Saturday, September 18, 2004
Tales of the Unexpected
From the reserved, calm and gentle shores of Chile we departed for the more frenetic and sexy shores of Brazil. We flew direct to Rio de Janeiro for sightseeing, beaching and babe watching! We found one of the cheapest hostels in Rio to stay in and settled into a few days in Copacabana. Copacabana was a pretty hip place in the 70s but is now just a little run down and the coolest part of town is Ipanema, the next beach along. Rio is a huge city and composed of many big sections, of which, Copacabana is just one. It was a little daunting to begin with due to the size and it is not the most tourist friendly place. If you are happy to fly in, stay in a posh hotel and get a tour from your hotel to a sight then get the tour to a restaurant then back to your hotel, it may be fine, but that is not my idea of seeing a city. The Portuguese language was also a barrier. I thought it would be more similar to Spanish, and although some of the words are the same the pronunciation it very different. We got by with our Spanish, by and large, which they seemed to understand but when they replied to us in rapid Portuguese that was another matter.
We visited the beaches and parks around Copacabana, Ipanema and Flamengo where everyone seems to be out and about playing lots of sport or just chilling out. The beaches are full of people in micro bikinis. I had thought Copa and Ipanema would just be full of the beautiful people but this is definitely not the case. No matter what shape or size you are there, you need to wear the smallest bikini possible, sometimes to disastrous effect. That said, there were plenty of babes there with perfect figures and amazing bikinis…I am sure that Nick might cover that angle a little more fully! I bought a Brazilian bikini myself and trying them on was hilarious. They are so tiny that I had to buy a "grande" just so that it covered enough of me.
The Corcovado was a must see tourist destination and standing atop the mountain next to the 38m high statue of Christ looking over one of the world’s most beautiful cities first by day then watching as the lights came on and Rio turned to night was pretty good.
One thing not usually on the agenda for tourists visiting Rio was a trip to the favelas. These are the slums of Brazil and they are everywhere. There are 600 of the in Rio alone. Back in the 1930s the Brazillian government granted land to the poor to live on but did not assist with building the houses. Most of this land was on top of the hills in and around Rio where the middle classes did not want to live. The poor moved in and built their houses and as time has gone on the favelas have grown and spread all over the hills in Rio with families adding a new room on top of their old house and just building up as they run out of space. This creates a chaotic system of tiny, narrow streets and ugly, higgledipiggledy houses and seewage systems running right next to housing. We visited 2 favelas, one with a population of around 2,500 and the other with a population of around 60,000. The favelas are basically run by drug lords. One per favela. They control all the drug business and also try to look after their inhabitants, so there is usually a feeling of fondness for the drug lords. They make obscene amounts of money and channel most of this back into weapons for the drug wars against rival gangs or the police, but some goes back into the community. The larger of the two favelas that we visited had been involved in a war with the favela on the other side of the hill just a few days before we visited, so we could not visit certain areas. There had been a battle between two gangs involving bazookas being fired!! This is something else and hard to imagine when you walk around the favelas. People there are keen to let tourists see that they work hard and live a normal life rather than all sitting around selling drugs and shooting at each other. They are like separate communities with their own schools and bus terminals. However, there are big drug problems there as the drugs are cheap and cocaine is by far the biggest problem. One of the most shocking aspects is the close proximity of the favelas to the middle class houses. Sometimes there are big, elegant houses just over the road from the slums and these houses are surrounded by electric fences and all have CCTV and dogs to guard them.
