Monday, April 4, 2005 (Santiago - Chile)
More moving on and more farewells. Initial
apprehensions about arriving in a new country on a new continent. Chile
gracefully welcomes us with open arms. So may cities all in one. A problem that
just won't go away. How to ask for something in a language you don't
speak.
Day 393 (183). I didn’t much feel like
breakfast this morning but Sandy threw together some sandwiches for herself. In
fact, what looked like a very nice breakfast was laid on this morning in the
main house. Neither of us was too impressed with the hygiene in the kitchen,
however, and so we weren’t particularly eager to eat there anyway. I paid
the outstanding US$100 (€76,92) bill for our two nights here and we said
our goodbyes to the staff as well as Kai, whom the owner’s mother rather
unceremoniously shook out of bed so that he could ‘say goodbye’ to
his ‘friends’. It’s always nice to share a few days with
another traveller and we’ve enjoyed Kai’s company tremendously, as
we have done previous travellers that we’ve temporarily met up with before
him. These off-chance encounters with other travellers that we meet are all part
of the experience and we feel very much richer for having met
them.
As per the jeep rental
woman’s instructions, we left the jeep at the airport with the keys in the
ignition. This rough and ready four by four served us well for the past four
days. Many of the people that were already there at the small terminal building
were people that we’ve bumped into around the island and in town over the
past few days and we all exchanged a few anecdotes of our time here. The queue
of passengers was being very slowly checked in and the wait in line would have
been less irritating if it weren’t for the German package tourists
immediately behind me that were doing their utmost to move ahead through the
line faster than it was naturally moving. It seemed to take forever for the line
to whittle down to the last remaining passengers but despite that, the plane did
somehow manage to take off on schedule. Given that the vast majority of the
flight was over the open ocean, there’s not really much I can comment on.
What was interesting nevertheless was the fact that we passed over the real
Robinson Crusoe Island off the coast of Chile. We started our descent just as we
were approaching the mainland and the sun was by now very low in the sky. The
mountain ranges of the Andes looked particularly spectacular with a light mist
hanging in the air that allowed the low sun to cast some eerie shadows between
the peaks and valleys.
Once again, we
find ourselves arriving into a new place, indeed a new and very different region
of the world, completely blind. That is to say that we don’t know where we
are going to stay or how we are even going to get out of the airport once we
collect our bags. Worse still, neither of us speaks any Spanish. I must admit to
being just a little apprehensive about what Chile has to throw at us. It is,
after all, our first real foray into South America (excluding for the moment
Easter Island) and this is the one region of the world that I must admit to
knowing the least about. South America has never really been high up on my list
of priorities as far as a travel destination in which to spend a lot of time and
I have subsequently not devoted much time and energy to researching it. For each
and every other country that we’ve visited, I’ve been able to tell
Sandy, for example, all about what to expect and thus have been able to exude a
certain degree of confidence towards her. This has helped in the past to put any
fears or apprehensions she might have had to rest. Generally speaking,
I’ve been driving this entire endeavour with Sandy following behind me,
metaphorically speaking, and I’ve done my best to explain all about what
is to come and what to expect as we’ve moved from one country to the next.
Chile, or rather South America as a whole, is the first destination for which
I’ve been unable to do
this.
For all my apprehensions about
South America, I’d have to say that I’ve been entirely impressed
with Chile so far. All the usual formalities at the airport went very smoothly.
Even the immigration officer seemed like a nice man and all he wanted to know
was from where we just flew in. As we were walking towards the baggage belt, my
attention was caught by a nice young lady standing at a small booth with a
backlit display full of hotel listings. I swallowed my natural instinct to be
wary about this sort of touting and went over to talk with her. Since we were
still waiting for our bags to arrive, it didn’t seem like any harm. She
was very nice and told me about various places to stay that were inside of our
budget range – that is to say, as cheap as possible. My natural instincts
to be wary were starting to break down but what I think sold me in the end was
the fact that one of the places she was representing was in the same street, but
just a couple of doors away, as the one place that we were intending to try out
first from our guidebook listing. She called them to make sure that they had a
room and then wrote out a receipt for me. I told her that I would need to see
the room first before I paid any money but this wasn’t a problem since the
idea was for me to pay the hotel directly anyway. I figured I could at least
show up, check it out and, if it was no good, just walk up the street to our
first choice anyway. She pointed out the various options for getting into town
and they all matched exactly what our guidebook told us so her stock went up a
bit more with that too. There isn’t a metro station at the airport so the
cheapest way to get into town was by bus, then metro and then on foot. With it
now getting very dark, we didn’t much fancy the idea of that much stress
but just across the other side of the baggage belt was another couple of booths
where we could buy our way onto one of several regularly departing minibuses
that would drop us and our luggage off right at the hotel’s door. I showed
them the little brochure of the hotel that I’d just received and for US$10
(€7,69) each, we bought a couple of return trip vouchers. I explained to
the shuttle booth attendant that we weren’t yet sure exactly which hotel
we were staying at since we planned to check them out first but this too was not
a problem. I just had to call to let them know once we were settled and they
would collect us from there. So far, then, everything has gone very smoothly and
all the usual new destination arrival hassles have been lifted from our tired
shoulders. We collected our bags and walked straight through customs only to be
immediately greeted on the other side of the sliding glass doors into the
arrivals hall by a uniformed shuttle driver who took our trolley and helpfully
loaded all our bags into the waiting minibus outside. As luck would have it, we
were the last of half a dozen or more passengers to be collected in this shuttle
and thus departed immediately. I don’t think we’ve been anywhere yet
where we’ve been so well looked after right from the get-go (except those
places were we’ve met friends or
relatives).
