Heading North

This Saturday (tomorrow) I leave Santiago, and head North. However, despite travelling some 1,750 kilometres, I'll still be very much in Chile. The journey will be spread over 10 days, and in the process I'll be bussing the equivalent of London to Moscow - it's a pretty long way! Have a look at this map for an idea of the route:

The Atacama Desert

I'm travelling with Pachamama by Bus, a backpacker bus company, for the first 5 days. We're heading to San Pedro de Atacama, and breaking up the journey with overnight stops in La Serena (second oldest city in Chile), Bahia Inglesa (beaches, penguins, and natural park), and Angofagosta (mining heritage). We'll get to San Pedro de Atacama (in the middle of the driest place in the world) and then I'll stay there for 4/5 days. Then I bus all the way back down to Santiago, a journey that will take about 24 hours.

"Semi-Cama" seats: 2nd class on coaches

An interesting point is that Chile has a really good bus network, and a very poor rail network. Although trains allegedly go down to Puerto Montt, in the South, I can't actually seem to find any information about these, and the only main train route is around the Santiago metropolitan area. Buses are the way to get around. There's a huge coach network, which is really very good; the coaches are safe, comfortable, and relatively quick. Also, unlike anything else in Chile, they actually have a timetable which they run to. The best company seems to be TurBus, which has routes country-wide, and also goes into Bolivia, Argentina and Perú - a safe bet for my journey. Plus, tickets are cheap: San Pedro to Santiago is costing me $18,000 pesos, which is around £25. Not bad for that big a journey, in seats comparable to business class flying.

I might not have very much internet access throughout the journey, but I'll post photos and info on here when I can.

(PS. Well done Penny for finishing the LifeCycle ride - Britain is a long country to bike all the way down!)

1973-1990

This weekend was an interesting mix: I went to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, the Iglesia de San Francisco (sorry, Martha!), the Cerro Santa Lucia, and then partied on down in Barrio Lastarria and Vitacura with some friends of friends from work.

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is dedicated to the victims of human rights violations committed during the dictatorship of Augosto Pinochet, from 1973 to 1990. It's a really excellent museum that shows the story of what happened during the dictatorship, as well as the coup itself, and their fall from power. Some of it's pretty nasty stuff: the secret state police, the DINA (replaced by CNI) and other government organisations, were responsible for the torture, execution, interrogation, intimidation and "disappearing" of tens of thousands of Chileans. Also taking into account both the 200,000 Chileans who were forced into exile and the fact that this happened little more than 20 years ago, it's understandable that this is something that Chileans are still coming to terms with; the museum was pretty empty.

Next up was a bit more sight-seeing, albeit slightly less heavy. The Iglesia de San Francisco is the oldest church in Santiago, and has managed to weather the frequent earthquakes well considering it's made out of adobe. It's a nice place, but basically just another church that happens to look a bit different. Close by is the Cerro Santa Lucia, a small hill in the middle of downtown Santiago Centro. You have to sign the guest book before entering (why, I'm not sure) but the walk up is well worth it for the great views on top. However, the vast number of cuddling couples on benches was a little off-putting; one is fine, but there was genuinely a couple on every single bench. Ew. However, the view at the top was pretty cool!

Santiago by Night!

So this weekend I had a number of milestones in my Chilean life. Chris, my predecessor at Redland School, had his last day on Thursday and left the country today (Monday), so we decided to go out in Santiago by day and by night.

On Friday night we went to a house party with another Redland ex-staff member, Sam, who's now studying at Católica as a part of his year abroad from the Uni of Bath. There I met a load of other students on their year abroad, as well as some Chilean students also at Católica. From there on we went to a Karaoke Bar in Providencia (an upmarket district near to Las Condes), and then onto a Cuban salsa bar where my dancing made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in skill.

Argentine and Chilean heads
of state + Pisco Sour

During this epic journey across Santiago, I was introduced to the Chilean passion that is pisco. Pisco is a Chilean/Peruvian* grape brandy that they seem to drink as if its water, and have created a number of equally revered cocktails from it as well. The Pisco Sour is the most common of these: pisco with egg white, lemon juice and sugar. Another favourite is Piscola, which is simply pisco and Coca Cola - simple. The Chilean way of serving it seems to be with alarming quantities of pisco compared to coke.

The next day, I was introduced to another Chilean passion: the asado, or BBQ. Given the reputation of Argentinian beef, and my experience with Chilean portion sizes, I was expecting great things and it didn't disappoint! We had a big BBQ with chicken, pork, beef and sausage, along with the staple of avocado and the normal accessories, plus mandatory pisco. When the sun set and it got colder another fire was started, and everyone sat around it in the evening chatting and continuing to plough through quantities of meat.

Gringo central

Sunday I had another lovely lie in, then met with Sam and Chris in the Plaza de Armas (central downtown) just before lunch. We walked through town, visiting the Mercado Central (seafood) and the Mercado de la Vega (meat and veg) before going to Bellavista for lunch, Chilean style. Queue more meat. We then headed out into Providencia again for a quick trip to a popular gringo bar where we met with another Redland teacher for a few goodbye drinks.

Then back to school for another week!

* This is actually yet another sore point between Chile and Perú. At the BBQ later that weekend I was firmly assured that Pisco and the Pisco Sour are 100% Chilean, and Perú is merely up to their old tricks in trying to steal it from Chile.