Unfortunately we probably suffered as a result of one of the coke addicts from a favela. We were mugged on our way to dinner one night in Copacabana by 2 lads, one probably about 13 or 14 and the other about 16 or 17. They were young but when one of them grabbed Nick’s collar and said he had a gun and he wanted all our money, it is best not to muck around too much. I doubt he had a gun, but there is no point in taking the risk. His eyes were like saucers and he was completely off his face and very aggressive. Luckily for us we only had 35 USD on us, but that is about a third of the minimum wage that a Brazilian adult can earn in a month. We were also nearly mugged the following day in the center of town in broad daylight. If it weren’t for a friendly local alerting us to 4 kids following us we would have been got a second time in 2 days. As you can probably imagine, this put a significant dampener on our time in Rio and made walking about the streets anytime of day feel like a risk. The ironic thing was that were really starting to enjoy Rio and appreciate it very different areas of town, the nightlife and the lovely food and fruit everywhere but this made us feel unsafe and combined with hearing similar stories from other people we decided that we would head out of town for a while and chill out on a beach somewhere calm and beautiful.
The Costa Verde was where we headed; a lovely stretch of coast with Atlantic rainforest tumbling down to gorgeous sandy beaches that fall into crystal clear, emerald green seas. About 200km south of Rio is Ihla Grande, as the name suggests, a large island off the Costa Verde. We spent a very peaceful 4 days sunning ourselves on various little beaches, dipping into the sea now and then, and sampling the superb fresh seafood at every restaurant.
We popped back to Rio briefly for a footballing epic - Flamengo versus Fluminese at the Maracana. To put it in European terms, it is like going to see Real Madrid vs Barcelona - but this is Brazil!! The match itself was a 2-1 win for Fluminese and quite exciting with an really great atmosphere, although the players were not up to the Ronaldo standards I had perhaps expected. That said, I think most of the amateur footy players on the beaches have far more skill than any England player could ever have. It is cool to watch the casual players as well as these professionals and it is daunting to see the talent around making me think that Brazil are going to keep winning and winning the World Cup for so many years. Football is totally ingrained in their culture. Everyone plays the sport and they play it all the time.
Leaving Rio was not hard, and although it was perhaps more beautiful than I had expected, it is not a city I want to go back to for a very long time. The crime is too rife and the scares we had put me off even going out for dinner at times. I have not felt like this at any time during our stay in South America and we have seen some other dodgy places, but Rio is the worst. It seems slightly ironic that this city with the most obvious Christian symbol in the world staring down on it has perhaps the most un-Christian way of life - killing people, mugging, drug dealing, corruption and prostitution. Maybe they need a bigger statue! On the positive side, aside from the beauty, is the food and the delicious fruit juices. They have so many fruits that there are no English names for many of them and we worked our way down the list of wonderful sounding and even better tasting juices while we were there. They also have a great restaurant ethic of the eat as much as you want buffet, which are very dangerous but a brilliant way of sampling an enormous amount of the local cuisine.
From Rio we took a 22 hour bus ride to Foz do Iguacu where we spent a couple of days admiring one of the world's most amazing natural wonders. We walked around the Brazilian side on the first day to give an overview of the falls in total. They are huge, stretchjing for around 4 km with a total of well over 200 individual falls. But the highlight for me was the Argentinian side where you can spend an entire day walking along trails seeing different parts of the falls from different viewpoints. There are a few sights in the world where you have to stop and just stare in awe at something natural and so beautiful that it takes your breath away. This was such an occasion for me and at times the views were spellbinding. Iguazu has the power and majesty of Niagra but also the beauty and elegance of its tropical surroundings with butterflies, coloured birds and coaties all around.