The drive into town was
about half an hour long and what immediately struck me was the well-developed
country infrastructure around me. I had half-imagined South America to be quite
third world with very poor facilities in general but Santiago, at least, seems
to have a quite well developed airport and road system with lost of advertising
for consumer goods much like I might expect from Europe or North America. During
the brief drive, I was suddenly aware of the fact that I was no longer holding
onto any apprehension or misgivings and was quite at ease. Just about the only
thing that I was concerned about was the slightly heavy right foot of the driver
as he zipped through the city traffic, trying to one-up all the other road
users. Judging by the flow of traffic and the general manners of all the other
motorised vehicles on the road, this very much seems to be the norm here. As
cars and buses were busy cutting each other off, I was reminded of how things
were in Cairo, although things there were very much worse than they are
here.
Santiago is a sprawling
metropolis just like any other large city. From what we could see through the
failing sunlight, it is devoid of the cluster of skyscrapers that many cities
tout but still a very active and lively metropolis nevertheless. Some parts that
we drove through were very reminiscent of Delhi and Cairo whilst at times it
felt like we could have been driving through London or Paris. I thought the
five-ball juggler that was entertaining traffic for small change at a particular
red light was quite amusing.
Just one
other passenger was dropped off before we reached our hotel in a very quaint
part of the city with cobblestone streets and architectural splendours that
beckon to be visited during the daylight hours of tomorrow. Our driver politely
offloaded our bags and he was away. Rather than take the luggage straight into
the hotel, I had Sandy sit with it all outside, whilst I went in to check it
out. The idea was that if it didn’t look any good, we could just walk the
few metres across to the other side of the narrow and winding street to check
out some of the other places here, including a couple that are listed in our
guidebook. One of the pleasant young ladies at the reception desk spoke a little
bit of English and rather than telling her that I had a receipt from the
airport, I thought I’d just ask her how much a double room would be. To my
pleasant surprise, it was the exact same price that we were given at the
airport. I asked her if I could see the room and, after persuading her that my
wife was pregnant and unable to climb very many stairs, she had one of the hotel
maids show us a room just around the corner on the ground floor. The room was
very spacious, had good security and its own bathroom. As with all the buildings
in this part of town, our hotel is an older building but has a lot of character
to it. Breakfast here is included in the US$34 (€26,15) per night room
rate and there is a kitchen as well as free Internet use. I told the
receptionist that I was happy with the room and that I was going outside to
collect my wife and our baggage. Once outside, what I actually did was to tell
Sandy to stay put whilst I quickly dashed over to the other side of the street
to check out the other place but the first thing that struck me there was that
there was a flight of stairs leading up to the reception area on the first
floor. That was all I needed to see to convince me so I collected Sandy and so
we went to check in to our ground floor room from where I had just moments
earlier emerged.
As Sandy was making
herself comfortable in our new home, I wasted no time in checking out the
Internet, which turned out to be quite a respectable speed. Unfortunately, some
bad news was awaiting me from Holland. Out campervan had failed its yearly
check-up and I was now facing more bills to fix the battery and brakes. Will
that problem ever go away? Our guardian angle in Holland, Dinie, is handling
things for us but still needed input from me on how to proceed so I spent a few
minutes writing her back. Hopefully, we can get things sorted out before we get
to the Galapagos Islands, where I’m certain that Internet access is going
to be extremely limited.
The streets
of Santiago are alive with thousands of pedestrians going about their business
so we ventured out to have a general look around. Although we can use US Dollars
for many things here, we still needed some local currency. It took just a few
minutes to locate a nearby ATM and I withdrew CLP70,000 (€95,89) to keep
us going for the next couple of
days.
A main road just a short walk
from out hotel building appears to mark a clear division between two parts of
the city. We are located in what seems like an older sector of town with narrow,
winding, cobblestone streets and elegant architecture that houses mostly hotels
whilst on the other side of the very busy road, the city takes on a more modern
feel with very many more pedestrians buzzing around and dozens of restaurants
and other food outlets. This is where we found a small eatery where I did my
level best, using little more that primitive sign and body language, to try to
place an order for our evening meal. The fact that there were some pictures of
food on a backlit sign above the counter helped as I was able to point to things
as we went through the ordering process. It was more like a cafeteria than a
formal restaurant and I took the fact that it was packed with locals to be a
good sign. The very busy wait staff seemed generously tolerant with me (and my
one to two word Spanish sentences) and managed to bring out exactly what we
thought we were ordering in the
end.
When we were in Thailand, we
bought several bottles of the coconut oil that they use there for massaging. We
bought and sent some bottles home for ourselves but kept one with us in our
backpack too. Since Sandy has become pregnant, she has been using it on her
stomach. It helps to keep her skin dry and she read somewhere that it can help
to prevent or reduce the effect of stretch marks. We think we left this bottle
behind by mistake somewhere recently as we can no longer find it anywhere and so
since we were now in a large city with lots of shops, we went shopping around to
see if we could pick up another bottle. And so it came to pass that we had
recently arrived in a new continent and were walking around in a major city
looking for coconut oil to rub on my wife’s tummy, even though we had no
idea what to ask for in the local language or how to even describe it using sign
language. We made several attempts to try to ask for it at pharmacies and even a
supermarket but the language barrier proved just too insurmountable for
something that complex and so we eventually had to abandon the quest.
We’re thinking the next thing we should start to look for might be a
phrase book instead.
Back at the
hotel, I had the receptionist call the shuttle bus company to confirm our
airport transfer pickup for the day after tomorrow. This she did without
hesitation or reservation and even with a smile. Everything is now settled. We
have our place to stay right in the thick of things, some local currency in our
pocket and our onward transportation all sorted. We can now devote the entire
day tomorrow to sleeping in and enjoying what Santiago has to
offer.
Posted: Mon - April 4, 2005 at 10:09 PM