On the Island of Chiloè
Thursday, Feb. 9, Castro, Chile
The full day I spent in Valdivia, I took the bus upriver to a town called Niebla. It´s a small village where a ferry travels back and forth to another place, Corral, across the river. In Niebla, I wandered the area and eventually found a restaurant filled with local people. I sat at a table on the porch outside and ordered their special--fried fish. It was a big hunk of fish apparently cut from one of the big, long fish I have seen in the markets, since the bones in it were about 3 inches (7.5 cm) long! That made it easy not to swallow a bone. It was served with rice and a salad. There was a wonderful orange colored salsa that I ate with it all. Unfortunately, the place was too busy, and I was mostly ignored by the waiter. He forgot to bring my drink, and he never brought utensils. I used the plastic spoon from the bowl of salsa to eat my food. But the lunch was delicious. I just left the money on the table and walked away rather than wait forever for him to me again.
We stopped at a small island on the way to Corral. It looked like a very nice, secluded place with expensive homes. Corral itself was far more interesting than Niebla. There is an old fortress there. And the streets are very steep going uphill from the waterfront. I walked looking into the small wooden buildings housing shops that look as if they may not have changed in 80 years (except for the merchandise inside them). After about 1 1/2 hours, I took a ferry back across and caught the next bus back to Valdivia.
In Valdivia, the bus took us by Austral Universidad de Chile (University of Southern Chile). It was a nice looking campus. It´s a big school and is what gives the city life. It´s summer now, so all the students are gone home and the town is rather quiet.
My room in Valdivia was the best I have had in a while and is the best value place during all my visit to Chile. I just found it on my own as I walked toward a place the tourist office had recommended. It is in a modern, private home. I had a nice room with carpeting and lots of light through a window. There was cable TV in the room, and the bath was just beside the room on the hall. The woman who owns the home is always smiling and is very likeable. She takes pride in the breakfasts she serves. We had cheese, two kinds of breads, butter, 3 kinds of jams, teas, coffee, and a fresh piece of cake (different kind each day) for breakfast. The cakes were both especially nice. The only way to make the place better would be to have a private bath that didn´t have to be shared. But the room only cost me about $11.50 per night.
Yesterday (Wednesday), I took a 7 hour bus trip from Valdivia to Castro on the island of Chiloè. On the way, we passed an area with lots of snowcapped volcanos. This the southermost point I will reach in Chile. When I leave here, I will go 3 1/2 hours back northward near the volcanos for a few days and then cross back over to Argentina. The conductor on the bus was a very nice young man who took an interest in me. He checked on me every time he came back into the bus to check tickets and do other duties. And he visited with me on the 30 minute ferry ride to get to the island. Unfortunately, he didn´t speak English, so we were limited to the little Spanish I speak and to sign language.
Chiloè is famous for its wooden churches. Castro has a fantastic one on its main plaza. The entire inside of the church is in pine with vaulted ceilings, a dome, etc. It is just fascinating to see. Each town and village has its own version of such a church. Some are less ornate, some have painted wood, but each one is built entirely of wood. All the houses are also built of wood. Most are covered in wooden shakes on the outside--various shapes of cuts--and painted often in very bright colors. It´s a bright, cheerful place.
There are many backpackers here in Castro. It´s the first place I have visited this year where I see them sitting and walking around everywhere. It´s much like the places I went in northwestern Argentina last year. Mostly, they seem to be university students traveling on VERY low budgets. My guess is that they are camping out or paying $2 each to sleep 8 to a room in places! Most of them look like they could use a good shower! I´m glad I am paying more for where I stay so that I didn´t have to compete with them to find a place to sleep.
I´m staying in another nice place. I have a very small room with one single bed, but it is furnished nicely and has cable TV. Also, it has a good breakfast. The man of the couple who runs it was wearing an apron when I arrived yesterday. This morning, I could see why. His kitchen is filled with professional equipment, and the breakfast was great. We had a bowl of homemade yogurt to begin. Then he cooked a big omelette filled with local white cheese and herbs that were running when he served it. There was bread, coffee, and tea, too.
Today, I took a bus to Chonchi, another town about 30 minutes from here. It is much more atmospheric than Castro. It runs down a steep slope toward the waterfront. Again, all the buildings are wooden, but the ones there seem to be much older than the ones in Castro. Almost all are occupied, but there are several huge old wooden buildings that seem to be abandoned. Maybe they were warehouses at one time. There was a small fish market that even included locally smoked fish. There were several bakeries, but one was especially nice; I took a photo of some of their bread and bought two pastries to eat by the waterfront.
I returned to Castro for lunch at 2 p.m. I went to a local place I found last night and ate what everyone else was getting--a bowl of soup. It was a huge bowl that had chunks of pumpkin, potatoes, peas, tube-shaped noodles, etc. It looked like there were chunks of roast beef, but then it didn´t taste like beef. I didn´t really like the taste or the texture. Maybe it was heart. Or maybe it was horse, since that is eaten here. Anyway, I forced myself to eat half the meat, then I finished the rest of the soup without meat. The soup itself was good.