We debated where to go next with our original plans being to head south towards Buenos Aires going through Uruguay, but we have heard so many great things about north-west Argentina that we really wanted to get over there. So we changed plans and decided to go west from Foz to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. Paraguay is famous for harp music, being the only country to have a double sided flag, mate tea (which all males over the age of 12 seem to drink almost constantly throughout the day), the interesting mix of indiginous peoples, the Mennonites (originally from Poland and Russia) and it's war history, of which more below. Paraguay is completely off the gringo trail and we have seen only 4 tourists while we have been here. But there is a reason for that - there is not a whole heap to do here. It is a small country with only 5 million people, but for 2-3 days we have found enough. Asuncion itself is big and sprawling but very low rise - mostly just one storey. There is a mixture of the grand colonial buildings and the horrible 60s cheap housing, but there are nice big squares in the original Spanish style. We took a day trip out to see the surrounding towns and countryside which is different to anything we have seen yet. Lots of estancias (ranches) with cattle farmers looking like gauchos, hills surrounded by flat farm land, little towns with white washed churches and well tended houses and gardens. Paraguay has an interesting history of wars fought against bigger and more powerful neighbours and one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard about a nation at war was the Triple Alliance War that Paraguay engaged in in the 1860s. It's close friend Uruguay was being threatened by Brazil after Brazilains had been killed in Uruguay's civil was, so Paraguay declared war on Brazil (in the good old days of war declarations). In order to invade Brazil, Paraguay wanted to go through some of Argentina's land. Argentina refused and Paraguay declared war on Argentina. Uruguay's government had fallen in the meantime so they came into the war on the Argie's side, meaning Paraguay ended up fighting against 3 nations. The loss to Paraguay was enormous. They lost about half of their territory but more incredibly, out of a population of 400,000 before the war, they ended with 220,000 after the was, of which only 28,000 were men - mostly very old or very young. Boys of 12 and over were sent to fight after the adult population had been wiped out. An unbelievable story and one that must still affect the psyche of this country and definitely affects the population statistcis to this day - the population is still heavily dominated by females with the ration of women to men at 3:1.
From here we are planning to spend our remaining 2 months in South America mostly in Argentina, with the odd trip over to Chile. Will keep you posted.
We visited the beaches and parks around Copacabana, Ipanema and Flamengo where everyone seems to be out and about playing lots of sport or just chilling out. The beaches are full of people in micro bikinis. I had thought Copa and Ipanema would just be full of the beautiful people but this is definitely not the case. No matter what shape or size you are there, you need to wear the smallest bikini possible, sometimes to disastrous effect. That said, there were plenty of babes there with perfect figures and amazing bikinis…I am sure that Nick might cover that angle a little more fully! I bought a Brazilian bikini myself and trying them on was hilarious. They are so tiny that I had to buy a "grande" just so that it covered enough of me.
The Corcovado was a must see tourist destination and standing atop the mountain next to the 38m high statue of Christ looking over one of the world’s most beautiful cities first by day then watching as the lights came on and Rio turned to night was pretty good.
One thing not usually on the agenda for tourists visiting Rio was a trip to the favelas. These are the slums of Brazil and they are everywhere. There are 600 of the in Rio alone. Back in the 1930s the Brazillian government granted land to the poor to live on but did not assist with building the houses. Most of this land was on top of the hills in and around Rio where the middle classes did not want to live. The poor moved in and built their houses and as time has gone on the favelas have grown and spread all over the hills in Rio with families adding a new room on top of their old house and just building up as they run out of space. This creates a chaotic system of tiny, narrow streets and ugly, higgledipiggledy houses and seewage systems running right next to housing. We visited 2 favelas, one with a population of around 2,500 and the other with a population of around 60,000. The favelas are basically run by drug lords. One per favela. They control all the drug business and also try to look after their inhabitants, so there is usually a feeling of fondness for the drug lords. They make obscene amounts of money and channel most of this back into weapons for the drug wars against rival gangs or the police, but some goes back into the community. The larger of the two favelas that we visited had been involved in a war with the favela on the other side of the hill just a few days before we visited, so we could not visit certain areas. There had been a battle between two gangs involving bazookas being fired!! This is something else and hard to imagine when you walk around the favelas. People there are keen to let tourists see that they work hard and live a normal life rather than all sitting around selling drugs and shooting at each other. They are like separate communities with their own schools and bus terminals. However, there are big drug problems there as the drugs are cheap and cocaine is by far the biggest problem. One of the most shocking aspects is the close proximity of the favelas to the middle class houses. Sometimes there are big, elegant houses just over the road from the slums and these houses are surrounded by electric fences and all have CCTV and dogs to guard them.
