After a quick stop in Auckland and 16 hours in the air, we landed in Santiago and quickly saw the damage to the airport as a result of the earthquake. Our fatigue got the better of us and we decided to take up one of the many drivers offers' for a taxi ride to the city, despite the fact the bus was cheaper. Boos Boos was thoroughly examining the drivers ID and the taxi to ensure he wasn't a fraud who would take us to the bush and murder us. Luckily he had minimal homicidal tendencies and arrived safely in Santa Lucia. The first hour was quite an experience trying to navigate to our hostel unable to speak any useful Spanish and Boos Boos vomiting into a plane spew bag, because of some dodgy plane food. Hilarious! (thought Doodles :)) Welcome to South America!
We found our hostel in the end, a little three story family owned place close to the metro called the Green House. Needless to say we crashed out.
We had heard back in Australia that Red Cross were taking volunteers to help with aid relief for the earthquake. So after some classy charades and dodgy broken spanish we made our way to the headquarters where we were quickly ushered into a car and told we would be helping unload a supply plane at the local airforce base. We were taken first to a sports hall which was set up as a supply base to load up trucks which were heading south.
The temporary supply base.
One of many "guard" dogs around the place - Boos Boos was in love...It was quickly becoming apparent that our lack of spanish might be becoming an issue. As the Chileans speak incredibly fast and with what is called lazy spanish, chopping of the last half of words meaning even if you are fluent its hard to understand. After a few hours of us sitting on our asses for a couple hours eating lunch they provided we headed out to the Air Force Base to find the supplies. This in its self was an adventure. It was pretty amazing standing right next to the runway, with helicopters, jets and cargo transport planes parked near by. After a few more hours of standing around they realised that the supplies were actually sent to another area. So we were loaded into the cab of a mack truck along with four other Chileans in what was a unique, bumpy, slow ride over to the new cargo area. Getting out of the truck we were told we were coming back tomorrow, so then taken back in a car to the headquarters with promises that there would be work tomorrow. This was our first experience of Chilean time...
We had organised the previous night to go out with a couple of Ecuadorian medical students in an area called Barrio Bellavista. Needless to say it was a huge night, combined fatigue and jet lag we slept for pretty much the next day and a half.
On the friday night we went out with Gustavo, a local guy that we met at the Red Cross who had lived in Australia for 20 years and spoke good English. Doodles had mentioned that he was a metal fan so he decided he would take us out to metal bar. Which turned out to be like an metal bar back home, Boos Boos loved it...NOT! Still feeling ordinary we kept it relatively tame. The next day our distinct lack of spanish came to a head. We were planning on going to a small beach town called Zapallar but upon ringing to book accommodation, we realised that we were completely out of our depth and the majority of our side of the conversation consisted of 'No intiendo' (I don't understand)
Gustavo had told us of an Australian friend of his who runs a hostel across the city called La Casa Roja (the red house). Upon doing some research we realised that they provide one or two week intensive Spanish courses. This is exactly what we wanted and booked ourselves into a one week course with our new Spanish teacher - Jesus! Too put is simply Jesus is cool, he is a rock climber, push bike enthusiast and a great teacher who started the first lesson with 'From this point forward we speak in Spanish' and off he went. The classes consisted of 5 days of 4 hours each, from 10-2pm, meaning we had the afternoons free to chill by the pool, play ping pong, drink cerveza and do our homework.
One thing that you notice about Chile are the dogs. They are every where and so it their shit. Rule 1 of walking in Chile: Watch your step! Or you will be living in a dog poo extravaganza.
Santiago is a pretty nice city, always sunny intersected by a rushing river - caused by ice melt off the near by Andes which provide a dynamic back drop around the city. We spent several afternoons lazying in the many parks (being sure to check for poo before we sat down!)
A key landmark in Santiago is San Cristobal, as simplified by Doodles - Mary Hill. This is small mountain topped with a giant marble statue of the Virgin Mary. The majority of Chileans are Catholic and many ascend the hill daily to light a candle at her feet.
The hill is a bushwalker and mountain bikers dream, riddle with tracks and for the more slovenly (such as ourselves) there is a cable car the runs up one side. One afternoon Doodles decided to go visit Mary on foot, four hours later ended up circumnavigating the hill not even making it to the top.
We had planned to head out of Santiago immediately after our lessons had finished, but heeding the advice of Jesus, we stayed in the city while everyone else pilgrimaged to the coast.
After a weekend of chilling, losing pathetically to the poms in ping pong (Vasiles our Englo-Grecian fellow disciple of Jesus), we jumped on a bus to the coastal town of Valparaiso early Monday morning. Eager for some beach action! One thing to note - on the last night, we felt our first (and hopefully last) earthquake, only lasting for 10 seconds or so, and not very large, but still enough to make streams of dust fall from the ceiling and remind you that Chile sits on the edge of a continental crust.
Also, we got some pics of some damaged building in the city - check it out:
Peace and Love
Doodles and Boos Boos
I always suspected Jesus was a rock climber... Nice work guys!
ReplyDeleteAmazing stuff you little Chickens, very very jealous, and very very missing you, xx C
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