Two updates:
I finally got through to Mexicana. Although their site said I needed to complete the payment method form before making a restervation, it continued to reject me as I tried. So I made my reservation and then went to the payment procedure from there. Finally, it accepted that my credit card was from the U.S. even thought the computer recognized me as being in Chile at the present time. Therefore, I am flying into San Antonio from Mexico City on Friday, Mar. 10.
I exercised my thumb some on Wednesday. At first, I couldn´t get my thumb to even touch my index finger. But I eventually got it touching two fingers. Yesterday, since I had 7 hours on the bus, I did the exercises a lot. I got to the point where I could touch the tips of all my fingers except the little finger, and I could barely touch the side of it. I also did the exercise where I twirled my thumb in a circle clockwise and then counter-clockwise. I also was able to hold my pen and write again. Well, I must have overdone it. During the night, my hand began aching. Today, my thumb was so stiff I could only touch the tip of the index finger, and that was with pain. I´ve worked at it some today, but it has hurt. I guess I stretched tendons and muscles that I haven´t used for a while and they have reacted by being sore.
Tomorrow, I will catch a bus to Puerto Varas back in the Lake District. That´s my last stop in Chile, although I will make serveral outings from there. I figure I will be there 3-4 nights before crossing back to Argentina.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Free Thumb, But Not Very Opposable
Free Thumb, But Not Very Opposable
Tuesday, Feb. 7, Villarica and Valdivia, Chile
I managed to pass the day on Saturday waiting for my 1:00 a.m. bus from Curico to Villarica. I spent the last 3 hours on a park bench (9:30-12:30) across from the bus station. There was an overhead light, so I read from the novel I´m reading now to pass the time faster and shivered as the night got cooler. Around 1:00, bus after bus came, but mine wasn´t one of them. The bus station wasn´t open, so I had to stand outside. Everyone else waiting took one of the buses that arrived. A guy who was cleaning up inside the station finally invited me inside to wait. He turned on the computer to check on my bus and told me it was on its way. It didn´t arrive until 2:00! Then it was rather uncomfortable. The seats were not nearly as nice as the buses I have ridden before. So I twisted and turned as the hours passed. Finally, we arrived in Villarica around 9:00.
I walked directly to the tourist office, and the two people there spoke enough English to help me find a room. Actually, what I got is a cabin. Almost every house in the town has 4-5 cabins built in the backyard to rent out. They aren´t complete cabins with kitchens--just bedrooms with an attached bath. Mine was quite cozy. There were two beds with a rug between them. A window let in plenty of light during the daytime. One bed was firm and another was sagging. Maybe a sagging bed is a preference for many Chileans, since I have now run across them in several places. Whatever the situation, I took the firm bed and slept well.
The area around Villarica is wonderful and the town is very nice, too. The area has the feel of Colorado, or of Danish summer with mountains. The air is fresh, everything is green, there are wildflowers in many fields, there are wonderful forests, etc. The town itself is quite nice, too. The houses have a European look to them. The downtown buildings are more like in Colorado--much pine in their construction with most of it being rather contemporary in appearance. It´s a very clean city, too. The streets are well paved, and there are designated bicycle lanes on them. The main attraction is the lake with a huge snowcapped volcano in the shape of a perfect cone behind it. Almost all activity is around the lake. There are boats that can be hired for tours on the lake. There are grassy picnic areas along the shore. There are several beaches, including one on the end designated as a nudist beach (although everyone there was clothed).
Chile is the most modern and most advanced of all the Latin American countries I have visited. I am impressed everywhere I go. It is more like Canada or Europe than like the U.S. If you dropped anyone here, only the signs and the spoken language would cause them to have a second thought in terms of it being either northern North America or northern Europe. They seem to have adopted all the little things that we think represent an advanced society. For instance, even the man picking up the garbage in an office yesterday was wearing plastic gloves to do so.
I found a local place in Villarica for lunch. It was full of people, and I was the only tourist. I particularly chose it because one of their specials was ravioli with meat sauce. I am tired of the usual Chilean dishes, so Italian sounded good. The meat sauce was obviously homemade. The food was tasty. And the bread wasn´t the usual Chilean hard bun, it was freshly cooked sopapillas--much like the Mexican kind, but served plain as a bread rather than with honey or sugar-cinnamon as a dessert.
I spent the afternoon walking around the edge of the lake there in town. I watched for opportunities to get a good photo of the volcano, since, like it is with most volcanos, the clouds tended to cluster around the top of it. I watched the people swimming. I sat and read from my book. I visited briefly with a man who approached me while his son was having a lesson at a tennis club across the road. For some reason he knew I was a tourist. He has lived in Vancouver and was here visiting his wife´s family. I got the impression he is a go-getter who changes jobs often trying to get ahead; he has also worked in Banff, and he is returning to Miami, another place where he has worked. I wonder if he does all this illegally? He said he had been though San Antonio driving. Why would he have done that other than to enter the U.S. in an easy way (before 9/11)?
