Chillán is not a city where tourists go. Not usually, anyway, which is why we are in the Hotel Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins instead of a cheap hostel cooking our own spaghetti, putting up with a shared bathroom at the end of a squeaky wooden landing, struggling to work out how to lock the bedroom door, wondering why there's only one plug socket in the whole room and whether we actually have paid for breakfast.
But that's later. 7am was horrid. Thank God we had packed earlier on the Saturday, just in case. Up O'Higgins we dragged ourselves, Sarah feeling much better than I, and at the Tur-Bus terminal we stand still, stomach churning, and wait. Some dogs flee past, and a couple run up to their bus as the doors close, unusually it pulls off without them. She looks exasperated. He looks like the couldn't care less.
Sarah buys us empanadas, but I cannot handle eating them, the delicious 'spicy' odour resembling 'feet'. I lie back and pass out, feeling distinctly awful.
Somewhere over the next six hours the landscape changes. 378km can mean a lot in this continent, and in Chile, where you travel almost straight up or down, it can mean the distance between lush fields and dusty dried-up riverbeds. When I come to, a few kilometres outside Chillán, I know we have journeyed to a very different part of the world.
Our attraction to this little town, roughly the size of Lisburn (but more attractive, with bars and restaurants and churches and a train station and FOUR bus terminals and quite a lot of ice cream parlours - the Chilenos love their frozen fruity milk), is twofold. One, it is virtually halfway between Pucón and Santiago (about 6 hours each way). Two, this is the birthplace of Chilean liberator and bastard son of an Irishman, pint-sized hero Bernardo O'Higgins. We went to the birthplace of San Martin, we really ought to visit here too.
Our initial impressions were not good. Clearly no one comes here because it looks awful.
But that's later. 7am was horrid. Thank God we had packed earlier on the Saturday, just in case. Up O'Higgins we dragged ourselves, Sarah feeling much better than I, and at the Tur-Bus terminal we stand still, stomach churning, and wait. Some dogs flee past, and a couple run up to their bus as the doors close, unusually it pulls off without them. She looks exasperated. He looks like the couldn't care less.
Sarah buys us empanadas, but I cannot handle eating them, the delicious 'spicy' odour resembling 'feet'. I lie back and pass out, feeling distinctly awful.
Somewhere over the next six hours the landscape changes. 378km can mean a lot in this continent, and in Chile, where you travel almost straight up or down, it can mean the distance between lush fields and dusty dried-up riverbeds. When I come to, a few kilometres outside Chillán, I know we have journeyed to a very different part of the world.
Our attraction to this little town, roughly the size of Lisburn (but more attractive, with bars and restaurants and churches and a train station and FOUR bus terminals and quite a lot of ice cream parlours - the Chilenos love their frozen fruity milk), is twofold. One, it is virtually halfway between Pucón and Santiago (about 6 hours each way). Two, this is the birthplace of Chilean liberator and bastard son of an Irishman, pint-sized hero Bernardo O'Higgins. We went to the birthplace of San Martin, we really ought to visit here too.
Our initial impressions were not good. Clearly no one comes here because it looks awful.
Every single road in the city centre was getting dug up. On Sunday the town was deserted, eery, crap dogs lying everywhere burning in the late afternoon sun. It was the only reminder that this was a Sunday, which still means something in this continent. Having been anywhere yet where the sanctity of Sunday had been forgotten.
We tried to find something, anything, but it was just too quiet to tell where the buzz would be during the week. We knew there was a Chinese restaurant out there somewhere, we just needed to find it.
Big shopping centre.
Ugly bit at the side of aforementioned shopping centre.
Enough wandering, enough confusion and hunger. Sarah hypo's at the side of the road, her sugars drop to 2, and we pour some Coke down here throat to stop her dying there in the dirt, in front of a few folk waiting to catch a bus home to spend some time with their loved ones. They didn't need that sort of a drama on their day off.
The all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet across the road was unappetising, cold food an hour before closing, and we made it round the corner to the Oriental Paradise something or other. A bit busy at this time of the day! But getting another platter of Mongolian Beef and Chow Mein Chicken was no bother. It's funny how Chinese food can force the life-force back into you. I supplement it with a big bottle of Coke Life (the bonus drink they sell down here, sweetened with Stevia as well as sugar, its not bad but its not Fat Coke).
There was only one way to spend this evening; sitting in the lobby of the hotel with our laptops, drinking tea, blogging and researching, and getting sore fingers from typing. The single power socket in our room just couldn't have coped with our electrical demands.
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