Our 3 weeks in Santiago in January was very unexpected. Like what Naomi said in her blog, we initially only planned to stay for 3-4 days before migrating to the South. But after our little incident in the supermarket in our second day, we realised that learning Spanish is paramount here in South America.
What happened in the supermarket? We bought a bottle of vino, discovered that the price wasn't right and wanted to get an exchange. It proved way too hard as NO ONE in the whole supermarket spoke any English. As I spoke no Spanish whatsoever at the time, me and the three customer service ladies resorted to using the universal language – sign language.
I pushed the vino across to the customer service lady and crossed my hands and said "Me, No". And then pointed to her and back to me and rubbed my thumb and second finger together and repeated "Pesos, Pesos". I repeated the process a couple of times whilst they continued to speak to me in very fast Spanish. As none of us understood each other, we (and the local spectators) just all ended up bursting into laughter. After a couple of very stressful yet hilarious attempts, they finally understood me and gave me my money back.
Spanish is such a hard language. It is similar to English, but so different in so many ways! It's actually very frustrating to learn. In our 3 weeks of school, we were being treated like 3 year old kids and had to learn absolutely everything beginning with the alphabet.
I was so frustrated with the all-Spanish class in the first couple of days. I think my most used words in class were "no entiendo" which literally translates into "I don't understand". Naomi was laughing at me in the first couple of days when I was grilled by the teachers to say things in Spanish and couldn't understand much. But good days never last long – it was her turn after a couple of days.
It definitely wasn't an easy learning process. It was in fact a steep learning curve for both of us.
On our first day as we knew NO Spanish at all, the teacher asked us "¿Como te llamas tu?" which meant "How do you call yourself?". She even wrote it on the whiteboard for us. Naomi, always being a smartarse, whispered in my ear that the teacher was asking me whether I liked the animal llamas, as obviously the two words are spelt the same. So I just answered 'Si, Si, love llamas'. Everyone in the class nearly just died from laughing. Ha! Ha! Very funny. And thanks Naomi!
After 3 weeks of learning basic Spanish we were still not good at all. In fact, we still suck big time. But at least we can understand a little of what people say. We have been trying to listening to podcasts and learning by ourselves since.
Santiago was a nice city overall. I met a lot of nice people through the language school. I went out a couple of nights with them. As Spanish was often the "common" language, I had to try to make up sentences mixed with Spanish and English and hopedthat people could understand.
During our three weeks in Santiago, we visited Vina Del Mar and Valparaiso. They both around 2 hours from Santiago by bus and both on the coast. Valparaiso was actually quite a unique pretty city with many hills with Spanish houses on them. It was also well known for its seafood and chorrillanas. Chorrillanas were awesome. It is such a hangover food. I am surprised they haven't introduced it to Australia yet. I think Naomi already talked about it in her previous blog. Maybe it could be my new business venture after I get back home :)
Pucon, Chile
Pucon was another nice town. The Volcan Villarica climb was quite nice. It wasn't too easy but definitely accessible. Sorry Angus, you would be out of action as some parts on the ice were quite steep and the height could be a big problem for you mate. I was a little disappointed that we could not see the lava underneath from the top. Because it is quite an active volcano, our guide told us that sometimes the lava rises so high that you could see it from the mouth. The view from the top was nothing but spectacular though.
We discovered that even the bus fares can be bargained for in Chile. We were told by some travellers that they got on a full cama (180 degree seats) bus for a cheaper price than our lower class bus. Apparently they just rocked up to the station and asked them whether they could go on for a discounted price. As I am very very price conscious when I am travelling, I was so jealous of their luck and thankful of their tips! Next time.....there's always next time!
It always pays to find the cheapest deal. Naomi is really good looking for bargains on the internet with her clothes/shoes shopping. But she often just get stressed out about finding the best deal in our travel. If it was me, a saving of $5 on a ticket was still a huge saving, especially as I currently have no real income. I am trying to train her to think of everything in terms of how many pairs of shoes those savings could turn into :)
We met this American girl Hailey who ended up travelling with us for the next week or so there.
Valdivia, Chile
Not much to report here really. There was a German beer festival going on while we were there. But it cost $10US to get in though. I also heard mix reports about the festival. So in the end, we just got a couple bottles of vino for $3 each and watched tennis on TV. Hey, although they were cheapo, they weren't too bad.