I wish I had a car here. I would see so much more of Chile with one. An independent traveler likes me seeing the cities and the main sites near them, but this area is filled with national parks that cannot be explored via public transportation and are too far away to hike to them. If I ever return, it will need to be with someone else so we can rent a car and explore on our own.
Yesterday morning, I checked out of the cabin to head to Valdivia. I was surprised to see that the woman with the cabins had a wood burning cookstove in her kitchen. It was all fired up. She said that is how she provides the hot water to the cabins. I mentioned it would be good for baking, too.
Valdivia is on a river bend and is also where two rivers come together. It´s a very old city, and there is a tower remaining from the walls that once surrounded it. This area had natives the Spanish were not able to bring under their control. Valdivia was a lone Spanish outpost among this large area the natives controlled. Today, it is a city that has lots of old wooden buildings that are not very attractive. But the riverfront is nice. And there is a nice plaza. There is an outstanding chocolate shop where you can see the chocolates being made. Apparently many people come here just to buy their chocolates!
But I didn´t arrive until 1:30 p.m. Then I had to get a room. I was lucky to find a house with a room for rent upstairs with cable TV and the bath next to it. And it includes a great breakfast which today consisted of rolls, cheese, butter, jams, and a slice of cake! The cake was like a lemon pie with a thin cake on the bottom rather than a crust. I think I might trying making one when I get home--layer of cake (about 3/4 inch thick), layer of lemon pie filling (about 1/4 inch thick), and layer of merringue and baked until the merringue is lightly golden.
After getting the room, I went to see a doctor. The x-rays showed that my thumb is probably healed enough. The doctor took an intermediary step. He removed the splint and cleaned the wounds around the pin endings. Then he wrapped me up again only in a flexible gauze bandage. He told me to start exercising the thumb to get my movement back while waiting 2 more weeks to have the pins removed. The thumb doesn´t move much right now, but I am making progress. I can touch the tips of my index finger and the one next to it. It´s taken lots of work to get that far in the past 1/2 days. And it goes stiff again as soon as I don´t do that moment after moment. Hope I can get it back to normal. I can´t write with it yet, for instance.
It was already 4 p.m. by then, so I headed out to eat my first and only meal of the day. I found a small place with a roasted pork special. It was two pieces of pork about 1 1/4 inches thick. It was so good. And it came with a yellow rice that had mixed vegetables within it and with a salad. I was so full, I knew I wouldn´t need to eat again. Therefore, I went to the grocery store on my way back to my room and bought a bottle of wine to celebrate having my thumb back. It is Missiones del Reino and is a Reserva Carmenére 2003 from the Valle de Rapel. I had half of it last night, and it is quite good.
Today, it is drizzly. I will go to the bus station to try to make plans for traveling tomorrow. And if all goes well, I will make a trip up river this afternoon and report on it on my next entry.
Tuesday, Feb. 7, Villarica and Valdivia, Chile
I managed to pass the day on Saturday waiting for my 1:00 a.m. bus from Curico to Villarica. I spent the last 3 hours on a park bench (9:30-12:30) across from the bus station. There was an overhead light, so I read from the novel I´m reading now to pass the time faster and shivered as the night got cooler. Around 1:00, bus after bus came, but mine wasn´t one of them. The bus station wasn´t open, so I had to stand outside. Everyone else waiting took one of the buses that arrived. A guy who was cleaning up inside the station finally invited me inside to wait. He turned on the computer to check on my bus and told me it was on its way. It didn´t arrive until 2:00! Then it was rather uncomfortable. The seats were not nearly as nice as the buses I have ridden before. So I twisted and turned as the hours passed. Finally, we arrived in Villarica around 9:00.
I walked directly to the tourist office, and the two people there spoke enough English to help me find a room. Actually, what I got is a cabin. Almost every house in the town has 4-5 cabins built in the backyard to rent out. They aren´t complete cabins with kitchens--just bedrooms with an attached bath. Mine was quite cozy. There were two beds with a rug between them. A window let in plenty of light during the daytime. One bed was firm and another was sagging. Maybe a sagging bed is a preference for many Chileans, since I have now run across them in several places. Whatever the situation, I took the firm bed and slept well.
The area around Villarica is wonderful and the town is very nice, too. The area has the feel of Colorado, or of Danish summer with mountains. The air is fresh, everything is green, there are wildflowers in many fields, there are wonderful forests, etc. The town itself is quite nice, too. The houses have a European look to them. The downtown buildings are more like in Colorado--much pine in their construction with most of it being rather contemporary in appearance. It´s a very clean city, too. The streets are well paved, and there are designated bicycle lanes on them. The main attraction is the lake with a huge snowcapped volcano in the shape of a perfect cone behind it. Almost all activity is around the lake. There are boats that can be hired for tours on the lake. There are grassy picnic areas along the shore. There are several beaches, including one on the end designated as a nudist beach (although everyone there was clothed).
