Chile National Days

I have to say that Chile's National days rival China's New Year celebrations. We partied for five days here taking advantage of all Santiago had to offer for their Independence day. The 18th was the National day, the 19th was Military day, and because these fell on a Tuesday and Wednesday we also celebrated a 'sandwich' day  on the Monday. Around 2 million people actually left the city to vacation in coastal towns like Vina del Mar or head south into the Lake District, and as unpatriotic as it sounds many went into argentina for cheap eats and sleeps. For us it Santiago was unusually tranquil....the streets were quieter anyways.

Bridge Linguatec had a party on the Friday leading into the long weekend. They had food, drink, dance and karaoke. 

On the weekend we spent time 

with our Brazilian friends Daniel and Fabiana, and their friend Paula visiting from Brazil. We walked around the central market and main plaza and into a cultural museum underneath the presidential palace. We also went into other cultural neighborhoods like Barrio Bellavista for food and entertainment. The highlight was finding a little restaurant at the end of the day and sitting down for beers and empanadas, while being entertained by traditional dancers dancing the cueca, Chile's national dance.

On Monday we had people over to our apartment building roof-top for a barbecue. It was a nice time with lots of food, pisco sours and beer, that reminded us of summertime in Canada. 

The next day we had refueled our tanks and went to party at a nearby Fonda. We went to 

Parque Inez de Suarez for live music, dancing, food and wine and had a great time celebrating Chile's Independence days.

Day Trippin'

We just spent a great weekend on Chile’s coast.  

Our friends Philipe and Zanatoa invited us to their beach house for the weekend in Concon.  They picked us up in Vina del Mar and we drove up the coast to their place taking pictures and checking out the surfers along the way.  

We had a great dinner that night at a local restaurant of seafood and white wine.  The best seafood ever..?  I would have to say yes.  Mixed seafood platter to start followed by crab cake, fish and chips, and cooked fish jumbilee.  For dessert we had two crepes - papaya and pineapple.  We walked it off and then relaxed on their balcony overlooking a beach.

The next day we went back down the coast to Valparaiso and spent the afternoon walking through the streets, up and down the hills through different neighborhoods.  Actually I should mention before going to Valpo we went to Las Deliciosas in Concon and filled up on the best seafood empanadas in Chile; seafood, crab and cheese, scallops and cheese, - again the best empanadas ever!

So with full stomachs we walked the streets of Valparaiso taking pictures of the cool graffiti and colorful homes.

We used a couple of the funicular elevators to get us up certain hills for great views of the city and port.  The city has a certain atmosphere...like old Quebec, a cool old-charm.  UNESCO named the city a world heritage site in 2003.

We took a lot of pictures and I’ll have them uploaded soon(I hope)(Elqui Valley pics are finally loaded).  It’s slow without home internet access.  We are seriously reconsidering our position on getting the service.

Tomorrow is National Day for Chile.  We are having a barbecue here on the roof of our apartment tonight and will be checking out all the festivities around town tomorrow.  Stay tuned for September 18 update.

September Weather

Hi all.

August was a very busy month.  Lots of work.  All of a sudden it’s September now and there’s not as much work, but Paula has secured a private class! Spring is around the corner and thank god, we’ve been a long a time without a summer and now it’s almost here.

We’ve been exploring the mountains close to the city.  Last weekend we went deep into Parque Mahuida  along the pre-cordilla mountains.  We hiked up and over them for some really great views of the Andes.  We had a picnic and met a old ranger patrolling the area on horseback who told us to come back in a couple of weeks and he’d give us a tour further into the mountains.

With all the free time on our hands, we’ve been doing a lot of homemade cooking!  (yum!)  As I write, Sean is frying up fresh naan to eat with some chickpea concoction I made up....  We’ll let you know how that works out!  It’s hard to find ethnic food out here, unless it’s Japanese.  Sushi is huge and any blue-blooded Chilean will tell you that raw fish is at the top of their favorites list along with Peruvian food.  We’re not too sure how to distinguish between Chilean and Peruvian yet, but the Chileans are astute in pointing out the differences, sure it will come with time!

We’ve bought our tickets to the south for February!  We will fly from Santiago to Punta Arenas on the 4th and then head to Torres del Paine National Park for 8 or 9 days.  We’re planning on doing the circuit.  Then we have tickets for P.A. to Balmaceda.  Will will spend a couple of weeks exploring the carretera austral(southern highway) between Peurto Montt and Cohaique, Chiloe Island, Orsorno Volcano, and then head into the Lakes District where we’ll hopefully visit with some friends in their summer home.  

Big plans that require a lot of preparation.  We really need to buckle down and save as much money as we can during the time between so there will be plenty of home-cooked meals and walks in the parks.

Around town; there was a violent protest last week with molotov cocktail’s and full riot police(don’t worry folks we stayed away), the city is getting ready for Chile Independence day on September 18, and we’ve increased our Spanish lessons to 3 times a week!

