Friday 2/19/10 We land in (SCL) Santiago, Chile at 6:00pm and have no arrangement to get from
the airport to the hotel. Upon arrival in the country, and before we go through
immigration, we, as Americans have to pay a "reciprocity fee" (this only affects
citizens of the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Albania). Basically, there
is a fee that Chilean citizens are charged when entering the USA, so Chile has
decided to charge US citizens the same fee when they enter Chile. It is
different than a departure tax like we paid in Lima, and the fee changes based
on currency exchange rates. Today the fee is US$131 each to enter the country-
and they don’t take faded, ripped, folded, or any otherwise used-looking bills.
I learned this as two of my bills were rejected for having a ¼” tear in the top
center of the bills. I understand they don’t want bills missing parts and
whatnot, but this was really ridiculous and would have been more so if I didn’t
have two replacement bills! The ONLY saving grace is that the payment is good
for the life of the passports (which were just renewed last year). As we exit
the customs area, we are, like in Lima, swamped by taxi drivers and bus
companies looking to get your business. It gets to the point, where I
begin to feel a bit of sensory overload and just need some calm to sort out our
options and decide what we are going to do. The guidebook recommended a p/4000 (4000
Chilean pesos) bus to the city center which sounds good to me, but I have
decided that as much as we are capable of taking public transport to a hotel,
there is something to be said for door to door service when you are lugging
your baggage behind you and on your shoulders. El and I get ourselves away from
the crush of drivers and set our bags down. Leaving El to keep an eye on the bags, I take on the challenge of figuring
out what our best method to get to the hotel from the airport is. I go down and
get a quote from a taxi for p/15000, the bus company comes in with p/11000 for
the same ride. I decide to go the bus route and leave to get El. While walking
back to the bus counter, a taxi driver stops me. I ask him how much to
Providencia (where our hotel is)? He says p/12000. I counter with p/10000 (US$19)
and hold firm. I know I have a bus for p/11000 so anything equal or more is a
failure. Eventually, the taxi driver sees I am not interested in haggling.
Overpriced or not, he knows he can take it or leave it. He takes it and I have
my cheapest trip from the airport to hotel. It is a door to door for p/5000
each (then again my guidebook is a few years old, damn Ebay). On the drive from
the airport to the hotel, I can already tell that the driving in this city is
much more civilized than the driving in Lima where I was just happy to get out of
some situations alive!! We check in and ask the desk clerk to call in a dinner
reservation for us at a parrillada, or steakhouse. El made the choice based on the
location. We walk to the closest metro stop and try to figure out the station's Tarjeta Bip kiosk, an automated fare card dispenser. To no avail. There is no
English option on the touchscreen and we do not understand enough of the
choices to make an educated decision. We head to the customer service window
and ask “¿Habla Inglés?”, but none of the four workers in the booth do. El speaks enough Spanish to understand that there is no weekly
unlimited fare card and that what they do offer is the Tarjeta Bip. A card like a NYC
Metrocard- you put money on the card, you swipe the card on a metro or city
bus to draw down the money, and then you can refill the card at any time. We
buy one card for the two of us and head to the dinner spot called Parrillada la
Uruguaya. Our reservations are for 9:00pm and we arrive around 8:50. They seat
us with menus and after some brief negotiation, we order the house mixed grill
for one (for two) which consists of a lomo, which is a regular steak that tastes good,
but has a little too much gristle for my liking; morcilla or Spanish blood
sausage which is a casing stuffed with an attractive mixture of pig’s blood,
rice, onions, spices, and crushed walnuts, which turns out to be better than we
thought it would be (we both actually ate all of it!); a pamplona chicken which
is chicken breast stuffed with ham and provolone, and then marinated in chimichurri
and grilled, it is good, but pretty salty; a salty chorizo link each and an assado tiro
which is a cut of beef with several pieces of rib bones visible in the cross
section that is much tougher than we expected. We meant to order french fries
with mayo, but instead are served potatoes with mayo sauce (like potato salad
without the onions). We also get a tomato and lettuce salad, and the table’s
bowl of chimichurri is as excellent as I remembered it. Castillero Del Diablo is the wine
that we drink with it. From the description in the dining guide, El picked
well. In actuality, this place is nowhere near the quality of Parilla Peña in Buenos
Aires (where we first ate chimichurri and assado tiro). During dinner we plan
our next stop for the night. We know the metro stops running around
10:30-11:00, so we take it back towards the hotel to avoid getting stranded in
this as yet unfamiliar city. Again referring to the dining guide (Liz Caskey’s eat
wine guides: Santiago) we choose to start out at a bar called Santo
Remedio. We do our best to navigate the maps, but need to ask for help from a
street vendor. Even if I don’t speak the language, I find it much easier to ask
anyone on the street if I am heading in the right direction than to waste my
time going out of my way and having to be turned around later. The vendor
confirms that we are indeed heading in the right direction and we press on another
block or two and make our turn onto Ca. Roman Diaz. We got down to 152 and turn
into the bar. The dinner depleted most of the cash that we brought out with us
tonight, so we need to be diligent not to overspend. I keep my eyes peeled for
an ATM but we are in more of a residential neighborhood than a commercial one,
so for now we deal with what we have. Still very full from dinner, we are
looking to drink a little before calling it a night. This being a wine country,
I refer to my “Edict of Spain 2005”, that states, “when in a country known for
their beer, drink the beer. And when in a wine country, drink the wine. The
beer will probably suck in a wine country and the wine will probably suck in a
beer country. Very few countries do both well”. Chile makes wine. Show me some!
The waitress brings us food and drink menus and even though I am not usually a
wine drinker, I am about to order wine. Having no idea what we are ordering, we
get a bottle of Cefira Chardonay. It is not as dry and crisp as I like my
whites, but I'll deal with it. We use the time to journal and check email. Enjoying the music,
wine...and company. We are both affected by the wine. We expect that the metro
is closed by now, so we walk back to the hotel to walk off the buzz. It is a
bit of a hike, but the clear summer night made for a nice stroll. We fall into
bed and are out for the night.
