Day 26 SA - Last day for Seabattical Phase 2

Today is our last day in Chile.

After a leisurely start to the day we mount our (well Rick's) bikes to head downtown along the bike path bordering the Rio Mapocho. Our destination is Cerro Santa Lucia park, our first stop is to have a coffee with a Hatch friend. It is only a flat 10 km ride along the river bank with a sunny blue day about 22 degrees making for a beautiful ride. Along the way there are many workers tending to the gardens. Santiago keeps up with the land maintenance and it is very clean. Lots of sprinklers are on and some can't be avoided but the shot of cool water is refreshing. Lots of lovers in the parks, PDA is very accepted here. Very passionate and affectionate people. Everywhere you look there are pairs of people entangled with each other. Julie also had to take a closeup of the artwork at the Museum of Art. (no mysteries here).

Not as many stray dogs as in Valparaiso, we even saw dog houses in the park, we think are for the strays. We reach the park Santa Lucia and it is very beautiful. The park is constructed on a small hill and was first established by the Spaniards as a fort. In the late 1800 the hill was converted into a beautiful park with multiple fountains, gardens and pathways throughout. We still have extra hemoglobins from the Inca trail making the biking and stair climbing a breeze.

After the park we are again somewhat dehydrated and are in search of patio umbrellas to satisfy our thirst and hunger. We decide to return to the Italian district we found on Monday"s tour. The area is full of university students, (there are two universities within a block) so cold beer at a good price are available. The place we choose is called Plaza Blue. Food is good but the bathroom was in a construction zone and Julie could not find the light switch so gave up before she fell into a hole. We order dos cerveza grande, but when they come we have two 1 litre bottles of beer, slightly larger than we needed. We send one back and order our lunch. Excellent meal all for $13 Cdn.

At the end of lunch it was after 2 so time to head back. A fast ride back to Rick's apartment and a cab ride to the airport for our 19:30 departure, a direct flight to Toronto which is bonus. We are now writing this from the America Airlines lounge. We are scheduled to land in TO at 5:30 am with Ross to pick us up. It has been an excellent Phase 2.

Photo Notes

1) Sun light glinting of SA tallest building - Santiago Business district
2) Rio Mapocho - the bike path follows this river from the business district to the downtown
3) Part of the Bike Path
4) Dog houses in Park
5) Santa Lucia Park
6) Julie enjoying an Escudo beer at the Plaza Blue
7) Apparently "Punk is not Dead" in Santiago. We were a bit slow with the camera but that is what the tee shirt says

Cheers
Julie and Dawson
Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry device on the Bell network.
Envoyé sans fil par mon terminal mobile BlackBerry sur le réseau de Bell.

Day 25 SA - Valparaiso a second look

Today was an excellent day filled with further exploration of Valparaiso and the bus ride back to Santiago.


Well Today is day 2 in Valparaiso or our 2nd last day for phase 2. Our accommodation were adequate, quiet, clean, and comfortable albeit a bit small. Checkout is at noon so we decide to divide the day into two, one without packs and one with. For the without we head out to check out the local cemeteries that have been written up in our guide book. They consist of two Roman Catholic cemetery and a dissident cemetery (one for the non-believers i.e. protestant). It is sad to see headstones of so many children and young adults. It is also obvious that there was a large english contingence in Valparaiso . Life must have been much harder 100 and 200 years ago. There are huge marble stones and a number of crypts with a number of people being cremated as there are numerous persons in a small area and honoured on a head stone. After cruising 2 cemeteries we have had enough and head back to check out. Along the way there is more awe and disgust at this city of contrast. We stop for a coffee around the corner from us which has a lovely terrace, but bad expensive coffee, this is portably the worst and most expensive coffee of the whole trip. It was $4,800 Chilean pesos, over $10 CDN, but we both agree that as this was the worst thing that happened during 4 weeks of travel in SA we are doing all right.

Once we check out there are two items left to do on our "to do list for Valparaiso" to see Pablo Neuredas house and to see the beach. Pablo Neuredas is a nobel prize winning poet and communist activist who died in 1972. He designed the pigeon which is used as the symbol for peace as well as winning a Nobel Peace prize for literature. His house and and the accompanying voice tour (offered in Spanish and English) of the home and his life history was well worth the hike up about 500 to 700 meters to his home now call the "sebastian museum". The views from the home are impressive and the man was an eclectic collector, having a number of interesting pieces through out the home. These ranged from a carousel horse, to a cow punch bowl. Both of us now have inspirations of following in his foot steps. The walk back down to sea level was much easier.

We are now in search of lunch, which we found in an excellent "locals" restaurant, and then to the bus station for our evening departure back to Santiago. Before we get our tickets we decide to we still have a bit of time and head out to the waterfront to try to find the beach. The trek to the beach is not far and we soon find the "beach". We locate the sea lions, lots of garbage, a bit of sand and a very interesting sculpture behind bars. There is a submarine in the harbour which is cool. Enough Valparaiso, time to get on that bus, we still have a subway ride and a 3 kms walk once we get off the subway.