Chile is the most modern and most advanced of all the Latin American countries I have visited. I am impressed everywhere I go. It is more like Canada or Europe than like the U.S. If you dropped anyone here, only the signs and the spoken language would cause them to have a second thought in terms of it being either northern North America or northern Europe. They seem to have adopted all the little things that we think represent an advanced society. For instance, even the man picking up the garbage in an office yesterday was wearing plastic gloves to do so.
I found a local place in Villarica for lunch. It was full of people, and I was the only tourist. I particularly chose it because one of their specials was ravioli with meat sauce. I am tired of the usual Chilean dishes, so Italian sounded good. The meat sauce was obviously homemade. The food was tasty. And the bread wasn´t the usual Chilean hard bun, it was freshly cooked sopapillas--much like the Mexican kind, but served plain as a bread rather than with honey or sugar-cinnamon as a dessert.
I spent the afternoon walking around the edge of the lake there in town. I watched for opportunities to get a good photo of the volcano, since, like it is with most volcanos, the clouds tended to cluster around the top of it. I watched the people swimming. I sat and read from my book. I visited briefly with a man who approached me while his son was having a lesson at a tennis club across the road. For some reason he knew I was a tourist. He has lived in Vancouver and was here visiting his wife´s family. I got the impression he is a go-getter who changes jobs often trying to get ahead; he has also worked in Banff, and he is returning to Miami, another place where he has worked. I wonder if he does all this illegally? He said he had been though San Antonio driving. Why would he have done that other than to enter the U.S. in an easy way (before 9/11)?
I wish I had a car here. I would see so much more of Chile with one. An independent traveler likes me seeing the cities and the main sites near them, but this area is filled with national parks that cannot be explored via public transportation and are too far away to hike to them. If I ever return, it will need to be with someone else so we can rent a car and explore on our own.
Yesterday morning, I checked out of the cabin to head to Valdivia. I was surprised to see that the woman with the cabins had a wood burning cookstove in her kitchen. It was all fired up. She said that is how she provides the hot water to the cabins. I mentioned it would be good for baking, too.
Valdivia is on a river bend and is also where two rivers come together. It´s a very old city, and there is a tower remaining from the walls that once surrounded it. This area had natives the Spanish were not able to bring under their control. Valdivia was a lone Spanish outpost among this large area the natives controlled. Today, it is a city that has lots of old wooden buildings that are not very attractive. But the riverfront is nice. And there is a nice plaza. There is an outstanding chocolate shop where you can see the chocolates being made. Apparently many people come here just to buy their chocolates!
But I didn´t arrive until 1:30 p.m. Then I had to get a room. I was lucky to find a house with a room for rent upstairs with cable TV and the bath next to it. And it includes a great breakfast which today consisted of rolls, cheese, butter, jams, and a slice of cake! The cake was like a lemon pie with a thin cake on the bottom rather than a crust. I think I might trying making one when I get home--layer of cake (about 3/4 inch thick), layer of lemon pie filling (about 1/4 inch thick), and layer of merringue and baked until the merringue is lightly golden.
After getting the room, I went to see a doctor. The x-rays showed that my thumb is probably healed enough. The doctor took an intermediary step. He removed the splint and cleaned the wounds around the pin endings. Then he wrapped me up again only in a flexible gauze bandage. He told me to start exercising the thumb to get my movement back while waiting 2 more weeks to have the pins removed. The thumb doesn´t move much right now, but I am making progress. I can touch the tips of my index finger and the one next to it. It´s taken lots of work to get that far in the past 1/2 days. And it goes stiff again as soon as I don´t do that moment after moment. Hope I can get it back to normal. I can´t write with it yet, for instance.
It was already 4 p.m. by then, so I headed out to eat my first and only meal of the day. I found a small place with a roasted pork special. It was two pieces of pork about 1 1/4 inches thick. It was so good. And it came with a yellow rice that had mixed vegetables within it and with a salad. I was so full, I knew I wouldn´t need to eat again. Therefore, I went to the grocery store on my way back to my room and bought a bottle of wine to celebrate having my thumb back. It is Missiones del Reino and is a Reserva Carmenére 2003 from the Valle de Rapel. I had half of it last night, and it is quite good.
Today, it is drizzly. I will go to the bus station to try to make plans for traveling tomorrow. And if all goes well, I will make a trip up river this afternoon and report on it on my next entry.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Frustration with Mexicana
Frustration with Mexicana
Satruday, Jan. 4, Curico, Chile
I´ve been trying to join the Mexicana online membership so I can buy a ticket to get from Mexico City to San Antonio. It doesn´t look as if it will work. I joined, but I also have to fill out the payment method. Well, computers are smart enough today that the Mexicana site knows I am in Argentina, and it won´t accept the idea that my credit card is a U.S. card if I am in Argentina!! Isn´t that rediculous!! I´ll probably have to take an all-night bus because of this hangup. What a mess!!!!!