Unfortunately we probably suffered as a result of one of the coke addicts from a favela. We were mugged on our way to dinner one night in Copacabana by 2 lads, one probably about 13 or 14 and the other about 16 or 17. They were young but when one of them grabbed Nick’s collar and said he had a gun and he wanted all our money, it is best not to muck around too much. I doubt he had a gun, but there is no point in taking the risk. His eyes were like saucers and he was completely off his face and very aggressive. Luckily for us we only had 35 USD on us, but that is about a third of the minimum wage that a Brazilian adult can earn in a month. We were also nearly mugged the following day in the center of town in broad daylight. If it weren’t for a friendly local alerting us to 4 kids following us we would have been got a second time in 2 days. As you can probably imagine, this put a significant dampener on our time in Rio and made walking about the streets anytime of day feel like a risk. The ironic thing was that were really starting to enjoy Rio and appreciate it very different areas of town, the nightlife and the lovely food and fruit everywhere but this made us feel unsafe and combined with hearing similar stories from other people we decided that we would head out of town for a while and chill out on a beach somewhere calm and beautiful.
The Costa Verde was where we headed; a lovely stretch of coast with Atlantic rainforest tumbling down to gorgeous sandy beaches that fall into crystal clear, emerald green seas. About 200km south of Rio is Ihla Grande, as the name suggests, a large island off the Costa Verde. We spent a very peaceful 4 days sunning ourselves on various little beaches, dipping into the sea now and then, and sampling the superb fresh seafood at every restaurant.
We popped back to Rio briefly for a footballing epic - Flamengo versus Fluminese at the Maracana. To put it in European terms, it is like going to see Real Madrid vs Barcelona - but this is Brazil!! The match itself was a 2-1 win for Fluminese and quite exciting with an really great atmosphere, although the players were not up to the Ronaldo standards I had perhaps expected. That said, I think most of the amateur footy players on the beaches have far more skill than any England player could ever have. It is cool to watch the casual players as well as these professionals and it is daunting to see the talent around making me think that Brazil are going to keep winning and winning the World Cup for so many years. Football is totally ingrained in their culture. Everyone plays the sport and they play it all the time.
Leaving Rio was not hard, and although it was perhaps more beautiful than I had expected, it is not a city I want to go back to for a very long time. The crime is too rife and the scares we had put me off even going out for dinner at times. I have not felt like this at any time during our stay in South America and we have seen some other dodgy places, but Rio is the worst. It seems slightly ironic that this city with the most obvious Christian symbol in the world staring down on it has perhaps the most un-Christian way of life - killing people, mugging, drug dealing, corruption and prostitution. Maybe they need a bigger statue! On the positive side, aside from the beauty, is the food and the delicious fruit juices. They have so many fruits that there are no English names for many of them and we worked our way down the list of wonderful sounding and even better tasting juices while we were there. They also have a great restaurant ethic of the eat as much as you want buffet, which are very dangerous but a brilliant way of sampling an enormous amount of the local cuisine.
From Rio we took a 22 hour bus ride to Foz do Iguacu where we spent a couple of days admiring one of the world's most amazing natural wonders. We walked around the Brazilian side on the first day to give an overview of the falls in total. They are huge, stretchjing for around 4 km with a total of well over 200 individual falls. But the highlight for me was the Argentinian side where you can spend an entire day walking along trails seeing different parts of the falls from different viewpoints. There are a few sights in the world where you have to stop and just stare in awe at something natural and so beautiful that it takes your breath away. This was such an occasion for me and at times the views were spellbinding. Iguazu has the power and majesty of Niagra but also the beauty and elegance of its tropical surroundings with butterflies, coloured birds and coaties all around.