We make it back with no remarkable events, in total we must have walked another 15 kms today. Back at Rick's we are by ourselves as he has flown to Canada today, we have a light bite and off to bed.

Photo Notes:
1) Cerros of Valparaiso
2) One of the Cemeteries of Valparaiso
3) Some interesting artwork on a set of stairs
4) Julie taking in view while waiting for coffee
5) Nice photo of a window plant
6) More "graffiti" Valparaiso
7) View to south west of cemetery
8) Street scene in Valparaiso - note dog having a good stretch
9) Man contemplating life or just having a rest you decide
10) Another derelict building - I get kind of drawn to take pictures of them
11) Sea Lion
12) Sea Lions - We like the face on buddy 2nd from the right
13) Dawson on the beach - thanks for lending me your pack Kevin
14) Sub off of Valparaiso
15) "Sculpture" behind bars - one has to wonder what these cars did to deserve this treatment
16) Julie at the Santiago Metro

Cheers
Julie and Dawson

Day 24 SA - Valiparaiso

We woke up early to say good-bye to Rick as today we are heading to Valparaiso on the coast and when we return tomorrow evening Rick will be on his way to Toronto. The same flight as us, but 24 hours before we depart South America. By the time we pack, walk the 3 kms. to the subway and get across town to catch the interurban bus it is 11:00. We do well requesting our tickets etc. and are soon on our way for about a 2 hours bus ride to the coast. It is only a bit more than 100 kms away but things move pretty slow through the city and then the mountains.

By 1:00 pm we arrive in Valparaiso, and it is much cooler than Santiago. We had melted the previous day in 30 degree celcius weather so had packed our bathing suits and shorts in preparation of beautiful weather at the coast. Unfortunately the coast is much cooler and we were glad we had thrown in our light sweater/jackets for the evenings as it was only about 13 degrees here. Julie only brought sandals and was getting quite a few looks.

We walked about an hour to our B&B to unload our daypacks of clothes so we could explore uninhibited. First stop is the naval museum which is quite good. There is lots of kudos to Cochrane and O'Higgins for the Chile independence from Spain. Cochrane was an english navel officer who lead the Chilean Navy during the war of independence. To get to the museum we of course got to take one of the many veniculars up the hill. Valparaiso is built on many hills, cerros in spanish and has about 10 veniculars to get people up the various hills. Sadly some of them are not working. The one to our B&B was not functioning so we had to walk up the hill to reach our accommodations. (Of course we could take a taxi, but that would be too easy).

We walked the waterfront which in this area is lots of cargo and containers. Many of the ships in port belong to the military. This is one of the major ports as most of the Chilean coast is exposed and Valparaiso is famous for its port since it has a bit of a protected bay.

Valparaiso is a city of contrasts. On first look it is dirty, with lots of grafitti, stray or at least loose dogs, and corresponding dog crap. A number of the buildings are derelict or in disrepair. We went past one building that had some see through black cloth on it instead of a wall and you could see it was a bathroom on the other side. Wonder if they were still using it? We wonder if some of the derelict buildings and disrepair is due to the 2010 earthquake. The building products of newer structures is mainly tin, of which it is often mismatched, incomplete, and spray painted with graffiti. On the other hand much of the architecture is incredible, and some of the "graffitti" is amazing artwork. You can see the architecture is from a number of time periods and has influences from a number of countries. The city looks like a San Francisco with a layer of grime and decay on it.

We hunted around for a spot to stop for Cervesas and an empanada as we missed lunch. Our goal was to find a spot in the sun, outside, with a view. Not such an easy task with a setting sun and hill side. Finally we did find a spot at about 4:30. The empanadas, were con queso (with cheese), but this meant no meat! We thought it was in addition to meat. An empanada is a pastry folded over with meat in it usually.

After our break we wandered around some art shops for an hour and headed back to our B&B to do some research on where to have dinner and blog a bit. We found a dinner spot with good trip advisor comments just around the corner from us and were off again. Turns out the restaurant was excellent. Beautiful sparkling lights on the harbour to watch, clean, great service and good food and wine. A wonderful way to finish our exploratory day.

Lastly we took a picture of ????? What do you think the 15th pic is?

Photo notes
1) Venicular (inclined street car, cost to ride was $200 Chilean Peso (~50 cents)
2) View looking out on Valiparaiso Harbour - Cargo and Warships
3) Julie and Dawson - the classic straight arm portrait
4) Derelict building
5) Dog and graffiti
6) Derelict Building for sale
7) Cat on a hot tin roof
8) Bath room with partial cover
9) Republic architecture
10) Colourful mural
11) Interesting photo ops
12) Street view to harbour
13) Dawson enjoying a well deserved cervesa
14) Laurel and Hardy give us the thumbs up
15) What is this? Answer will be given next week. Prize once again is a weeks accommodation in the Caribbean next winter.
Cheers Julie and Dawson

Day 23 - A day in Santiago

Today was to be a no travel day but we still managed to get an ~15 km walk in.

The day started off with a nice leisurely morning that saw us barely out of the apartment before noon. But in our defence we have come to realize that Latin Americans work/live a slightly different schedule to North America with a late start and late finish to the day. So we figured a tramp around Santiago from 12 to 8 is the just as good as 9 to 5.