Winter in Santiago

It’s been awhile folks. Hope everyones having a good summer, staying out of trouble, and having fun. Things are good here! It’s relatively cold but September is just around the corner and for Chile that means Spring! It also means Chile National day or Independence day, on September 18. The 19th is military day,..for all the Pinochetists, and the 17th being squeezed in on the monday is going to be a ‘sandwich’ day. It sounds like it should be a real party with 5 days of drink, drum, and rodeos.
It snowed here in Santiago for the first time in 10 to 40 years depending on where you live in the city. The elevation change is extreme ,being so close to the cordillia, so the folks in Las Condes have a different take than the folks downtown. It was nothing like a snow storm in Canada but it was really something new for most. For us it felt like Christmas as we walked up Vicuna Mackenna to the metro and looked up at a nicely dusted Cerro San Cristobal in all its snow dome glory.
We’ve started spanish lessons!
A movie recommendation: What the Bleep! Down the Rabbit Hole. If you liked The Matrix or are interested in quantum physics this movie is key.
We’ve just bought a new refrigerator! This should be the last of our major purchases, I think(still like to get a guitar and a blender), so we’re settled in now! Wouldn’t it have been cool to have the fridge in the photo page?
We’re having occasional dinner parties with some teachers from our school and there’s also a regular football game being played every sunday. It’s nice finding people you can hang out with and have a few. I think sometimes it helps with any homesickness of our friends and other times makes me wish more than ever, you were here.
Namaste.

Long Weekend

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Originally uploaded by Travels and Escapades

The Chileans really know how to liven’ up their winter. This weekend was the second long weekend in July.

On Canada Day long weekend we tried to go to El Morado but were unsuccessful mainly because we couldn’t understand exactly when and where the bus would leave.
It was a good though, because we now understand that it’s not the best time of year to visit this area. It is close to the mountains and not very accessible.

So we started researching and asking questions about an area north of Santiago near La Serena. We were told that there was a beautiful valley to the east of this city that’s well known for its Space Observatories, spirituality, clear skies, magnetism, papaya’s, pisco distillery’s and UFO sightings. This area actually has the highest levels of magnetism on earth and its telescopes are some of the biggest and most powerful.

So after our classes on Friday we caught a bus 500km north along the Pacific coast into a dry cactus covered land. We arrived in La Serena around 6pm and immediately bought tickets into the Elqui Valley. The bus took us to the main town, Vicuna, in the valley with a population of 7000 people. We got a room had a couple pisco sours and had a little time to gaze up at the stars before we fell asleep from a long day of travel.

We woke up in the morning to a beautiful cloudless day. We walked through the streets and then out of town and up a big hill for some nice views of the surrounding landscape, the town below, and the observatories far off on hills in the distance.

Later we went further into the valley towards the Andes by catching a bus to the end of the line - Pisco Elqui. It was a really nice drive even though the valley isn’t as lush as it usually is during the summer. We went through Monte Grande, the birth place of Gabrial Mistral, Chile’s other nobel prize winning poet, and continued down the road to Pisco Elqui. We had reserved a cabana here where we chilled out for two nights. Other than relaxing by the pool or going across the road to watch locals play soccer we went for a nice long hike up and around a nearby mountain going down through a vineyard over a fence and then followed the road back into town. The sun and altitude made for an exhausting trek so we went to a local juice bar afterwards and each had an all natural papaya drink.

We are back in Santiago now and don’t know when we’ll see another long weekend. We’ve hit winters peak and are looking forward to getting some of that sun you’ve all been basking in the last couple of months.

In other notes Chile is very excited about it’s junior soccer team that is well in the under 20 championships being held in cities across Canada. Tonight they are playing Argentina for a birth in the finals. Go Chile!

This just in....Chile lost and got in a fight with the Toronto police afterwards! We are laying low on being Canadian for a few days!

Deadwood Days

Hi People, hope you had a good Canada Day long weekend. We celebrated our Canadian heritage by climbing a big hill for some nice views of the city and then had a couple beers. We posted some pictures of the way up and from the top of Cerro San Cristobal. It might be hard to make out the buildings with the thick layer of smog blanketing Santiago. Not so healthy. Being tree hugging greenies it’s a bit hard to stomach but the reality of the poor air quality we create is obvious . In winter the smog here is at it’s worst. We are looking forward to the summer winds blowing in to make our hill hikes a little easier.

We have been passing our nights making home-cooked meals and watching episodes of Deadwood. Our days are busy preparing for classes and our teaching hours are gradually increasing. Paula has picked up a 4 hour Saturday class. We are also close to finalizing spanish classes that should begin next week! The weather is mild and we’ve had warm sunny days here and there.
The internet hook up is not happening. The long delay involved in getting registered with a Chile ID got us to thinking we could do without the home service. So we’ll put the money we save towards spanish lessons and use wi-fi at school and at the many locations around town.

Ciao for now!

Good Gear!

It was chilly in our apartment till we found this little powerhouse. We’ve also outfitted the bed with a warm down blanket to help us through this Chilean winter. The cold temperatures, though, are giving us time to find a cheap/used refrigerator to buy.

The real rush is to get the internet hooked up in our apartment. Paula is having Facebook withdrawls and I miss Skyping my friends and checking the baseball scores. It has been a bit of an ordeal trying to talk with these fast speaking Chileans over the phone. If it’s not the speed they talk at it’s the Chile slang and expressions. We are getting nowhere so we’ve enlisted the help of a new friend in our building and hopefully tomorrow we’ll be online.

We’re hoping to be taking Spanish lessons soon too! Our school also teaches Spanish and offers to swap teaching hours for lesson time. It’s a really good option because Paula and I are on similar schedules and should be able to take the Spanish lessons at the same time basically giving us a 2 for 1 deal.
We’re both loving our classes and Paula is really liking teaching. I am really enjoying the organization and methodology this school provides. It’s a far cry from what I experienced in China.

Anyways hopefully the next time we post it will be from our apartment!