I´ve been in Curico for two days. It´s a city of 150,000 people that is 2 1/2 hours south of Santiago. It´s a center for the fruit and wine industry in Chile. Coming here, we passed lots of vineyards and orchards. There were also lots of big fruit warehouses and packing plants. Some of the names were American--Dole and Del Monte, for two. Just outside of Curico is the Torres Winery. I went by there today, but it wasn´t open for some reason. It is one of the best known of all the wineries in Chile, and their wines are exported both to the U.S. and to Chile. It´s a nice complex that even includes a restaurant.
When I arrived yesterday, I went to the tourist office where a very nice young student spoke English well. She said he father and her brother are doctors if I need any help with my thumb while here! She suggested restaurants and places to stay and gave me maps.
I had a strange experience with the first place I went for a room. The woman opened the door and quoted a price of 6000 pesos when I asked for a room for one person. I asked if I could see the room, and she didn´t understand. I tried motioning by pointing to my eyes. She got upset. I think she thought I was trying to talk her down in price or something. How she could help but understand that I wanted to look at the room, I don´t know; everyone else everywhere has understood that pointing to the eyes and then pointing into the building means that I want to see the room. Anyway, then she had a sour look on her face and announced she had only a double room that was grand in size and would be 10,000 pesos. As I walked away, I thought two things: 1. I didn´t like her personality, so I am glad that I didn´t stay there. 2. She really was a bitch.
I found another place down the street, but there were strange things about it, too. I got a nice room upstairs with a window overlooking the back yard. In the evening when I had returned to the room, I realized that one bed was better than the other because it was more firm whereas the other sagged. I got on top of the bed to read for a while. After I while, I felt a bite and looked. I found a flea. I searched and found one other. Well, I looked at the other bed and pulled the covers back. It had light colored sheets, so I could see that it was fine. I went to bed in it, but then I couldn´t sleep because the sag was so really bad. After about 2 hours, I realized that I needed to deal with the problem. I moved my luggage to the side, lifted a chair onto the top of the bed with the fleas, and took my mattress off the sagging bed and placed it on the floor. After that, I slept well all night. Then this morning, I asked one of the two women (sisters?) running the place for a towel. As she went to get one, the other must have asked what I wanted. Then she started yelling. It must have been because she didn´t think they should have to provide me with a towel. Anyway, this town seems to have a problem with women with problems!
I had a late lunch because of the time it took to get here and to get a room yesterday. Most places had quit serving lunch by then. I found a pizza place and had a small pizza and a glass of pineapple juice. The pizza was good with a thin, crispy crust and covered with tomato sauce, cheese, ham and mushrooms. It was nice to have a pizza (and a good one, too) for a change.
The tourist office told me that Tur Bus has buses to Villarica. That´s the company that showed nothing on their computers when we checked in Santiago. So I went back to the Tur Bus office after eating. Sure enough, there were about 5 buses to choose from. They all begin in Santiago, so the night buses are LATE NIGHT buses from here. I took the earliest one. It will pick me up here tonight at 1 a.m.
It was too late to do anything else after all that but explore the town. I saw an old church from the 1700s, an ornate bandstand on the square, a modern church built inside the ruins of an old church, the shopping streets, etc. I spent quite a bit of time in the plaza on a bench watching people and reading. I bought two empanadas (ground meat, onion, gravy, olive, and boiled egg inside the crust) and ate them and went to my room around 8:30.
Today, I took a bus to Molina planning to stop at the Torres Winery. When I saw that it was closed, I just went on to Molina on the bus. We passed apple orchards with apples hanging on the trees, tomato fields where they were picking the tomatoes and then cutting down the stalks, more vinyards, more fruit packing plants, etc. Molina is a small old town. The houses are all adobe with super thick walls and old, old tile roofs. I wandered the streets, bought a pastry and ate it, sat on the square for a while, and then caught the bus back to Curico.
I ate lunch at a nice small place run by a mother and son. There were only two choices--two things I´ve had too frequently lately--but I chose one anyway. I had the sweet corn casserole with chicken, beef, boiled egg, etc. I had tomato salad first, drank melon juice, and had a big slice of watermelon as dessert. It was all good quality. I may go back and have a sandwich there for dinner tonight with a banana milk shake.
Most of the afternoon, I have been sitting in the plaza here reading. I´m just passing the time and trying to stay comfortable. It´s now 6:30, so I have about 6 hours more to go before the bus will be arriving. I may hike up a hill. I have to go back to my hotel around 9:00 and pick up my luggage that I stored there.
Tomorrow I will arrive in Villarica. That is on the northern edge of the Lake District. I´m keeping my fingers crossed that I can find a room when I get there.