We debated where to go next with our original plans being to head south towards Buenos Aires going through Uruguay, but we have heard so many great things about north-west Argentina that we really wanted to get over there. So we changed plans and decided to go west from Foz to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. Paraguay is famous for harp music, being the only country to have a double sided flag, mate tea (which all males over the age of 12 seem to drink almost constantly throughout the day), the interesting mix of indiginous peoples, the Mennonites (originally from Poland and Russia) and it's war history, of which more below. Paraguay is completely off the gringo trail and we have seen only 4 tourists while we have been here. But there is a reason for that - there is not a whole heap to do here. It is a small country with only 5 million people, but for 2-3 days we have found enough. Asuncion itself is big and sprawling but very low rise - mostly just one storey. There is a mixture of the grand colonial buildings and the horrible 60s cheap housing, but there are nice big squares in the original Spanish style. We took a day trip out to see the surrounding towns and countryside which is different to anything we have seen yet. Lots of estancias (ranches) with cattle farmers looking like gauchos, hills surrounded by flat farm land, little towns with white washed churches and well tended houses and gardens. Paraguay has an interesting history of wars fought against bigger and more powerful neighbours and one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard about a nation at war was the Triple Alliance War that Paraguay engaged in in the 1860s. It's close friend Uruguay was being threatened by Brazil after Brazilains had been killed in Uruguay's civil was, so Paraguay declared war on Brazil (in the good old days of war declarations). In order to invade Brazil, Paraguay wanted to go through some of Argentina's land. Argentina refused and Paraguay declared war on Argentina. Uruguay's government had fallen in the meantime so they came into the war on the Argie's side, meaning Paraguay ended up fighting against 3 nations. The loss to Paraguay was enormous. They lost about half of their territory but more incredibly, out of a population of 400,000 before the war, they ended with 220,000 after the was, of which only 28,000 were men - mostly very old or very young. Boys of 12 and over were sent to fight after the adult population had been wiped out. An unbelievable story and one that must still affect the psyche of this country and definitely affects the population statistcis to this day - the population is still heavily dominated by females with the ration of women to men at 3:1.
From here we are planning to spend our remaining 2 months in South America mostly in Argentina, with the odd trip over to Chile. Will keep you posted.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Culture Shock and Skiiiiiiiing in August!
Wow! We arrived in Chile to find ourselves in a first world developed country for the first time in well over 3 months and what seems like about a year. We have adjusted back to this type of country and it feels very European compared to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The main differences that we have noticed being tarmac, efficient road signing, people with white skin (we have spent most of our time in SA around the Andean region which contains the majority of the indiginous people of the countries above), very few launderies (everyone has their own washing machine here), nice cars, nice buses (and I mean amazing buses - which beds you can lie almost flat in!!!), posh shops, homeless people, less crime, people smoking cigarettes (almost non-existant in everywhere else we have been), no forged money, and western music from after the 1980's.
From Bolivia we passed efficiently through the Chilean border after the mandatory drug search for coca and other evil goods like my honey that they confiscated. We entered Chile from the south western corner of Bolivia and spent a couple of very lovely, relaxing days in a tiny village called San Pedro de Atacama. The Atacama is the driest desert on Earth and in some places it hasn't rained for over 400 years. From San Pedro it is possible to explore some of the northern Atacama and we went off to walk around the Valle de la Luna (Moon valley), the Valle de Martes (Mars valley), salt canyons and some big sand dunes. These were all spectacular in their own way with the Moon valley providing the scenery to watch the sun set beautifully below the horizon igniting the sky into furious reds and oranges while we looked out over miles and miles of alien rock formations formed by the earth's crust crashing and rising up as the tectonic plates battled for supremacy. This is a wonderful area for sitting atop a peak and just staring out onto the landscape and marvelling at how the earth was formed. You can almost see mountain ranges being created out of the plates and you can look out over hundreds of dry river beds created by the summer snows melting and carving out paths of least resistance. It feels like you are at the dawn of time.