Saturday 2/20/10
We wake up late and take the metro to Plaza de Armas which
is the central square in the city. From here we walk to Mercado Centrale.      
Observation: The
metro system in Santiago is called the Metrored. The subway cars and stations
are very clean and the schedules seem fast and efficient. There were times when
we got into a station as a train was pulling away, just to have another arrive
mere seconds later to take us on our way. Unfortunately, there is no air
conditioning in the stations or on the trains. All of the windows are open and a nice breeze can be created
inside the speeding train, but when the car is filled with passengers, the
shorter the trip, the better! It is an odd sensation when the summer heat of an
underground subway station feels refreshing by comparison as you exit the
train. The other significant downsides of the system are the time it stops
running at night- especially Friday and Saturdays when the bars and night spots
are just getting started around that time and also the areas of the city that are
not conveniently serviced by the system. We noticed when spending time in Barrio
Bellavista that the nearest stations were in neighboring barrios. I guess we
didn’t mind so much being tourists looking to see the city, but I’d be a little
disappointed if I lived here. There are three different fares for rides: peak,
off peak, and holiday, with the most expensive being p/400 ($.80). The card is
Tarjeta Bip or Bipcard. Wondering where they got the name from, after a few
trips we figured out that the “bip” is actually the onomatopoeia for the “beep” sound you hear when you swipe the card
at the station turnstiles. So, for us it was really the “beep card”.
We head back to the room to nap for a few hours and get up
at 9:00pm to head out for the night. First stop is a bar called Blondie which
proves much more difficult to find than we expect. We take the metro to Los
Heroes and head up and down Bernardo O’Higgins (we have no number, just a
street name and the closest metro stop). The area is a little dark with most
businesses closed for the night. I ask a few passersby for the direction and
get several answers, all different. I appreciate their willingness to help, but
would have preferred to be told they really don't know than sent in the wrong
direction. We pass a bar called Burdeos that is playing loud music and seems to
have a lot of people in it. They have a wi-fi connection and we stop in to get
a beer, and check the internet for more information on Blondie. I am able to
find one of the bartenders speaks English and seems to know where Blondie is.
El is not feeling all that well, so I am not sure if we will be out late or get
food or what. The other thing is that bars are just starting to open around
10:00, but the metro stops running at 10:30. We will have to walk or taxi the
rest of the night. This place is plays pretty good music with Led Zeppelin, Van
Halen and Aerosmith on the video screens. They serve no wine, so I am starting
the night with a Heineken and some free popcorn. It is now 11:00 and I am ready
to hit our next stop. Well, Blondie turns out to be a bust. We do find it and
it is located in the basement of a shopping center (explaining why we were not given
a specific address). When we get to the door there is a woman sitting behind a
velvet rope with a clipboard (Studio 54 style). We ask to go in, but she says
they do not open for at least another half hour and says that there will be
different cover charges when they do open (I presume cheaper for ladies) but
she does not know how much yet. We decide not to waste time waiting and make
the decision to head to Barrio Bellavista to check some of the metal bars the tourism
guy told me about today. As we walk down Av. O'Higgins I stop for a cheese
empanada from a street vendor for p/500. A few feet later, we buy a bottle of water
from another vendor and head to a bus stop to try to figure out a bus to get us
there (as the metro has stopped running). We pull out our maps and are
confident that given the necessity, we could figure out the bus system to get
us where we need to go. But after a half hour, we just take a metered taxi. We
again, have no address, only a map with a star where the bars are. The taxi is
quick and costs around p/4400. We start walking towards the first bar called
Oxide. I stop some pedestrians and ask if they know where it is. They do not. I
then ask about the other bar and one seems to know the name as he points is in
the direction. As we part, one of the girls turns to El and tells her to keep
her eye on her bags and belongings in the bar. We turn down the street and head
to where my map shows me. We get about 100 yards down the block and I hear some
loud music coming out of a bar. I stop and look in, and sure enough this is the
place we are looking for...  Sunday 2/21/10
We eat a quick breakfast at the hotel and take the metro
back to Plaza de Armas. The tourist info guy told us to wait in front of the
cathedral and look for people in red shirts with signs that say "free
tour". We find a bench and wait. We wait for about a half hour with no one
showing to either give tours or take tours. As it gets closer to 10:00am, we
scrap the hope that anyone will show and we decide to go to the tourist
information office to learn more, but they are still closed and have no hours
posted. We then just start doing our own thing and go back to the Museo De Arte
Precolombino that is said to be one of the better museums in the city. We
arrive around 9:50 and they open at 10:00. As we stand outside the locked gate
waiting for them to open, a woman arrives for work and when the gate opens to
let her in, she waves all of us who are waiting, inside. Everyone files behind
her as she walks through a small courtyard and into the admissions desk area
where the staff halts us in Spanish. The woman, not realizing we were still
following her, sternly tells the group that the museum doesn’t open until
10:00! Without saying anything I guess we should have known that she meant for
us to be let into the courtyard and not into the museum itself. For all of the
commotion, I would have rather just waited outside where I was. At 10:00 the
admissions people tell us the museum has opened and we go in. We go through the
rather small museum. It does happen to be one of the only museums that allowed
photography- although without flash. In addition, it was the one museum we saw
that did have English exhibit cards on the displays. No other languages
(besides Spanish), but at least I was able to appreciate the exhibit without a
guide or interpreter. We did see that free English tours are available, but
they must be set up at least 24 hours in advance. However, the size of this
museum coupled with my level of enthusiasm for the material, I was OK with the
self-guided tour. We are through the permanent and temporary exhibits rather
quickly and headed back to Av. O’Higgins where we stop at one of the many Café
Caribe’s to experience “coffee with legs”. Think of it as Hooters…but with
coffee. Basically, the café is a room with a single counter winding through.