Satruday, Jan. 4, Curico, Chile
I´ve been trying to join the Mexicana online membership so I can buy a ticket to get from Mexico City to San Antonio. It doesn´t look as if it will work. I joined, but I also have to fill out the payment method. Well, computers are smart enough today that the Mexicana site knows I am in Argentina, and it won´t accept the idea that my credit card is a U.S. card if I am in Argentina!! Isn´t that rediculous!! I´ll probably have to take an all-night bus because of this hangup. What a mess!!!!!
I´ve been in Curico for two days. It´s a city of 150,000 people that is 2 1/2 hours south of Santiago. It´s a center for the fruit and wine industry in Chile. Coming here, we passed lots of vineyards and orchards. There were also lots of big fruit warehouses and packing plants. Some of the names were American--Dole and Del Monte, for two. Just outside of Curico is the Torres Winery. I went by there today, but it wasn´t open for some reason. It is one of the best known of all the wineries in Chile, and their wines are exported both to the U.S. and to Chile. It´s a nice complex that even includes a restaurant.
When I arrived yesterday, I went to the tourist office where a very nice young student spoke English well. She said he father and her brother are doctors if I need any help with my thumb while here! She suggested restaurants and places to stay and gave me maps.
I had a strange experience with the first place I went for a room. The woman opened the door and quoted a price of 6000 pesos when I asked for a room for one person. I asked if I could see the room, and she didn´t understand. I tried motioning by pointing to my eyes. She got upset. I think she thought I was trying to talk her down in price or something. How she could help but understand that I wanted to look at the room, I don´t know; everyone else everywhere has understood that pointing to the eyes and then pointing into the building means that I want to see the room. Anyway, then she had a sour look on her face and announced she had only a double room that was grand in size and would be 10,000 pesos. As I walked away, I thought two things: 1. I didn´t like her personality, so I am glad that I didn´t stay there. 2. She really was a bitch.
I found another place down the street, but there were strange things about it, too. I got a nice room upstairs with a window overlooking the back yard. In the evening when I had returned to the room, I realized that one bed was better than the other because it was more firm whereas the other sagged. I got on top of the bed to read for a while. After I while, I felt a bite and looked. I found a flea. I searched and found one other. Well, I looked at the other bed and pulled the covers back. It had light colored sheets, so I could see that it was fine. I went to bed in it, but then I couldn´t sleep because the sag was so really bad. After about 2 hours, I realized that I needed to deal with the problem. I moved my luggage to the side, lifted a chair onto the top of the bed with the fleas, and took my mattress off the sagging bed and placed it on the floor. After that, I slept well all night. Then this morning, I asked one of the two women (sisters?) running the place for a towel. As she went to get one, the other must have asked what I wanted. Then she started yelling. It must have been because she didn´t think they should have to provide me with a towel. Anyway, this town seems to have a problem with women with problems!
I had a late lunch because of the time it took to get here and to get a room yesterday. Most places had quit serving lunch by then. I found a pizza place and had a small pizza and a glass of pineapple juice. The pizza was good with a thin, crispy crust and covered with tomato sauce, cheese, ham and mushrooms. It was nice to have a pizza (and a good one, too) for a change.
The tourist office told me that Tur Bus has buses to Villarica. That´s the company that showed nothing on their computers when we checked in Santiago. So I went back to the Tur Bus office after eating. Sure enough, there were about 5 buses to choose from. They all begin in Santiago, so the night buses are LATE NIGHT buses from here. I took the earliest one. It will pick me up here tonight at 1 a.m.
It was too late to do anything else after all that but explore the town. I saw an old church from the 1700s, an ornate bandstand on the square, a modern church built inside the ruins of an old church, the shopping streets, etc. I spent quite a bit of time in the plaza on a bench watching people and reading. I bought two empanadas (ground meat, onion, gravy, olive, and boiled egg inside the crust) and ate them and went to my room around 8:30.
Today, I took a bus to Molina planning to stop at the Torres Winery. When I saw that it was closed, I just went on to Molina on the bus. We passed apple orchards with apples hanging on the trees, tomato fields where they were picking the tomatoes and then cutting down the stalks, more vinyards, more fruit packing plants, etc. Molina is a small old town. The houses are all adobe with super thick walls and old, old tile roofs. I wandered the streets, bought a pastry and ate it, sat on the square for a while, and then caught the bus back to Curico.
I ate lunch at a nice small place run by a mother and son. There were only two choices--two things I´ve had too frequently lately--but I chose one anyway. I had the sweet corn casserole with chicken, beef, boiled egg, etc. I had tomato salad first, drank melon juice, and had a big slice of watermelon as dessert. It was all good quality. I may go back and have a sandwich there for dinner tonight with a banana milk shake.
Most of the afternoon, I have been sitting in the plaza here reading. I´m just passing the time and trying to stay comfortable. It´s now 6:30, so I have about 6 hours more to go before the bus will be arriving. I may hike up a hill. I have to go back to my hotel around 9:00 and pick up my luggage that I stored there.