My seafood lunch was seriously sooo delicious. Naomi not only got a little food envy, she practically ate a fork-full of her food, a fork-full of my food etc. I was a little disappointed how quickly my lunch disappeared....
This was where we say goodbye to Chile temporarily and headed over to Bariloche in Argentina – home of cheap but excellent steak and vino.
Bariloche, Argentina
I was overwhelmed by the people in Bariloche. And by this, I am referring to the amount of tourists that were there. I felt like I was back in China again surrounded by millions of people. I didn't really like how touristy the city was, but I absolutely loved the picturesque lakes and the surrounding mountains of the Andes.
It wasn't as BIG as Naomi described, it was just a LOT of tourists – many RICH tourists.
We ran into the American Hailey here again and hung out for the next couple of days.
We spent a day doing the bike riding around the lake. Although it was really hard work going up the hills, the scenery was breathtaking. I never thought this was Argentina. I felt like I was riding around in New Zealand or Switzerland (although I have never been to Switzerland). With some massive pristine blue lakes that you could literally look down tens of metres to the bottom.
I still can't believe that we are in Patagonia now. It was such a mystery place that I have heard so much about. And here I am!
Oh yes, we did have our first AWESOME Argentinian steak the first night we got in to Bariloche. It was like $10/kg for eye fillet. We topped it off with a nice bottle of vino and a fresh salad.
We went to an Irish pub with Hailey and her Irish friend Hayley the night Hailey left us. I was so disappointed that there was not many people there even at 12:30am. We were later told that it probably only gets busy there from 1am! I felt like such a grandpa!!! I don't know how people ever get anything done here in Latin America by going to dinner at 10pm and go out for drinks at 1am and go home and get up for work at 8:30am! Although "apparently" siestas don't exist in Chile and Argentina, people must just fall asleep at work to recover for another night of action! Hey Meow, if you are reading this, you should come and work over here. You will love it here!
Naomi really missed out on the views from Cerro Compania. It was such a pity that she lost her pants. I would be fuming too about it. But I had such a nice time up there eating my lunch and enjoyed the 360 view of Bariloche and the surrounding lakes and snow-capped mountains.
From there, we debated about whether to take the legendary Ruta 40 (route 40) following the Andes and go all the way to El Chaltan/El Calafate or Ruta 3 along the Atlantic Coast. Ruta 40 would have taken us 3D2N and partially on gravel. It apparently is also one of the most remote roads in the world and runs from the Bolivian border all the way to the bottom of Patagonia. They even sell Ruta 40 T-shirts in all the tourist shops.
We decided to go via Ruta 3 on Naomi's insistence. A 14 hour bus ride later, we arrived in Puerto Madryn.
Puerto Madryn, Argentina
Nothing special about the city itself. It's on a bay with some sort of a beach. It was sandy I guess, if that's your definition of a "beach". But the areas around Puerto Madryn was just amazing.
Naomi already blogged about them, so I will skip the details here.
We met this French guy called Benjamin in our hostel and he just happened to travel with us for the next 2 days to different sights around the city. He was such a strange fellow. He pretended that he couldn't speak much English at all to people in the hostels and on the tours that we went on. He even told the tour guide that he only spoke French or Spanish. Knowing us and our lack of Spanish skills (and as he knew no one else), he often whispered in us in ENGLISH and hoped that no one else could hear him. He even told us that he worked in Australia as a rafting guide for a few months, and yet he apparently speaks NO English. Hmmmmm??????
Yes, the penguinos were sooooo cute! I have never seen that many penguins in my life. Our pictures didn't turn out that perfectly as both our cameras were out of battery and I had to take the photos from my 2MP phone.
Some baby penguins were following me wherever I went for a little while. Maybe they were also expecting me to regurgitate my lunch for them too. Not happening!
Rio Gallegos
Such a boring town this one. Absolutely nothing here. Naomi did the right thing by staying indoors while I went out on the Sunday that we got there to scope around and check out "sights". After about 3 hours of walking in hurricane-speed wind and the cold, I went into a colonial museum. That was nice with some old relics from the town back in the 19th Century. But was it worth the effort battling the wind and the cold???
We decided to go to El Calafate as the bus to Ushuaia was full until 2 days later.