From the north east of Chile we set of down this very long, thin country about 15 hours by gorgeously comfy bus to a town called La Serena - on the coast. From here we dived straight on a short bus ride to Vicuna about 1.5 hours east of La Serena and situated in the Elqui valley. The Elqui valley is a lush green valley between the coast and the mountains and is a refreshing surprise after the Atacama. There are orange groves, vineyards, papaya trees, fast flowing rivers and green mountains everywhere. The attraction of Vicuna for us, besides being a chilled out town, was the observatory. Northern Chile is one of the best places in the world to observe the night skies due to the great weather and the altitude. There are very few cloudy days around here. We took a trip to peer through a telescope - 30cm in diameter - which is big enough to get some great views of the moons surface and really see the craters and valleys. We also got to see Jupiter and 3 of her moons along with Alpha Centauri and various cluster stars. The lecture after the stargazing was fairly basic given our interest in the subject but still worth while.
There was a Pisco distillery within sniffing distance of Vicuna so clearly we had to pay a visit here. Pisco is Chile's national drink and most of the vineyards in this particular area are designated for the production of pisco rather than wine. Pisco is produced by distilling wine - rather like brandy - and tends to be around 35 per cent by vol and is used to make delicious pisco sours - pisco, lemon juice, ice and perhaps a little egg white and bitters. Obviously a bit of tasting was on the cards too which all went down rather well, particularly as it was Nick´s birthday that day.
After a day or so in Vicuna we hopped back to La Serena, on the coast, to walk along the beach and sample some more Pisco. La Serena is a big town but manages to hide that in a rather nice old centre with charming plaza and relaxed atmosphere. Not a stack to do around here but the beach and a few observatories and the local countryside.
6 hours south of La Serena by bus and we were in Santiago - the 4th capital city of our trip. Santiago is one of those great cities of the world where you can be on the beach 1.5 hours in one direction, and skiing 1.5 hours in the other direction. It has some grand old buildings that house some good museums and governmental offices, but on the whole is not pretty. But believe me, it is good to be in a city where it feels safe and you can walk around without watching out all around you everywhere that you walk. The traffic lights are the same as those in the UK so it even feels a bit like the UK. In fact, the Chileans have been known to call themselves the English of South America due to their slightly reserved nature - and perhaps their exciting naval history and pride in their country too. Santiago has so many fast food places it makes the US seem like a health concious country. The national dish is a completo - a hot dog with cabbage and buckets of watery mayonaise and mustard...mmmm...well - I have tried one and I think I am now over my hot dog craving for a while. There are big malls, shops with clothes you might actually want to buy, a metro system (clean and efficient), coffee bars with scantily clad, nubile women working the cappuchino machines, copies of the Economist for sale, clean streets - all a far cry from the other capital cities on the tour. Good for a change, but there is a sense of a lack of challenge in this. It is just like Europe, but refreshingly so for now. For our return to this kind of city we treated oursleves to a top night out at the opera - we went to see Verdi's Rigoletto which was sublime and seemed even more so than in London where work always beckons the following day. The opera house was very grand on the outside and a little out of date on the inside - rather like most London theatres - smaller than Covent Garden, but the set and the costumes were all very well done and the main roles performed fantastically.
We had a day trip down to Valparaiso - a port city and of some renown in Chile for its history in the various naval battles fought over the years, the attractiveness of the place and being the place that Pablo Neruda lived for some time (Chilean Nobel Prize winner for Literature). The beauty of the city is overstated by the locals as the city was largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1906, but some of old buildings survive and wandering around the hills overlooking the bay through tiny meadering back streets with houses painted a variety of different bright colours was still a pleasure, enhanced by finding a great French restaurant for lunch.
The highlight of our time around Santiago was 2 days skiing in Valle Nevado, a ski resort 1.5 hours away. How amazing and slightly surreal to be skiing in August. Valle Nevado is the most modern resort in Chile and was very like a lot of European resorts with modern lift and well groomed slopes. It was just great fun to be out playing in the snow in the Andes - great scenery and great weather - although - as a result of such great weather, Nick and I both have gone a very amusing shade of puse red.