You go to the cashier and place your order and pay, receiving a coupon for your
drinks. Then you take the receipt to the counter and wait for one of the young
ladies to come and take it. In the back of the room there is a counter with a
sizable coffee machine setup with one or two male baristas behind it. As the men
make your coffee, the girls, all in matching, blue, one-piece, long shirts
(short enough to show a maximum of leg!), prepare everything else for your
order. They get things like sugar, creamers, saucers, and spoons, while
standing and facing the baristas in the back, allowing them to show off their
back sides to the customers. I do believe El was the only woman on this side of
the counter and I was easily the youngest customer by many, many years. The old
guys go in to get a thrill while the hot young ladies stir the sugar into their
coffee for them. A cute gimmick, but of the two drinks we ordered (one hot
chocolate and one cappuccino), they were both wrong (one chocolate milk with
whipped cream and one regular coffee were delivered). We just drank them and
moved on, because you don’t come here for the drinks! (We also felt creepy
asking to take a picture inside- so we only got a shot of the outside). I read
a travel blog that suggested that the museum at the Iglesia San Francisco has
one of the Moai heads that are so symbolic of Easter Island. We walk to the
church and do a cursory walk around the building, expecting that a building
that has one would display it prominently. Not seeing it, we head into the
museum portion and pay the p/1000 each. This is a completely self-guided tour
and there are no English brochures or signs. We walk through the rooms with a
lot of artifacts and art work in them. Like most other places, there is no photography allowed at all. The courtyard looks more like a forest than the “gardens” that we see
in a lot of church courtyards. We get to the end of our tour without seeing a
Moai head.  
Observation:
there are a couple of things to look for on a restaurant bill. First, the
waiter never brings the check until you ask for it. I was curious to test this
theory and see if they would after it was clear that we were well past done,
but I did not have the patience and we did wind up asking for the “la cuenta
por favor” at every place we ate at. Second, tipping in restaurants is flat
10%. Some places add the tip (or “propina”) to the bill and some do not. We
always check the bill and ask what the charges are if we don’t recognize them. My
rule of thumb is that if they added 10%, that’s what they got. If they did not add
it, they got 15%. I think it is pretty lousy to add a tip to the bill and not
itemize it, possibly tricking me into double tipping. We were told they only
added tips to parties of six or more, but found most places added it to our
bill for two. This is not to be confused with a silverware charge called a
"cobierto" which we saw more in Lima, but not so much in Santiago. [Ironically,
you are not expected to tip taxi drivers. In fact, they will have your change
out so fast and wish you a good day before you can even calculate a tip amount!]
After drinks, we head back to La Chascona and wait for our
tour to begin. The woman who sold me the tickets smiles when I enter and
affirms when I point upstairs to the tour. It is now 4:25 as we sit in the cafe
and wait for the tour. At 4:30 a guide comes through and announces, in French, “4:30
tour en Francais”. The Francophones leave with the guide. Then, we waited and
waited until around 4:40 when I went back to the ticket desk to see if we were waiting
in the right place. Well, without going into so much detail, the ticket seller
thought she sold us a French tour and that no English tour would go until 5:30!
They refused to do anything for us until then. They they gave us the choice of
a refund, a spot on the 5:30 tour or we could come back on Tuesday. As a last
ditch effort I pointed again to our ticket that read 16:30 tour en Inglés. The
ticket office chalked it up to a “misunderstanding”, I chalked it up to poor
customer service, took my refund, and do not plan to return (although if El wants to go back, I won't resist). We walk back to the metro and come back
to the hotel to sleep before going out tonight for dinner and bars. We start
off the night by going back to the same bar from our first night here called Santo
Remedio, unfortunately they are closed, so we have to come up with a plan B. We
had passed a place with a lot of neon lighting on the way to the bar, and El
says she wants to go back to the “place with all the lights" which is
called Bavaria. Hmmm, coming to Chile to eat at a German restaurant is odd, but
we go for it. It turns out to be the Chilean German equivalent of Denny’s! We
get the "dinner for 2" which starts with a pisco sour...made with
either really bad pisco or really bad sour mix. Either way, not the the best
pisco sour I've ever had. The dinner for two includes a mixed grill, like the one from the
other night. Two each of steaks, pork chops, boiled potatoes, chorizos, and blood
sausages. So my question to you, would you eat a blood sausage at Denny's?? At
one point I did cut into the link and the piercing started to ooze! It wasn't blood,
but it was enough to make me put the piece back on the grill. We got a plate of
raw tomato and onion as a salad. A plate of papas fritas rounds out the food. Included was also a 1/2 bottle of Vino
Santa Emiliana, the house wine. Over dinner El and I discuss the incident at La
Chascona. We summarily rehashed the events and I made it clear that I
understand mistakes happen and that the thing I objected to most was the ticket
seller putting partial blame on me by calling it a "misunderstanding"
and accusing me of buying a tour in French regardless of the fact that the
ticket had “Inglés” printed on it! The most frustrating thing was that when
she sold me the tickets she spoke excellent English, but when this all went
down she conveniently couldn't understand what the issue was and had another
young lady do the speaking for her. Anyway, I told El that if she wanted to go
back, I would and if we did not go back I would be OK with that too. The dinner
comes with ice cream and the choices are vanilla, chocolate, berry, and chirimoya.
Having never heard of chirimoya, we get that and the ice cream tastes like
pineapple life savers. A cherimoya is a “custard apple” that has a flavor of a
cross between pear and pineapple. Later in the trip, we pass a fruit market
that has a cherimoya display so we see what it looks like, but we didn’t buy
one.
