was going to be like for the next day: I didn´t catch everything she said through her laughter but I got "mañana" (tomorrow) and "peor" (worse) and that made my mind up. I also decided that maybe I´d missed the best of the weather for heading further south and made arrangements to head over the border to Bariloche, Argentina!