Today is our last day in Chile for a while. We celebrated this with a visit to a vineyard nearby for a tour and tasting - clearly! I have really enjoyed my time in this country. For me, the people have been the friendliest and most helpful of any we have met in South America - this is in strange contrast to what other travellers told us about Chileans, so I have been very pleasantly surprised. Everyone raves about the Argies and says the Chileans are a bit reserved, but everywhere we have been the people have been great. One particularly good memory of being here was watching as Chile won its first ever gold medal at the Olympics - the mens' doubles tennis match - we were watching in a bar and the atmosphere was electric. Like a Henman match in England, there were ups and downs but finally the Chileans came through and won (ah - OK so a slight difference between a Henman match and this). The next day, Nicolas Massu did his country proud again by winning the mens' singles tennis gold as well, so Chile stormed up the medal table.
Chile is probably the wealthiest country in South America with a mere 22% of the population being classed as being in poverty. It's history is very colourful, particularly it's recent history. With Chilean law courts only last week ruling that Pinochet is no longer imune from prosecution for overseeing the murders of various Chileans, French and Spanish citizens, Chile again faces and interesting time, and is forced to confront its recent and traumatic past. The military coup in 1973 still seems too recent to be dealt with but with 5,000 people murdered or still "missing" and Pinochet due back in court, the time to deal with these issues may be now. We will watch the developments unfold - but in all likelihood, Pinochet will pull another Ernest Saunders and get off scott free.
From Bolivia we passed efficiently through the Chilean border after the mandatory drug search for coca and other evil goods like my honey that they confiscated. We entered Chile from the south western corner of Bolivia and spent a couple of very lovely, relaxing days in a tiny village called San Pedro de Atacama. The Atacama is the driest desert on Earth and in some places it hasn't rained for over 400 years. From San Pedro it is possible to explore some of the northern Atacama and we went off to walk around the Valle de la Luna (Moon valley), the Valle de Martes (Mars valley), salt canyons and some big sand dunes. These were all spectacular in their own way with the Moon valley providing the scenery to watch the sun set beautifully below the horizon igniting the sky into furious reds and oranges while we looked out over miles and miles of alien rock formations formed by the earth's crust crashing and rising up as the tectonic plates battled for supremacy. This is a wonderful area for sitting atop a peak and just staring out onto the landscape and marvelling at how the earth was formed. You can almost see mountain ranges being created out of the plates and you can look out over hundreds of dry river beds created by the summer snows melting and carving out paths of least resistance. It feels like you are at the dawn of time.
From the north east of Chile we set of down this very long, thin country about 15 hours by gorgeously comfy bus to a town called La Serena - on the coast. From here we dived straight on a short bus ride to Vicuna about 1.5 hours east of La Serena and situated in the Elqui valley. The Elqui valley is a lush green valley between the coast and the mountains and is a refreshing surprise after the Atacama. There are orange groves, vineyards, papaya trees, fast flowing rivers and green mountains everywhere. The attraction of Vicuna for us, besides being a chilled out town, was the observatory. Northern Chile is one of the best places in the world to observe the night skies due to the great weather and the altitude. There are very few cloudy days around here. We took a trip to peer through a telescope - 30cm in diameter - which is big enough to get some great views of the moons surface and really see the craters and valleys. We also got to see Jupiter and 3 of her moons along with Alpha Centauri and various cluster stars. The lecture after the stargazing was fairly basic given our interest in the subject but still worth while.
There was a Pisco distillery within sniffing distance of Vicuna so clearly we had to pay a visit here. Pisco is Chile's national drink and most of the vineyards in this particular area are designated for the production of pisco rather than wine. Pisco is produced by distilling wine - rather like brandy - and tends to be around 35 per cent by vol and is used to make delicious pisco sours - pisco, lemon juice, ice and perhaps a little egg white and bitters. Obviously a bit of tasting was on the cards too which all went down rather well, particularly as it was Nick´s birthday that day.
After a day or so in Vicuna we hopped back to La Serena, on the coast, to walk along the beach and sample some more Pisco. La Serena is a big town but manages to hide that in a rather nice old centre with charming plaza and relaxed atmosphere. Not a stack to do around here but the beach and a few observatories and the local countryside.