Observation: This city has a lot of stray dogs everywhere. They can be seen in parks, roaming the streets, resting in doorways, or foraging for scraps in the public squares. Sometimes they are alone, but mostly you see two at a time. Although once at night we saw a few walking down the middle of a street together. A tad scary for a few seconds until you realized they were not going to bother you. They must be used to people because none of them bother or confront you in any way. In this heat, I was thankful to not have gotten close enough to smell them. They are just something that you see everywhere.
We decide to walk back to the hotel and we see that everything that isn’t
already closed is closing. We are having no luck finding an afterhours place to
get a bottle of wine and journal as we wind down the night. We get within a
block or two of the hotel and there is a guy standing on the corner holding a
menu and trying to get us to come to his restaurant. It is a Brazilian karaoke
bar complete with resident singer and a room full of people dancing and
enjoying their night. The place is called Louisiana and the staff is very
friendly and smile when I pull out the only Portuguese word I know
(obrigato=thank you). The menu is mostly grilled meats and alcohol. We are full
from dinner, and this is the only game in town, so we pick up our Scrabble
game, order a bottle of wine and toast our anniversary. After an hour we
realize that this place is more crowded now than when we first got here. I guess
there is a market for Brazilian karaoke in Santiago tonight. It is now 1:00am
on a Sunday night and this bar is still hopping. When the waiter brought the
bottle to the table, before he opened it, we specifically asked "how much
is the bottle?" El translated p/7000 ($14US). At this point they have
stopped serving desserts and coffees (if I want more drinks though, I am
covered). We will finish up the wine and head to the hotel and call it a night.
We drank our wine and asked for the bill, and when it arrived, the bill was p/15000
(US$30). Figuring there was not much we could do to renegotiate, we paid and
left. On the way out I saw one of the waiters who had come to our table over
the course of the night. He smiled and wished me a good night, so I asked if
he was the one that told us the price of the wine. He said “no”, but asked what
the problem was. I said we were told it would be p/7000 but were charged p/15000.
He sprang up and went in to confront the waiter who did bring the wine. El and
the two waiters discussed the situation, and El admitted that she may have
misunderstood the original quote. I agreed if it was our fault, we were good,
but if he misquoted us and overcharged, we were not good. El reaffirmed that it
was she that misunderstood. I smiled and shook everyone’s hand to let them know
that I was taking the blame for the issue...although we didn't have much choice.
Tomorrow’s agenda, Cerro San Cristobal funicular, plan trip to vineyard on Tuesday,
possible anniversary dinner. Even though there were many speed bumps today (free
walking tour fail, Moai head bust (no pun intended), Neruda house tour fail,
most restaurants and bars closed on Sunday definite bummer!, and ending the
night with yet another “misunderstanding”) El says it is days like these that
test our abilities to be intrepid travelers. She is right!
Monday 2/22/10
No solid plans today. We get up late, around 9:30, and stop
at Starbucks to check email then to Fuente Alemana for lomitos (pork sandwiches)
for breakfast. 
Observation: it
is odd that some things are considerably cheaper than at home, while some other
things are way more expensive than we expect. For example, taxis seem to be
relatively cheap and travel by public transport is about 1/3 what we pay at
home. However, some of the restaurants we ate at we felt were more than we
would have paid at home. US$30 for the lomito lunch was a bit steep, even if
they are known to be the best in the city! Beers in bars were cheap at
$4/liter, but $14 each for a tour of the winery was a bit more than it should
have been.
Today is overcast and a bit cooler than we have seen in this
city, which means 60's, and that is still OK by us. We will wait to see if it
clears up a little before going up San Cristobal. Our next stop is the Estacion
Centrale to do a dry run to figure out the transport to the south tomorrow for
our wine tour (and hopefully there will be no "misunderstandings")!
We know that we have to get a bus from the San Borja bus station near Estacion
Centrale, but we do not know how much the ride is or how long it takes. Our
tour reservation for the winery tour is for noon tomorrow, so we will plan it
out today so we don't mess it up. We opt to walk to the Estacion Centrale to
digest the giant sandwich we just had. It is a bit of a hike, but it is good
walking weather. El spots a post office and asks about buying stamps. Some of
the countries we have gone to require you to bring your written postcards to
the post office and they will stamp and mail them from there. Others sell you
the stamps and you can drop them at you hotel desk. It sounds like you can buy
the stamps here (p/500), but there is only one counter that sells them and she
is busy with other customers. I suggest we press on and write our cards and
then return to the P.O. to mail them. El spots a little shopping area that she
stops into while I journal outside. She is able to get some post cards and some
clothing she has been looking for. The sky is starting to clear a little and it
is already getting a little warmer. We found a couple of places near the hotel
that we wanted to eat at today or tomorrow. One is a dessert place called
Bravissimo Gelateria that serves lucuma gelato that has been recommended. (More on that
when I actually eat it). Today is our anniversary, so we may opt for a finer
dining experience tonight and do the local thing tomorrow. Not sure yet.
Observation: I am
a bit surprised about the lack of English used around here. Of course, I don't
expect it, but it just happens that in many non-English speaking countries,
menus and transit directions are written in English in addition to the local
language. I guess I have taken for granted how helpful that is in helping you
get what you want. I may want a chicken stew, but won't know the word for it,
so I settle for a ham sandwich because that is something safe I recognize.
Obviously, El speaks a bit of Spanish and I do recognize a small portion of
what I see on menus, but the ATM's and the transit cards have proven a little
difficult for me. All an ATM has to do is say "press here to continue
transaction" (in Spanish) and I am stuck for a minute. Once I get through
it the first time I am usually OK afterwards, but that first time can be a real challenge.
This is just one other thing that tests our abilities to be intrepid travelers.