Tomorrow I will arrive in Villarica. That is on the northern edge of the Lake District. I´m keeping my fingers crossed that I can find a room when I get there.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Last Day in Santiago
| Last Day in Santiago Thursday, Feb. 1, Santiago, Chile Well, today is my last day here in Santiago. I´ve done most of what I think I would like to do. I didn´t go up on top of the big hill in town for the view, because the days have been cloudy until 2 p.m. and then have been rather hazy. But I did climb to the top of Santa Lucia (smaller hill near my hotel) and saw the view from there. Last night, I stayed in my hotel room and watched movies--BAD movies. The movie channels show only the horrible films that are popular with teenagers except for one channel which specializes in independent films. Unfortunately, all their films were foreign, meaning that I could not understand the spoken language or read the Spanish subtitles. Anyway, it was nice just to relax after all the walking I had done earlier in the day. Today, I walked a lot, too. I started by heading for Providencia. It´s an upper-class neighborhood just east of the center of town. The shops are elegant, and the homes are fancy. But that´s about all there is to see there. It´s a clean, pretty neighborhood, but.... I did see a photography exhibit from one of the Chilean polynesian islands at the tourist office there, however. It was quite interesting. I returned to my hotel area and had lunch at the same place where I ate two days ago. I had planned to eat at a neighboring place, but their menu didn´t sound good today. I had chicken consome, salad plate (tomatoes, beans, broccoli, and another green vegetable I didn´t know but that the owner wanted me to try--it was good), roast pork in gravy with rice, flan, and Sprite. All that cost about $5 including the tip. I went to the bus station to plan my travels out of here. I had planned to go from here to Curico for 1-2 nights and then go from there to Villarica. Unfortunately, there are no buses operated by the two main bus companies between Curico and Villarica. But I decided it would be bad to try to go by night bus all the way to Villarica tomorrow night. First, they are probably already booked up. Second, what would I do all day here tomorrow? And third, I didn´t want to arrive in Villarica (a resort in the Lake District) on Saturday of the first weekend of the Chilean tourist month. February is the MAIN month for traveling by Chileans. So I am worried anyway about heading to the Lake District. To arrive there on a Saturday just doesn´t sound like a good idea. So I bought a ticket to Curico and will decide when I get there what to do. I will check immediately to see if there are bus companies that provide service between there and Villarica and, if so, whether they have tickets for Saturday night. If not, then I will figure out where to go toward the south that I can get to. Complicating all of this is that I also have to keep in mind that I need to be somewhere on Monday or Tuesday that is big enough someone will speak English to help me get an x-ray of my thumb. If it is healed, I am supposed to get the splint and the pins removed. So.... We´ll see what happens about heading southward and I will report it in the blog. Of course, there is also the unaswered question of whether I can get housing once I get to Curico tomorrow. It doesn´t seem to be a big tourist site, so I am hoping there will be a place for me. Again, stay tuned to this blog for the answer. I´m going out wandering tonight since it is my last night here. I have no particular plans for where to go. I just feel the need to see some of the city by night. Of course, I won´t be seeing the NIGHT LIFE. Dinner time isn´t until 10:30 or 11:00, and night life beyond that doesn´t get going until about 1 a.m.!! I´ll be long asleep by either of those two times. |
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Cold in Santiago
Cold in Santiago
Wednesday, Feb. 1, Santiago, Chile
Everywhere I have been in Chile so far has been cold at night and until about 1:00 p.m. This is summer here, so I am surprised about that. I guess it´s the winds coming off the Pacific Ocean. I can´t put on my windbreaker or my jacket because of my hand being too big with the splint. So every day I have to just be cold until the sun comes out and it warms up in the afternoon.
It was a long bus trip from Vicuna to Santiago. Next to me was a young man who was mostly still, but it was still difficult to sleep for long. I really didn´t rest.
We arrived here at 6:30 a.m. I took the metro to the area of the Hotel Paris which both my guidebooks recommended (but which they said there could be a problem during the summer months getting a room). I lucked out. All they had was a double, but the man let me have it at a bit of a discount. I am paying a little more than for a single room, but I have a big bed to stretch out on. So I´m happy. It´s a central location making it easy for me to come and go and to get to anywhere I want to go in town.
I was so tired that I went to bed immediately. I slept about two hours. Then I forced myself to get up and explore. I stayed outdoors, though. I knew I was too tired to concentrate on exhibits at a museum. I returned to the hotel area at 2:00 for lunch, took another 2-hour nap, and then went out to explore another area. Lunch was great--the menu executivo at a place full of people. It included the salad bar (one trip only), the main course (I had roast beef with mashed potatoes which is what 90% of everyone there was having), juice, and a choice of desserts (I had flan).