6 hours south of La Serena by bus and we were in Santiago - the 4th capital city of our trip. Santiago is one of those great cities of the world where you can be on the beach 1.5 hours in one direction, and skiing 1.5 hours in the other direction. It has some grand old buildings that house some good museums and governmental offices, but on the whole is not pretty. But believe me, it is good to be in a city where it feels safe and you can walk around without watching out all around you everywhere that you walk. The traffic lights are the same as those in the UK so it even feels a bit like the UK. In fact, the Chileans have been known to call themselves the English of South America due to their slightly reserved nature - and perhaps their exciting naval history and pride in their country too. Santiago has so many fast food places it makes the US seem like a health concious country. The national dish is a completo - a hot dog with cabbage and buckets of watery mayonaise and mustard...mmmm...well - I have tried one and I think I am now over my hot dog craving for a while. There are big malls, shops with clothes you might actually want to buy, a metro system (clean and efficient), coffee bars with scantily clad, nubile women working the cappuchino machines, copies of the Economist for sale, clean streets - all a far cry from the other capital cities on the tour. Good for a change, but there is a sense of a lack of challenge in this. It is just like Europe, but refreshingly so for now. For our return to this kind of city we treated oursleves to a top night out at the opera - we went to see Verdi's Rigoletto which was sublime and seemed even more so than in London where work always beckons the following day. The opera house was very grand on the outside and a little out of date on the inside - rather like most London theatres - smaller than Covent Garden, but the set and the costumes were all very well done and the main roles performed fantastically.
We had a day trip down to Valparaiso - a port city and of some renown in Chile for its history in the various naval battles fought over the years, the attractiveness of the place and being the place that Pablo Neruda lived for some time (Chilean Nobel Prize winner for Literature). The beauty of the city is overstated by the locals as the city was largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1906, but some of old buildings survive and wandering around the hills overlooking the bay through tiny meadering back streets with houses painted a variety of different bright colours was still a pleasure, enhanced by finding a great French restaurant for lunch.
The highlight of our time around Santiago was 2 days skiing in Valle Nevado, a ski resort 1.5 hours away. How amazing and slightly surreal to be skiing in August. Valle Nevado is the most modern resort in Chile and was very like a lot of European resorts with modern lift and well groomed slopes. It was just great fun to be out playing in the snow in the Andes - great scenery and great weather - although - as a result of such great weather, Nick and I both have gone a very amusing shade of puse red.
Today is our last day in Chile for a while. We celebrated this with a visit to a vineyard nearby for a tour and tasting - clearly! I have really enjoyed my time in this country. For me, the people have been the friendliest and most helpful of any we have met in South America - this is in strange contrast to what other travellers told us about Chileans, so I have been very pleasantly surprised. Everyone raves about the Argies and says the Chileans are a bit reserved, but everywhere we have been the people have been great. One particularly good memory of being here was watching as Chile won its first ever gold medal at the Olympics - the mens' doubles tennis match - we were watching in a bar and the atmosphere was electric. Like a Henman match in England, there were ups and downs but finally the Chileans came through and won (ah - OK so a slight difference between a Henman match and this). The next day, Nicolas Massu did his country proud again by winning the mens' singles tennis gold as well, so Chile stormed up the medal table.
Chile is probably the wealthiest country in South America with a mere 22% of the population being classed as being in poverty. It's history is very colourful, particularly it's recent history. With Chilean law courts only last week ruling that Pinochet is no longer imune from prosecution for overseeing the murders of various Chileans, French and Spanish citizens, Chile again faces and interesting time, and is forced to confront its recent and traumatic past. The military coup in 1973 still seems too recent to be dealt with but with 5,000 people murdered or still "missing" and Pinochet due back in court, the time to deal with these issues may be now. We will watch the developments unfold - but in all likelihood, Pinochet will pull another Ernest Saunders and get off scott free.
