Santiago - Chile

SANTIAGO – CHILE

On Thursday we left our beloved colleagues, the travel team, in Rio and caught our flight to Santiago Chile via Sao Paulo. While the airport in Santiago was a vast improvement on Rio’s outdated shambles, once we cleared customs we were bombarded by taxi operators who were determined to have our business, no matter how many times we told them that we were being collected! Until they actually see you meeting someone they keep at you like a pack of wild dogs! Luckily for us the owner of our rented apartment, a Dutch guy called Florus, collected us in his 4x4 and drove us to our new home in the centre of Santiago. The city itself appears small at first but is actually a sprawling metropolis of over 6 million people, 40% of the entire country’s population.

Once we arrived at our apartment and had settled the bill (it’s interesting working in pesos with all the zeros!!! 800 peso’s for £1) it was 10pm and V and I were starving, so we decided to take a little walk to see what we could find to eat. It’s very daunting walking in a completely unknown area at night so we were very much on our guard and didn’t want to venture too far from the apartment. Finally we stumbled across a Chinese takeaway so thought we would sample the Chilean version of Chinese food. We ordered in our broken Spanish and then headed back to the apartment to eat. The food was pretty good, and so we watched a Few Good Men on TV and then hit the sack.

Friday morning was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and it was 28’C so after a solid sleep we took a walk up to an area called Bella Artes for brunch. It’s about a 10 minute walk from the apartment and consists of restaurants, bars, churches and markets. The area is very pretty and we sat outside at the Patagonia restaurant for a tasty lunch, beer and of course some Chilean wine. After avoiding wine in Brazil due to its extortionate cost it was great to finally be in Chile where it is cheap and tasty. We then went for a quick walk around the city centre which has a few historical buildings but is mostly shops and businesses. One of the interesting things about this city is that certain areas specialise in specific services eg. if you want to buy shoes there are several streets which are predominantly shoe stores. We walked down one street which was filled with optometrists, one after another......... we have never seen so many optometrists, you would swear half the population here is blind ;-)

After a leisurely walk we stopped at the grocery store for some essentials and then home for some admin ...... washing! I never thought I would get excited about this but what a pleasure to have clean clothes again. V and I worked our way through a bottle of wine (just to give an idea, it was an excellent bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and cost us £2) while we waited for Georgie, Lara and Shaun to arrive from Rio. Finally the troops arrived at around 9pm and we had another quick drink to celebrate our reunion. Once everyone was settled we found a traditional Chilean restaurant around the corner called Adobes the Argomedes. What a great night we had, tasty steaks, the best Merlot, and live traditional Chilean dancing. Shaun and I were dragged onto the dance floor by two of the lovely dancers and had to perform a routine with them which involved much aimless dancing and the waving of a handkerchief over our heads – cue great hysterics among the girls! Not to be outdone they were soon up and strutting their stuff too, and by 12.30am it was time to head back home for a nightcap and a good night sleep before our city tour the next day.

On Saturday morning we awoke to a miserable day of heavy rain and cold so we should have known based on past experience that there would be a few trials and tribulations along the way! This was in fact the first day I had worn a jersey on our entire trip but at least it was getting some use. While the ladies did some extra washing Shaun and I caught the Santiago metro (an extremely modern, cheap, clean, and efficient underground system) to go and collect tickets for our overnight coach trip to Mendoza, Argentina on Sunday night. We then met the girls on our main street (the interestingly named Libertador Bernardo o’Higgins) to catch the city tour bus. This cost £20 each but guaranteed to take us around all the important sights of the city. The first part was pretty boring and consisted mostly of business areas, until we arrived at the main shopping precinct and decided to disembark and enjoy a stroll around the shops. The centre was excellent and we soon found our favourite shop called Ripleys, which stocks everything including clothing, electronics, appliances, toys, luggage etc all scattered over 5 floors. We bought some goodies and Georgie even bought a laptop – one we were later to find is installed with Windows XP Spanish version and cannot be changed without a reinstallation. Good things she’s travelling with two “techies” J

Unfortunately for us all the shopping and our waffle treat meant we ended up missing the last bus! So for our £20 each we had basically caught a very slow ride to the other end of Santiago for some shopping, a pricey journey to say the least! Never mind the fact we missed all the important tourist attractions which were all located at the end of the bus tour. We walked 20 minutes to the nearest metro and then head back to the apartment to watch the Colombia v Chile World Cup qualifier on TV. Stocked up on local beer Shaun and I watched the game and in an exciting contest Chile won 4-2 to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa – congratulations Chile! Within minutes the celebration began as half the population ran onto the streets with flags waiving, cars hooting all over the city, and general chaos. We headed out for dinner an hour and a half later and the party was still raging. The main streets in the centre were closed to traffic and were just full of people singing at the top of their voices. What a great atmosphere!

We walked up to an area called Bella Vista which is famous for it’s bars and restaurants. We came across a Chilean restaurant called Venezia, and in honour to my wife decided this would be where we had dinner. The place itself was very rustic, rickety old tables and chairs with plastic table clothes but the food and wine were outstanding, the best steak on our trip so far. If this is what the steaks are like in Chile, what awaits us in the home of beef – Argentina?! The evening was punctuated with drunken supporters popping in and whipping the local diners into a frenzy of Chilean anthems and songs, what a festive night. We then caught a taxi home and called it a night.

Sunday was another lousy day to start with, not so much rain but very overcast and chilly. Leise finally cracked the Spanish laptop conundrum much to Georgies delight, and so we headed out to a wine estate to sample the local grape. After a couple of changes on the Metro and a long and bumpy bus ride we arrived at Concha Y Torro. This is the largest estate in Chile and the biggest wine exporter in South America. We paid up for the tour and noticed that the clock in the office was one hour ahead...... after much head scratching we found out that the clocks had gone forward by an hour for daylight saving the night before........ news to us travellers who barely know what day it is never mind when daylight saving is coming into play.......... thank goodness we found out when we did otherwise we would have missed our 10.30pm coach to Mendoza!

The tour of the wine estate was incredible; the grounds are beautiful and some of the stunning buildings date back to the 19th century never mind the Andes Mountains which provided an impressive backdrop. Our tour took us to the “devils cellar”, which got its name from the original owner who told the town’s population that the devil lived in the space amongst the bottles in order to scare the superstitious locals and stop them from stealing his great produce. After this we sat down to a great lunch and some wine on the estate. The food was great and the wine even better, and with that we raced to the bus station to make our 90 minute trip back to our apartment to pack up and head off to the station for our overnight coach trip to Mendoza.

So adios Chile, we have enjoyed the hospitality here and our highlights and lowlights are:
- The Chileans have a very distinctive look, and as foreigners we stood out – especially the blonde’s
- Lunch at Patagonias with a glass of wine in the sunshine
- Adobes the Argomedes, top class authentic Chilean food and entertainment, great fun!
- The wine which is very good, and most importantly very cheap ;-)
- The wine estate, absolutely stunning
- No fresh milk, is this a South American thing or what? We shall find out in Argentina!
- Venetia’s heat rash, asking for allergy cream in Spanish is interesting!