Santiago is a nice city. It´s clean and modern. It could be in Europe or the U.S. There is a problem with too many people in the center, however. It has pedestrian-only shopping streets, a nice old market, wonderful buildings from the late 1800s, various styles of neighborhoods, etc. It is difficult to walk down the sidewalks with so many people on them even though the walks are very wide. It´s a case of constantly trying to avoid bumping into people. Tuesday, I wandered the downtown area and the Belavista area (the more bohemian area with narrow streets and lots of nightlife but nothing much happening in the daytime).
I took a pile of laundry to a place near my hotel. I´ll pick it up this afternoon and have a nice clean wardrobe to begin wearing. I almost bought some new clothes in La Serena the other day. Two big department stores were having sales with nice polo shirts for $3-8 and with shorts, swimsuits, etc., also on sale. But I would have had to throw away something, and everything I am wearing is still quite nice.
Being so tired last night, I just ate hotdogs (bun, hot dog, chopped tomato, mashed avocado, dashes of hot sauce) near the hotel and went to bed early. And even with that, I am still feeling tired today.
I spent this morning doing two things. I watched the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace. Like all such ceremonies I´ve seen, I found it to be too slow and boring. Even the band that was playing played as if it were half dead! Then I walked nearby to the Museum of Pre-Colombian Artifacts. It´s fantastic. Every item is of high quality, and they have items representing what seems to be all civilizations from Mexico to the tip of South America. I spent about 3 hours there wishing I could do it in parts returning daily for several days.
I had a big lunch today. It started with a tomato and onion salad. Tomatoes are so tasty here, since it is summer. Then I had pastel de choclo again. Unfortunatly, it wasn´t as good as the one I had the other day. I had a glass of juice and fruit salad for dessert.
Now, I plan to return to my hotel room to rest. I am tired.
Wednesday, Feb. 1, Santiago, Chile
Everywhere I have been in Chile so far has been cold at night and until about 1:00 p.m. This is summer here, so I am surprised about that. I guess it´s the winds coming off the Pacific Ocean. I can´t put on my windbreaker or my jacket because of my hand being too big with the splint. So every day I have to just be cold until the sun comes out and it warms up in the afternoon.
It was a long bus trip from Vicuna to Santiago. Next to me was a young man who was mostly still, but it was still difficult to sleep for long. I really didn´t rest.
We arrived here at 6:30 a.m. I took the metro to the area of the Hotel Paris which both my guidebooks recommended (but which they said there could be a problem during the summer months getting a room). I lucked out. All they had was a double, but the man let me have it at a bit of a discount. I am paying a little more than for a single room, but I have a big bed to stretch out on. So I´m happy. It´s a central location making it easy for me to come and go and to get to anywhere I want to go in town.
I was so tired that I went to bed immediately. I slept about two hours. Then I forced myself to get up and explore. I stayed outdoors, though. I knew I was too tired to concentrate on exhibits at a museum. I returned to the hotel area at 2:00 for lunch, took another 2-hour nap, and then went out to explore another area. Lunch was great--the menu executivo at a place full of people. It included the salad bar (one trip only), the main course (I had roast beef with mashed potatoes which is what 90% of everyone there was having), juice, and a choice of desserts (I had flan).
Santiago is a nice city. It´s clean and modern. It could be in Europe or the U.S. There is a problem with too many people in the center, however. It has pedestrian-only shopping streets, a nice old market, wonderful buildings from the late 1800s, various styles of neighborhoods, etc. It is difficult to walk down the sidewalks with so many people on them even though the walks are very wide. It´s a case of constantly trying to avoid bumping into people. Tuesday, I wandered the downtown area and the Belavista area (the more bohemian area with narrow streets and lots of nightlife but nothing much happening in the daytime).
I took a pile of laundry to a place near my hotel. I´ll pick it up this afternoon and have a nice clean wardrobe to begin wearing. I almost bought some new clothes in La Serena the other day. Two big department stores were having sales with nice polo shirts for $3-8 and with shorts, swimsuits, etc., also on sale. But I would have had to throw away something, and everything I am wearing is still quite nice.
Being so tired last night, I just ate hotdogs (bun, hot dog, chopped tomato, mashed avocado, dashes of hot sauce) near the hotel and went to bed early. And even with that, I am still feeling tired today.
I spent this morning doing two things. I watched the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace. Like all such ceremonies I´ve seen, I found it to be too slow and boring. Even the band that was playing played as if it were half dead! Then I walked nearby to the Museum of Pre-Colombian Artifacts. It´s fantastic. Every item is of high quality, and they have items representing what seems to be all civilizations from Mexico to the tip of South America. I spent about 3 hours there wishing I could do it in parts returning daily for several days.
I had a big lunch today. It started with a tomato and onion salad. Tomatoes are so tasty here, since it is summer. Then I had pastel de choclo again. Unfortunatly, it wasn´t as good as the one I had the other day. I had a glass of juice and fruit salad for dessert.
Now, I plan to return to my hotel room to rest. I am tired.
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