As we walk down Bernardo O'Higgins we stop at a cafe for coffee and a bathroom
stop. We each get a cafe con leche and I try a flan. We take the time to write
most of our postcards and catch up on journals. We still have to get to the
Estacion Centrale and it is getting close to 3:00pm, so we need to get going as
we have been here for more than an hour- with just the one coffee. We walk on
to the Estacion Centrale with the directions for getting transport to the Undurraga
Winery in hand. We find San Borja bus station, we get to the bus platform and
confirm with the conductor that this is the bus we want the next day. He gives
El the whole scoop (leaves every 20 minutes from platform 77 towards Talagate.
Pay p/900 on the bus, ask driver to stop at winery, 35 minutes ride) The
directions I have are pretty good, but I am very glad that we made this dry run
to find the exact bus platform that we need to get to tomorrow. By now my
stomach is feeling a little queasy, either from the lomito or the flan (and I'm
guessing it's the lomito!). I am carrying El purchases in my pack which are a
heavy addition, my feet are aching, and I am feeling cranky. El and I discuss
the plans for the rest of our day and since the sky has cleared a bit decide to
go now back to Bellavista Barrio to take the funicular up San Cristobal Hill to
the statue of the Virgen de la Inmaculada (p/1600 2 ways per person).
Observation: We
are both a bit surprised by how much of the food in this country is served
oversalted. The amount of salt they use here is staggering. Everything seems to
just have way too much for our palates. If the dish was served with sauces we
could scrape most of it off and use either rice, potatoes or bread to cut it
down a little, but sometimes, like with the plateada, the dish is baked with
salt and it permeates the meat. Shockingly, we witnessed customers in some
places (Liguria specifically) actually adding salt from a shaker on the table!
I have heard of hiding bad meat with powerful spices, but salt? Unless they
were curing it, I just don’t know why they do that. It is no wonder in my mind
that Chilean cuisine has not become an international staple- like Chinese or
Mexican.
After dinner, we are both full, but I decide I want to walk
across the street to Bravissimo Gelateria to try the flavor called lucuma-maranga,
which is supposed to taste like a chestnut flavored ice cream. Like many of the
places here, you go to the cashier and order and pay. Then you take your
receipt to the counter and they give you your order. In this case, I had to
tell the server (not the cashier) what flavor I wanted, but in many cases every
detail is written on the receipt. I get the small cup of gelato to go and walk
with it to the next stop of the evening which is the same place we tried last
night (but was closed), and the same place we tried Friday (when it was open).
We get to the doors, and once again, closed! Not sure if they will open later
(since it is only 10:00pm), but we
will not stick around to find out. We have to be up at 9:00am to go to our wine tour and
wanted to make it local and not late tonight. I remember seeing another pub
between here and the hotel called The Phone Box- which is a British Pub. Of
course the staff is Chilean, the menu is Chilean, the wine selection...Chilean.
The decor, however, well, also Chilean. I guess the name "phone box"
is British and the entrance looks like a British phone booth. We sit down and
order some Chilean wine from a Chilean waitress and journal. El gets a wi-fi
key to check emails. The music is not too loud and is decent enough. We will
surely make this the last stop of the night. I remark to El how surprised I am
by how many stomach issues we are having on this trip and we joke of having to
go to a Cruz Verde and ¿Cómo se dice “anti-diarrheal”? [a quick note about Cruz
Verde. It is a chain of drugstores that seem to be on every corner...literally.
Sometimes you can see one Cruz Verde from another one and we did get a photo of
a four way intersection with three of the four corners having Cruz Verdes!] Nothing
to keep us off our feet, but enough to make us question just what the quality
of the food or drink we are consuming is. My issues today seem to have passed,
while El has had to go to the pharmacy to fix her ails. I hope we are both
recovered by the time we leave on Wednesday, if not earlier. We spend an hour
or two at The Phone Box and it is getting on midnight. With our 9:00am wake up,
we will call for check and call it a night. As I go to the bar to settle the
bill, I ask the bartender if his English is such that he can translate
"chirimoya" for me. The bartender speaks a little English, but the
waiter (who grew up in Canada) jumps in, and I wind up having a very pleasant 15
minute conversation with the two of them. I learn that chirimoya is a fruit
that is not exported to the US which is why we have never heard of it. There is
no translation (as in the word chirimoya is not just the Spanish word for a
common fruit), it is a chirimoya. As for lucuma (I thought might have been
Spanish for chestnuts based on the flavor), but it turns out to be a different kind
of fruit related to the avocado (again, not a word in need of a translation).
The guys also tell us that the city is pretty empty right now due to summer
holidays and everyone is at the beach. I pay for the wine and we walk back to
the hotel. We are in bed around 1:00am.
Tuesday 2/23/10
Today is our vineyard tour at the Undurraga Winery in the
Maipo Valley just south of Santiago. We wake at 9:00am and eat breakfast in the
hotel. It is included in the price of the room, but this is only the second
time we have eaten here. Our first stop today is to take the metro to Estacion
Centrale then upstairs to the San Borja bus station to get a bus towards
Talagate to Unduragga Winery. We follow all signs in the Estacion Centrale
towards San Borja which is all the way in the back and upstairs. Having made
the dry run yesterday, we know exactly where we need to go. The station serves
also as a train depot and interregional bus terminal. We head to the San Borja
blue side for intercommunale buses. We get to bus platform #77, but the bus is
empty with no driver. We ask at the next platform at the bus also labeled
Talagante if we can take this bus to Undurraga? The conductor affirms and we
get on the bus. The cost is p/900 each (US$1.80) and we have to tell the bus
driver to stop at Undurraga. We get the last seats in the back off the small
bus as these are the only two together. The ride is about 35-40 minutes and I
hear the driver mumble something. El was able to make out "Undurraga Viña"
and gets out of her seat. I see a sign on the right hand side cueing me to
follow her. For others like me, I would suggest sitting towards the front of
the bus or bringing your “superhearing”. As we get off the bus El asks the
driver about the return trip and he points to the other side of the road. On
our way here we saw a woman on the other side of the road actually hail a bus,
so we expect to have to do the same. We have no idea how long the tour will
last, so we will just play it by ear for now. Our tour is scheduled for noon
and we arrive at 11:15 (better to be 3/4 hour early than 1 minute late). We are
greeted at the gate by a security guard who lets us in and points us to the
tour office/gift shop. We check in and pay for the tour p/7000 (US$14) each, and
sit down to wait for the tour to begin. We confirm that the tour will be in
English. With very little exception, El and I do not know much about wine-
either making it or drinking it. I have had many glasses where someone will say
"oh, this wine is sooo good" and then I try it and think it is OK at
best, but I cannot appreciate the qualities that oenophiles look for. Conversely, there are
some cheap wines that we really enjoy and others will say "oh, that wine
is no good". I know what I like when I taste it, although I am open to
finding other brands and kinds of wine that I may like. It is almost tour time.
