Andy & Gillie's Big Adventure!: Not so Chilly in Chile OR A Country of Contrasts

Sounds like a cliché doesn’t it? And it is, really, but it’s also true. Didn’t really know what to expect from this country and it has exceeded all expectations (not very difficult when you don’t have any to start with, I suppose). As you may be able to divine, this issue, in vague recognition of the loose similarity between the words ‘Chile’ and ‘cliché’, will be trying to be a feast of same…

Our friends Pete and Sue had given us a wealth of information about places to see, things to do, whist exploring this long thin country bordered on one side by the Mighty Andes – the world’s longest mountain chain – and on the other by the Peerless Pacific Ocean. Our problem was trying to fit this half gallon of exciting opportunities into our little pint pot of allotted time.

It seemed to us that, wherever we were in Chile, there’s no escaping the Andes. They inform every vista and are the backdrop for almost every image. But they are quite magnificent.

Chile is a country of contrasts, as the heading suggests, and is definitely a country of three halves (before you protest, I had to get that cliché in somewhere, so might as well get it over with!). Not sure about the proportions, but it seemed like about the first third – at least the first 24 hours of our marathon bus journey from Lima to Santiago – took us through endless desert, in both Peru and Chile. When we say desert, we don’t mean scrubby hills and plains with struggling shrubs, tress and grasses. We mean Desert With A Capital S (Sand). Nothing seemed to grow there apart from rocks and more rocks.

After one of those typical cliché-ridden waits not just to get out of Peru, but also into Chile, where the dogs run up and down the rows of luggage, sniffing and peeing on some for good luck (joke – they were very well behaved), with sweating gringos (us) and swarthy border guards, armed to the teeth with guns and sticks and stuff, Gillie’s rucksack was chosen for special attention and of course, I had to go out and explain in my pidgin Spanish, that it was full of souvenirs and Gillie’s painting equipment. The other passengers on the bus had a great time watching ‘El Gringo’ trying to stuff everything back in once the (very pretty) customs officer had succumbed to my Anglo-Saxon charm/twinkling smile/sweaty armpits* and moved on. Has to be said, this was only the second time the art stuff had seen the light of day since we set off!

*delete as appropriate

The next third of Chile brings you to the temperate climates of the Central region and into the wealth that is Santiago. Chile has clearly managed its natural resources better than Peru and looks generally more well-to-do, in the country as well as in the city.

Santiago, the capital, is in the middle of a growth spurt and has been for quite a few years, judging by the amount of new building there is in the centre. It’s not a very impressive city, really, but we were staying in an area called Bella (pron. Beya) Vista, which has a reputation for slightly edgy, bohemian artiness, so we fitted in seamlessly!! On our first night there, we went out for a meal at a restaurant that had been recommended and met four lovely young ladies – one of whom was getting married the next week, so we got chatting and we promised to give them a name check on the blog. So here it is – İhola, Daniela, Francisca, Constanza and Alejandra! There.

Everything about Chile, and especially Santiago, is defined by the events of the early ‘70s and peoples’ attitudes to them. In a nutshell – Salvador Allende was the first socialist president for about a million years (sorry our guide’s English was good, but she selected highlights and I missed that bit – if it was even there) and he started nationalizing everything – transport, mining, other stuff.

Needless to say, big business (read USA interests/CIA), wasn’t too keen on these developments and started to make a fuss – cutting exports and not selling stuff to Chile, so people got a bit cross. But still very supportive of Allende as he was giving people who had had nothing something to be proud of.

Now, the details are a bit hazy here, but the gist is that in September 1973, General Augusto Pinochet – big pal of Mad Bitch Cow Maggie and Ronnie ‘Find the Brain cell’ Reagan – called on Allende and suggested that he should maybe think about handing over the reins to a much more ‘populist’ (army-controlling) unelected military junta. Allende went to his office in the Mint - ‘La Moneda’ and thought about it. It was while he was mulling over his options, that he appeared to shoot himself in the head – twice – with an automatic machine gun. Held by his toe, according to official reports. Go figure.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Pinochet took over and proceeded to remove all the evidence that the country had ever been governed by any form of democracy – even housing the Ministry of Defence in a building meant as a cultural centre for the people of Chile. Thousands disappeared – Los Desaparecidos – immortalized in song by The Rolling Stones and Sting, among others. Pinochet ruled with an iron fist in an iron glove for a long time, fixing elections, killing people and generally being a good friend of the West. Oh, and giving loads of invaluable mining and exploration rights back to the USA etc. as well as helping the British government during its war with Argentina over The Falkland Islands. Funny that.