Rick's apartment is in the business district, North-west section of Santiago. From his place it is a 3 km hike to the subway system which then provides access to the downtown. With a little bit of our limited spanish and hand signs, we figure out how to pay for the subway and even mange to get some info on the buses for our impending trip to Valparaiso. A quick ride gets us to the historical section of Santiago and we are up on surface. It is now mid day and hot so we are looking for a patio restaurant c/w umbrellas and cervasa's.

As we walk around it is hard not to make a comparison of Santiago to Lima. Santiago is much more orderly, more North America, traffic is nowhere near the volume of Lima, says a lot for a good public transit system, Lima has nothing but buses an d cars. We do see more graffiti on the buildings than Lima, but this might be a reflection on where we traveled in Lima. Smoking in Santiago is much more wide spread than Lima and may be a reflection on the affluence of Chile vs Peru. One final comment there are still a number of stray dogs but no where near as many in Lima and certainly far below the numbers in Cuzco.

Our cervasas/lunch stop is in a street plaza just opposite the La Monda - the presidential palace. The plaza in front of the La Monedo features the largest flag either of us have every seen although it was hanging down as there was no wind to speak of. We had an excellent lunch and were back wandering. We visited the main cathedral in the Plaza de Armas, it always amazes us the amount of work that has gone into churches through out the world. From here we walked over to what we thought was the main market, Mercado, but turned out to be a few shops and a whole bunch of resturants, from here over to the park San Cristobal.

En route to San Cristoblal we found ourselves in an area of patio cafes, due to our need to hydrate we were forced to stop for a cervasas. San Cristobal turned out to be a great visit, it is a park which is built on hill which rise about 800 meters above Santiago. Access to the top of the hill is offered through a venicular in this case call a Funicular. We made the right decision and purchased a return ticket and proceeded up the hill. The view of Santiago was excellent and would be even better if there was not any smog. Smog is a major concern as the city is boxed in on all sides by mountains.

We were off the hill for 6 and on our way back to the business district via the subway with a side stop in the Italian district for a gelato. It was now rush hour in Santiago and ridership was at capacity. It proved most interesting when we were leaving the Tobalaba station (one of the main station in the business district) and we were one of 10 people trying to get out of the station to hundreds entering the station. The classic salmon going upstream. A final 3 km hike and we were on the balcony with a very well deserved beer in our hands.

Phot Notes

1) Statue in Bicentennial park near Rick's apartment
2) La Monedo with flag/flag pole in foreground
3) Julie in Plaza de Armas
4) Bad inside photo of the Cathedral of Santiago
5) Mercado which was more restaurants then shops
6) Dawson at top of San Cristobal Park
7) Looking down the rails of the Venicular which provides access to the top of San Cristobal Park

Cheers
Dawson and Julie

Day 22 - Return to Santiago

Again a very early morning as we are up by 8:30. At 9:00 we are over to Sully and Charles for breakfast. And an excellent breakfast it was. We get some information from Sully on our up coming trip to Valparaiso.

After breakfast we head out for a short walk down by the Laguna, along the walk there are a n multitude of black necked swan, coots and herons. We are back at the farm to say goodbye and then we are on our way for the 6 hour drive back to Santiago. For the return trip we take the coastal highway for something different.

Some notable coastal views along the way, and some excellent road side stands sell salt, fruits and vegetables. The salt is sea salt which the locals produce from evaporation pools along the coastal estuaries. As we move more inland, we stopped and picked up some strawberries, raspberries and tomatoes. We stopped for lunch at an ocean side town, Pichumallie, and then back on the road. We arrive back in Santiago at dusk.

It is now time to eat again and Rick has a nice tenderloin for the bar b que. Before we can eat, Rick has set out a test for us, we are to take Rick's car and go and pick up Jeremy, Rick's youngest son for dinner. It is a test which we undertook with some trepidation, thank goodness driving in Santiago is similar to Canada and nothing like the driving in Lima. Rick draws us a map which is good as long as you don't make any mistakes. Unfortunately for us we turn the wrong way as we exit Rick's condo, so much for the map. We have the general idea where we are heading and after some bumbling we are able to make it onto the main highway heading north. We make one more error, this one we correct quickly with a U turn and we are at Miriam and Jeremy's. The return voyage was easy as we now had a "local" on board.

Jeremy is Rick and Miriam's youngest son, who the last time we had seen him was 12 years old. He has grown into a fine young man. We arrived back at Rick's having completed the 30 min. return trip in just under 45 mins. Not bad for two people just in the country 3 days.

Dinner was excellent, got caught up on the world of Santiago from the point of view of a 16 year and off to bed at 11.

Photo notes
1) off for morning walk
2) Julie overlooking Laguna Torrca
3) Swans and Coots on Laguna
4) Black necked swans
5) View of Chile's Pacific coast
6) Salt ponds - note piles of salt ready for sale
7) Fishermen selling the morning catch - beach at Pic
8) View from our lunch restaurant