During the research for this trip many people recommended doing a winery tour.
I suppose it could be like going to Napa or New York’s Finger Lakes region.
There are several wineries in the area and understand that Concha y Toro is the
biggest and   
Observation:
There is a remarkable amount of PDA in this city. Almost everywhere we went from
park benches and greenspace, to subways, to literally while both people are walking
down the street you would see people making out, cuddling, or engaged in an
extended kiss or hug. The other remarkable aspect of this situation was that it
was not just limited to younger people, but people of all ages. On a subway, I
suppose I would rather be near a kissing couple than a fighting couple! It
seems like it is just part of the culture here and those people around us seem
unfazed. As an outsider, it is just a reminder that you are experiencing a
foreign culture.
Parque Forestale is a nice promenade but after a few blocks
we decide we have seen enough trees and head back to the hotel for nap. Out by
9:15, metro to Baquedano, walk to Barrio Bellavista to have dinner at Restaurant
Venizia. Thinking this might be an Italian place, some research reveals that it
is so named because of the flooding that occurs in the area after a storm- it
is still just a Chilean restaurant. The book recommends to get the daily
specials, unfortunately they have been open all day, and the specials have long
been erased from the chalkboard. I get a house specialty called costillar de
cerdo con agregado which is a rack of pork (spare) ribs with a side of choice.
El gets the same preparation using beef (short) ribs. We get a 1/2 bottle of
the Undurraga Sauvignon Blanc/Riesling. The food is OK at best. Thankfully we
see the 1/2 portions on the menu and order those. The pork is pretty dry,
tough, and gamey. The fries, ultra greasy and the puddle of grease in the
bottom of the plate suggests that there was even more grease on the fries
before it dripped off! No idea what the people that recommended this place were
thinking- another culinary disappointment. We get the check and get out as soon
as we can pry our waiter away from reading his newspaper. The whole meal runs
us p/10200 (US$20) and this place has what we see in almost every restaurant, a
mobile credit card machine. When they se you are using a card, instead of
taking the card, they bring the swiper to the table, and ask you to type in the
tip amount directly into the machine. Convenient. I guess that the price was
fair, as I did eat all of my pork and El ate as much or her beef as she could.
We will not be having dessert here. We leave Venizia and walk over to Nercobar
which is closed. Without posted hours it is impossible for us to tell if they
are opening or closed for the night. There is some activity inside and we
decide to wait a few minutes hoping they open at 11:00. If not, we will grab a
taxi back to The Phone Box near the hotel. El sees some more activity inside so
we are optimistic to be in soon, but by 11:00 they have yet to open, so we stop
at a churro van for some fried dough for dessert. Then we grab a taxi to The
Phone Box. We try to get a bottle of Undurraga white wine, but they only have a
red. Instead, we order a bottle of Palo Alto Reserva Carménère. I see the two guys who worked last
night and they remembered me. I asked about the Chinese exhibit and they were
very specific about the directions. We should be all set to go there tomorrow
morning as one of the last things before we go home tomorrow night. This bar is
a good last stop for us. The music is good and the place is not too pubby, more
like a quiet bar. We leave at closing time and wave our final goodbyes to the
staff then head back to the hotel and call it a night.
Wednesday 2/24/10
Our flight out is scheduled to leave tonight at 9:05pm. This
gives us most of the day to wrap up our trip and prepare to leave. We get up
and have breakfast at the hotel and we head down to the government palace to
see an exhibit of Ancient China. We take the metro to La Moneda stop and walk
around the area until we find the palace. It is a pretty big complex, but if
you don't know exactly where it is, the smallest of buildings can block your
view of it. Which brings me to another phenomenon is when getting directions
from someone who knows and is very familiar with the area they are giving
directions to, they tend to say things like, "come out of the metro
station, and you can't miss it." Well, we came out of the metro station
and are standing in a park with a bank in front of us. It is entirely possible
to miss, if you don't know where to look. Luckily we asked a cop and he pointed
us in the right direction. The exhibit was p/1000 each. They had no literature
in English. You can only get English tours on weekends and today is Tuesday.
The exhibit centered around the terracotta warriors of Xi'an. Of the 8000
warriors, they had a room with a display of about 12 of them. The place was
pretty crowded and kids and families were everywhere. At one point actually, a
museum representative scolded everyone in the exhibit room for letting kids run
around and for not observing silence. It was pretty well needed for the room as
the chaos was peaking. We did the walk through the exhibit which was rather
disappointing. Granted, I always wanted to see the warriors, but the rest of
the displays were nothing spectacular. The curation was nice and the displays
were aesthetically pleasing, but there really didn't seem like a lot to them.
We stayed there about an hour and metroed back to the hotel to pack and get
ready to leave.
Observation:
maybe I am getting old, but one of the more annoying things we have seen, or
heard as the case may be, is people of all ages, not just young ones, using
their cell phones like a boom box on the metros and buses. You would think they
could invest a few pesos in head phones, but instead they use the speaker
feature of the cell phone to play the music at a level where the distortion
makes the song unlistenable. Surely, others on the train or bus don't want to
listen to it either and when you get two or more on the same train car doing
this, the noise is just mind numbing.