In 1998, he came over to the UK when his regime was starting to crumble to try and get some medical treatment/asylum for an undisclosed illness. Fortunately, too many people put enough pressure on the British government that giving him sanctuary would not be a good move, although Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, refused to hold him. So he was shipped back in 2000, but although he was deemed well enough to stand trial, by the time of his death in 2006, was still living in luxury and hadn’t faced any of the charges of human rights violations of which he had been accused.

That’s a bit of a truncated and highly-subjective view of Pinochet and Allende. Another bit of useless information. Allende’s daughter, Isabel, is a senator and has written some very well-loved books, most notably ‘The House of the Spirits’.

We exchanged the heat of Santiago for the comparative coolness of another bus. This one took us overnight to the town of Puerto Varas in the Lakes District – nearly as far as you can travel by road in southern Chile. We stayed in a delightful Airbnb about 30 minutes walk from the town. Next day we took a trip around Lake Llanquihue (pron. Yankeeway, or Jankeeway) and up to the Volcan Osorno – one of five live volcanoes in the region. It was raining a lot and the cloud was very low, so we didn’t see much, but had a great time with our lovely guide Christian anyway.

A note about the wine: we bought two bottles of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon for 3000 pesos – about £3. Fearing the worst, we cracked one on Friday night. It was lovely – probably pay about £9 in UK for that. Cheap is definitely good here!

On our last full day in Chile, we were blessed with bright fresh sunny weather and went to the Island of Chilhoé, with its lovely scenery, churches and penguins – apparently the only place where two different species of penguins can be found living side by side. Aaah.

We had a great time and met a couple of retired doctors from the UK who brought us up to speed with the various incompetences of our current government, particularly in relation to that well-known spelling mistake Jeremy Hunt. Say no more.

Just last Sunday, we were up at the crack of sparrow’s (half an hour earlier than we needed to be, it turned out) and, leaving behind our much-anticipated blueberries and yoghurts, left Puerto Varas for San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina. This was quite a magical trip, involving four different buses and three different boat rides across beautiful emerald-green and turquoise-blue lakes and the Mighty Majesty of The Andes (see, couldn’t resist a final alliterative cliché). Final shout out to a charming American couple – Ian and his daughter Kylie who we were chatting to on the journey and then met up with quite unexpectedly in Bariloche the next day (see Gillie’s previous post for unexpected encounters). But that’s for the next post.

Soon be back in Dear Old Blighty. It will seem a bit odd, I think. See (some of) you soon (we hope). Lots of love x

PS. Hi there. Wow! We’re nearly there. Where has the last 18 months gone? When we say to each other we’ll be home in under two weeks, we really can’t believe it. We’re only three hours behind the UK now, so definitely feel nearer, even though most of this lovely country and the experiences we are having is a world away from the UK.

So many people we have met have questioned why we have chosen to travel by bus and not plane. (At times, ie. hobbling off the bus in Santiago after 54 hours; we have also questioned the wisdom of this!) However, over all we are so glad that we did. We have witnessed amazing changes in environments, gone through many villages, towns and cities, to see just how the people really live. En route from Peru we were the only non-natives, so it was Spanish all the way. We felt it was a bit of a mystery tour, as most of the time we hadn’t a clue what was going on; whenever Andy asked them to speak slowly they tended to speed up. Our fellow passengers were lovely and reveled in calling us ‘the Gringos,’ laughing with us (at us?) all the time. After 2+ days in their company, once again we were all best friends.

One thing we found very funny was, that, unlike our bus trips to Cusco (where we all had individual screens in front of our seats and therefore could choose our entertainment) there were only a couple of screens so we all had to watch the same thing. (A bit like my old days at Laker Airways!) All the films they showed were English speaking, however they’d all been dubbed into Spanish with Spanish subtitles!! Andy could understand a lot of it, but it was Kindle all the way for me! We are lucky as we have had time to travel this way, while people here for two/three weeks, need to go from A to B as quickly as possible in order to see it all.

However we are quite relieved to know that our trip around the UK is to be by train (we bought our senior railcards yesterday, so we’re all set).

Lastly, about those blueberries!! They cost around £2 a kilo and were the best blueberries we’ve ever tasted. We only ate a couple as they were for our picnic on our long trip to Argentina. As we unpacked our picnic beside a lake on the Chilean border, I just couldn’t believe that we’d left them in the fridge at our Airbnb!! (along with the yoghurts) I was in mourning for ages and since we’ve been in Argentina I haven’t seen ONE blueberry!!

Time to go, Andy has just told me there’s snow in Holmfirth in Yorkshire…

Take care, loads of love

Gillie xx