Flying out of Auckland we were excited that the proper backpacking adventures were really just beginning. South America had always been number one on our list of priorities before we went away, and it felt good that after seven months we had finally got round to turning up there.
The flight was reasonably back-breaking, for one reason or another. The chairs were pretty rough and there was simply not enough red wine for a long haul flight. It did mean that we time travelled though, we essentially had two 1st of Februarys, arriving before we took off.
We got into Santiago quite early and settled into our hostel. We didn't do a great deal that day other than try and get some rest as neither of us had managed to get any sleep on the plane, we were wandering around like a couple of really preoccupied extras from a George Romero film, but without the kitsch make-up and only half the craving for brains.
The next day we went to ride the vernacular at a place that I believe was called Cerro Santa Lucia, which was great to look over the entirety of Santiago. It was only when we were this high that we realised the scale of the mountains that surrounded the city like big rock bullies. We then made the rather daring decision to forgo our tickets to ride back down the hill in the cable car and instead walk down. This took much, much longer than we thought it would. About four hours longer in fact.
For the next week we could hardly walk. From walking at such an excruciating angle, our achilles tendons felt as though they had been cut out, pulverised and put into a stew which we were then forced to eat using our knee cap as a rudimentary spoon. I hadn't realised the full extent of the pain until three days after the walk I jumped down from my bunk bed and my legs crumpled beneath me like a newborn deer's first attempt at doing the moonwalk.
The rest of the time that we spent in Santiago was general walky-aroundymanship, a skill that we have mastered quite well. It were alreet.
After four days in Santiago we bussed it to Valparaiso. Here we continued to walk around a lot, usually with no real aim whatsoever. Our first full day here we ventured on a public bus down to the beach. This was our first real experience of the Chilean peoples' acute sense of helpfulness, and we managed to not only get to the beach, but go to a much more pleasant one than was first planned, after an old lady told us that the other one smelled like dead fish. I think that's what she said anyway.
Bear in mind that neither of us can speak very much Spanish, and Chileans speak at four trillion words a minute. It's like talking trying to talk to Jools Holland three minutes before the Hootenanny begins, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but you still think that you'd like to be friends.
Valparaiso, interestingly enough, despite not being the capital of Chile, houses the National Congress. The second day that we were there we walked down and had a look at this nice big baby blue building. That evening we went for a walk into the area that we had been told was slightly on the rough side, and were pleasantly surprised to make it all the way back again without losing any limbs.
We had seen a reggae band playing in the streets, been stared at for rolling a cigarette (I quickly stopped rolling as it was quite clear they thought I was the doobie-making squad for the band) and witnessed some full on Christian madness in the town centre with people singing and clapping like the nutters they inevitably are.
The next day we went out and I started trying to practice my Spanish on unsuspecting Valparaisianites. We walked down to the docks and took some photos of the war memorials that are there.
Running off the main squares were seemingly hundreds of labyrinthine little cobbled roads that sprawled up the hillside that the city is built on. We wandered around these for a couple of hours and then decided to go to the very top of the hill on another vernacular to look out across the bay and ocean.
Up there we had a beer and talked about our next move, to fookin' Pucon.
The flight was reasonably back-breaking, for one reason or another. The chairs were pretty rough and there was simply not enough red wine for a long haul flight. It did mean that we time travelled though, we essentially had two 1st of Februarys, arriving before we took off.
We got into Santiago quite early and settled into our hostel. We didn't do a great deal that day other than try and get some rest as neither of us had managed to get any sleep on the plane, we were wandering around like a couple of really preoccupied extras from a George Romero film, but without the kitsch make-up and only half the craving for brains.
The next day we went to ride the vernacular at a place that I believe was called Cerro Santa Lucia, which was great to look over the entirety of Santiago. It was only when we were this high that we realised the scale of the mountains that surrounded the city like big rock bullies. We then made the rather daring decision to forgo our tickets to ride back down the hill in the cable car and instead walk down. This took much, much longer than we thought it would. About four hours longer in fact.
For the next week we could hardly walk. From walking at such an excruciating angle, our achilles tendons felt as though they had been cut out, pulverised and put into a stew which we were then forced to eat using our knee cap as a rudimentary spoon. I hadn't realised the full extent of the pain until three days after the walk I jumped down from my bunk bed and my legs crumpled beneath me like a newborn deer's first attempt at doing the moonwalk.
The rest of the time that we spent in Santiago was general walky-aroundymanship, a skill that we have mastered quite well. It were alreet.
After four days in Santiago we bussed it to Valparaiso. Here we continued to walk around a lot, usually with no real aim whatsoever. Our first full day here we ventured on a public bus down to the beach. This was our first real experience of the Chilean peoples' acute sense of helpfulness, and we managed to not only get to the beach, but go to a much more pleasant one than was first planned, after an old lady told us that the other one smelled like dead fish. I think that's what she said anyway.
Bear in mind that neither of us can speak very much Spanish, and Chileans speak at four trillion words a minute. It's like talking trying to talk to Jools Holland three minutes before the Hootenanny begins, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but you still think that you'd like to be friends.
Valparaiso, interestingly enough, despite not being the capital of Chile, houses the National Congress. The second day that we were there we walked down and had a look at this nice big baby blue building. That evening we went for a walk into the area that we had been told was slightly on the rough side, and were pleasantly surprised to make it all the way back again without losing any limbs.
We had seen a reggae band playing in the streets, been stared at for rolling a cigarette (I quickly stopped rolling as it was quite clear they thought I was the doobie-making squad for the band) and witnessed some full on Christian madness in the town centre with people singing and clapping like the nutters they inevitably are.
The next day we went out and I started trying to practice my Spanish on unsuspecting Valparaisianites. We walked down to the docks and took some photos of the war memorials that are there.
Running off the main squares were seemingly hundreds of labyrinthine little cobbled roads that sprawled up the hillside that the city is built on. We wandered around these for a couple of hours and then decided to go to the very top of the hill on another vernacular to look out across the bay and ocean.
Up there we had a beer and talked about our next move, to fookin' Pucon.
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