We arranged for a late checkout from the room at 3:00 and
ordered a taxi to the airport at 5:30. We leave the room and bring our bags to
the desk and check out of the room. We now have 2 1/2 hours to kill, so we walk
in one direction that we have not seen much of on our trip. As we walk for several
minutes it becomes obvious why we haven’t seen much of this area...because it
is all residential and not commercial at all. It made for a nice stroll, but not
helpful when looking for lunch. We change directions to go to an area we have
walked through, but have not eaten in. We take our last walk down Providencia
and see a place called Santorinos: Not Only Pasta. We check it out and decide
to eat there. I start with a house salad with lettuce, boiled potatoes, carrots,
olives, and tomatoes. For main course I get: mechada which is a slice of
braised beef studded with carrots and garlic, and then pot roasted. I get it
with a side of with rice. The beef is very tasty and just a little salty, which
is really saying something! The dessert
is a small dish of ice cream and a coffee which turns out to be really nasty.
El thinks it might be burnt coffee, but I think it was made with steamed milk
that was sour. I only drink a few sips and leave the rest. For just picking a
place to eat while walking we did pretty good. The total for lunch is p/11200.
This turns out to be a nice last meal in a city certainly not known for their
food (what was the last Chilean restaurant you went to?). It is now around 4:00
and we need to be in the lobby of the hotel at 5:15 so we stop at Starbucks'
rival, The Coffee Factory. El and I are both not feeling well and hope our
stomachs get right upon return home. This could be a long flight home! I get a
cafe con leche and El checks email. We will be done here soon and wrap up our
trip with a ride to the airport which actually gave us some of the best
mountain views of our trip! We take the hotel arranged taxi to the airport and
it runs about 40 minutes and is p/16000. We probably could have gotten a better
deal if we took a shuttle or got our own taxi, but that is not something I want
to chance when getting to the airport. Arriving without an agenda is obviously
a little different. We get to the airport three hours before flight time. We
have been seeing some bad weather reports for New York and if our flight does
get cancelled, we want to be at the front of the rebook list rather than at the
end of it. We have an interesting situation at the immigration booth just
before we go through security. We stand in line and get called to the window
and the officer asks for our passports, boarding passes, and our immigration
cards. We have no immigration cards. He flips through our passports and sees we
are truthful. He points us to the police office to get another. We fill it out
(not recognizing the form if we had ever filled one out before) and get back in
line. The new officer questions what we had done with our immigration cards.
Honestly, having never seen it before we do not know if we would have gotten
one on the plane from Lima, at the airport in Santiago upon arrival? All we
know is we did not have one, now we have a new one. He seems a little peeved
that he is processing a “duplicado", but it is no use trying to assure him
we did not throw it away- either we never got one or it was taken when we
arrived in Chile. He waves us on, and as we are walking to security, we see a
line of people at the police office and both comment that it cannot be possible
for all of these passengers to have lost their cards. It is odd. Security is a
breeze and we walk towards the gate. As we do, a young lady from the Chilean
tourist office stops us and asks us to take a survey, which was actually a
really great experience for us. As we have been travelling and I have been
journaling, I have been making notes about what I like and don't like about
this city. El and I answer the questions together and take averages when our
answers differ. Most questions are about our trip (how long, lodging
arrangements, where did we come from, where are we going to etc.) Then she got
really specific as to what we liked and did not like about the city we had just
spent five days in. We agreed that our goals when traveling is to experience a
tourist friendly city and not be made to feel uncomfortable for not speaking
the language. We agreed that in this capacity, Chile, was a really good choice.
As for the suggestions we had for the Chilean tourist board related to the
museums we went to. They have to figure that those who are visiting museums are
not always nationals. For this reason I think it would be more tourist friendly
if they at least offered brochures or information pamphlets in other languages (and
I don’t mean just English), as I am sure Germans, Japanese, and Italian
tourists that come also want to understand what is going on and what they are
looking at that. Although we did not go to the Museum of History, even the
guidebooks note that it is "better if you speak Spanish, but OK if you
don't". I have never let my not knowing a language stop me from visiting
anywhere. And although I think it is great to know another language- if I
decide to take up German, I will still be equally lost in Tokyo. So knowing a
second language can be helpful, but I don' think it is of paramount importance
when you start off knowing the words for "thank you" and
"hello" ("excuse
me" -as in I just bumped into you, sorry, and "please" don't
hurt to know either). By the end of a trip I am usually surprised just how many
words I do learn (or come back to me from previous trips). Obviously, I am
lucky to have El to help with many of the romantic language countries, but we
were both stumped with the Slavic and Chinese we saw and we had a ball in those
places. The other we mentioned to the tourism office is how bummed we were
about the smog situation in this city. Aside from possibly Lhasa, Tibet there
is no question that this has to be one of the most spectacularly situated
cities in the world. From almost any spot in the city you can see mountains.
Some even snow capped in summer. Just breathtaking...sadly, both figuratively
and literally. The amount of smog is not enough to obscure the mountains, but
there is a continual haze that does turn the crisp scenery into more like silhouettes
than anything else. I nominate Santiago to go green for this reason alone as
the air quality is in drastic need of improvement. One funny question in the
survey related to the quality of the food in Chile. As El and I discussed our
answer and assured the asker that we would be honest, we averaged our answer to
a 4/10. She told us that she had questioned people from France who refused to
answer the question! We laughed and told this twentysomething girl to take a
trip to France someday and she would see why that is so funny. I was at least
happy to be asked about what I thought about a city I had visited. To tell them
both what we like and disliked about our stay. So far, our flight has been
delayed two times for reasons unspecified. We cross our fingers for better luck
in an hour. So, as we wait in Santiago for our flight to leave they wind
up delaying it so long that people are starting to miss connections that they
have in Lima, so the airline starts rebooking people to Lima on another flight.
Then we are told that so many people have switched to another flight that we
will now fly direct from Santiago to New York. This is good news as we will
make up any lost time by flying direct. Then before we know it they are
boarding us. As we stand in line, we hear that we are still stopping in Lima as
scheduled. This of course pushes our schedule back. We arrive in Lima and are
told to stay on the plane while the cleaning crew gets the plane ready for the
next leg of the flight. Then all of the Lima to New York passengers board the
plane and everyone is in their seats and we are sitting there ready to go, then
an announcement that the flight is cancelled due to the airport being closed!
We all disembark and wait in the gate area. After a few minutes, the LAN rep
announces that we may be able to take off tonight if they can get a crew. This
sounds improbable, and after a few more minutes they reschedule the flight for
10:00am (it is now 2:00am) because the plane is having maintenance done. One of
the problems I am having is that being a bilingual flight the announcements are
being made in Spanish and then, before the announcement can be made in English,
several disgruntled Spanish speakers inundate the podium and the rep cannot
finish the announcement. So now you have half of the plane angry and yelling
and the other half saying "what did she say?". After about 20
minutes, "our" rep calls all passengers who arrived for Santiago and
tells us to wait in a particular area for her to return. Meanwhile, after she
walks away, another rep gets on the PA and starts reading names including ours
and tells us to go to a different gate. Then the first rep returns and has to
round us up because she told us to stay where we were. It is now after 2:00am
and the new flight is scheduled for 10:40am. Now comes the absolute chaos that
is getting a hotel for the night. Mind you, considering the time needed to
immigrate out of the airport and then check in before the departures, most
people agree it would be better to just curl up on a gate bench and sleep until
10:00am, but the reps say that is not allowed. Since the airport is closed, at
this hour, there is very little staff on duty for things like immigration and
customs. We find ourselves stopping to fill out paperwork and then go through one
line, only to be given another form to fill out and get through that line.
Then, as the first person in our group of only 20 gets to the front of the
line, the immigration officer wants to charge the passenger some sort of entry
fee. Of course this is unacceptable since we offered to stay in the airport,
and we are not actually "visiting" Peru. This takes some time to get
some supervisor on the phone to tell the officer how to process the group. Our
rep tells the group that she has a group of Japanese people who require
different services and that we are to get ourselves through immigration and
customs and wait for her on the other side of the exit. We all get through in a
relatively timely fashion, although the customs officer questioning the
electronics we are bringing into the country was a bit pointless, since we did
not PLAN to be here! We all get through and sit and wait. By the time our rep
returns to take us to the hotel it is after 4:00am. It turns out the hotel is
part of the airport complex and there was no shuttle needed, just walking
across the street to the lobby. They collect all of our passports and call everyone
one by one to the counter to get a room key. This takes another 15 minutes and
we are now asked to fill out another form for the hotel. I cannot help but
think how much time could have been saved to speed this process up if only there
was some better coordination. It's not like we are the first flight that has
ever needed to be cancelled and had to be put up for the night, so why does it
feel like it?! Nonetheless, we finally hit the bed around 4:25am with a wake-up
call at 7:30, gate report at 8:30, flight scheduled for 10:30. What else could
go wrong with this flight? Well, the flight went almost on time and landed in
NYC, as a severe snow storm was starting which stranded us in New York for an
extra day. Not the best way to end a vacation. We are already longing for the
80 degree days of South America, and starting to plan our next vacation...to
somewhere warm!
As I look at this trip I am finding it difficult to sum up.
There were some aspects of this trip that were amazing and made the trip
worthwhile like the food in Peru, or the scenery in Chile. And the people in
both places being so friendly, even though I couldn't communicate with most of
them. There were also aspects of this trip that reminded us that we aren’t in
Munich (or any other Westernized destination) anymore. Be it whatever it was
that we ate or drank to give us upset stomachs, or the fact that Lima did not
seem to be a very traveler friendly city makes me consider what we are trying
to get out of a city when we travel. Are we looking for adventure? Are we
looking for comfort? Do we seek the familiar or are we alright with the concept
of “foreign”. I think the answer to this
is that we are looking to experience as many new cultures as we can around the
world. There is so much out there that is different from what we are used to as
Americans that we are fascinated to see and be a part of them even if only for
a short time. On some levels, I think we would rather spend a short time in a
very foreign place (like Japan or Africa) than take a vacation to New Jersey. I
think in the grand scheme of things Santiago and Lima are still considered tier
one cities in relation to the rest of the cities in the world. We don’t need to
take every vacation to London or Paris and as we leave Chile and Peru, I think
I would rather plan my next trip to La Paz or Quito than Amsterdam or Brussels,
because this is what world travel is all about to us! Further, when you have a
good travel partner (even if it is not the perfect travel mate like I have) you
can still have a great time learning about and traveling to places that most
people don’t even have on their radar to get to in their lifetime. And that is
the way I like it. I don't think I need to come back to these two specific cities,
but would absolutely come back to South America. I am not sure where our next
trip will be to, but wherever it is I am sure it'll be a good time, as long as
El is there with me! sim
Two final notes:
we flew out of Santiago Airport around midnight on Wednesday February 24. At
3:30am on Saturday February 27 (51 hours later), one of the strongest recorded
earthquakes (8.8) hit Chile. It appears that the area we were in suffered
damage that was minor compared to the hardest hit areas to the south of
Santiago. So, we were not there when the quake hit, and thankful to have made
it home safely.
After making it home, El is still not feeling all that
great. Some days seem better than others, but she is having enough problem that
she sees a doctor. After much testing and diagnosis, she has picked up a food
borne parasite. It is impossible to determine exactly where it was picked up,
but does help to explain why she was feeling worse than I was while eating the
food in Chile. |
|
