For those without Facebook, you may not know that we were robbed last Saturday. For those who do not regularly read this blog, you may not know that we were robbed last Saturday. It has been a stupid week of running back and forth across Santiago, from Barrio Brazil to the edge of Los Condes, from Happy House Hostel to the British Embassy, filling in forms and trying to make something that, last Saturday, we did not want to work any more, somehow stay together in the face of our abject rejection of it. Ah, so wordy of me, sorry about that.
With a bag of clothes each and some receipts we had been hording away, to reminisce on another day, we returned to Santiago, 1500km from Calama, by way of Avatar, The Millers, The Notebook, ACOD and Home Run. No Taken 2 and no The Island. We play Movie Roulette on the buses these days. Tur-Bus, Chile's most noted bus company, does not offer an Xtra-vision-like range of flicks for us to enjoy as we whistle down the spine of Chile, up and over and down mountains at 100km/hr. There is a big difference between mph and kmph at 100, especially in a bus. 22 hours back to Santiago was ok, but we arrived in emotional and physical tatters from a sparse diet whilst travelling, and we had thousand phonecalls to make, to reassure family we were ok, to begin insurance proceedings, to try and work out what exactly our options were.
We had two choices. Stay or go. Go was going to cost more than stay, so the decision was made for us. But how? With emergency passports we needed visas for Argentina and the US. Audaciously we decide to apply for new passports and have them delivered to the British Embassy in La Paz, where we shall be in 6 weeks time. Whether this plan works shall be for a future blog. Hopefully a happy and exotic one entitled "Collecting a Passport In La Paz". That is not this post.
What else could we have done? The US visa was a straight one-off $160, the Argentina one an as-yet-unknown fee. Probably all going to come in at more than the 150quid the passport would cost us, plus we would get that money back. Visas? Nada.
It was galling that we might have cut the two cheap countries from our trip too. Chile had bled us dry. Take off the buses and it was an easy 30 quid a day. Hostels are more expensive in Chile than anywhere else, even Uruguay, where the supermarket prices are double Chile's. But it all adds us, a metro ticket here and there, a beer or two or wine, a big meal in the day so you only eat once, a not-horrible hostel and you're broke. Peru and Bolivia were offering us a respite from that pressure. We hadn't come here to deal with European prices. We won't be skinning the locals alive, in fact we'll be buying local produce where possible, but even so we ought to be able to walk away with change that Chile just can't offer.
It wasn't all bad. We suffered our exertions in 35C heat and clear blue skies. Santiago is definitely a first world city, what with all the Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts everywhere. We partook of a few, too. The local coffeeshops were also good, but sometimes you can't beat an American chain for sheer quantity. Santiago nearly redeemed itself with some new characters, not least the excellent staff in Happy House Hostel, who got us breakfast on day one when we were emotional wrecks, and the gentlemen of Bar Nacional, legends one and all, who spoke no English but got the very best of Spanish out of me somehow, standing there yelling at a tv as I watched Sevilla beat Real Betis on penalties in the Europa League. The night may have ended a gibbering paranoid mess, terrified that every Chilean was out to rip us off and leave us destitute, but those boys didn't deserve to be on the wrong end of our misadventures. We called back into Bar Nacional but they weren't about.
We made it into the US Embassy which was a glorious palace of a building, and found ourselves in a huge warehouse with countless other souls trying to sort out new papers to allow us to leave Chile. It wasn't as complicated as it sounds, and other people looked like they were dealing with their situations a lot worse than we were.
We sunbathed over the weekend playing with new toys, new camera and new tablet computer with bonus bluetooth keyboard. They only took an age and a day to find. Sarah's dream of brown legs has come true. I am not so pasty any more. The Latin sun has done its work. With our passport applications heading to the UK with DHL we finally relaxed. Tuesday morning came and we got out of there yet again. Here Comes The Boom, The Internship, Battleship, some Chilean comedians, Hansel and Gretel Vampire Hunters all got us through Tuesday, whilst Wednesday was a non-stop sci-fi feast of Oblivion, Pacific Rim, Elysium, Papi Se Volvio Loco!, we rode on through the Atacama Desert and it never got any more fun. The pale blue and washed-out golden dust stopped being charming. When the road didn't have a 3000m drop alongside it, it just wasn't interesting. Our 28hr journey took 30hr, 2070km. We were in Arica, and barely an hr from being in Peru at long last.
Not that Arica is overwhelmingly charming either. As we pulled in through the city outskirts, past the pasted-together shacks that you see on the edge of every town in Chile, we look at two objects dominating the skyline from the hill to the south; a gigantic Chilean flag, and what looks a lot like a Wicker Man. Should we smell smoke, we shall be running across the border tonight. It is bad enough to be reading an informed-but-fictional account of Ireland in Leon Uris's Trinity on the road here.
Summarising Proust in Ten Seconds...
Im relived to be leaving Chile. Where we never showed any interest in going to Brazil, it wheedled its way under our skin with a character so very un-European, un-British, that it fulfilled many of our desires for exoticism whilst being sufficiently familiar that we could get ourselves from A to B. Chile, by contrast, offered a mundaneity that no other country matched. The central south area around Chiloe was that most attractive, with Chiloe being an island easily appreciated by other islanders, where we experienced a type of hospitality unknown on the mainland. It was lush and Irish and familiar. After that, however, was a multitude of towns and cities that, were Chile not the outstretched goliath it is, you would have no need to stop in. Valdivia, Chillan, La Serena, all stops with just enough to distract you for a day, before you get back on the bus and cross another 6 hour stretch of panamericana to your next, anonymous, stop.
Not that Chile is unique in offering up bland destinations one after the other. That, in some respects, is exactly why we are here; to draw that distinction between the colossi of touristic destinations, and all the flotsam and jetsam around them. But in Chile, First World country that it is, the country offers up so many tedious locations and backdrops that, when we spoke to two little Australian girls who were travelling virtually directly from Mendoza in Argentina to Cuzco in Peru, via Santiago and Arica, that we nearly wondered if that really had missed anything out in between.
The Atacama Desert is bigger than you think. It can be dramatic, but usually where you have seen human interference etch through it with a pipeline or a manmade canyon. Mostly it is dull, hot or cold, with little ghost towns where works used to subsist. It is hard to imagine what this lift is like.
The wine regions are not so romantic. Acres of vines longside main roads. People who visited Concha Y Toro said for 30quid you see an enormous wine factory and get told nothing about the experience or technique of wine making. You get a good view and the taste of a single decent vintage. Mendoza, by contrast, gets sparkling reviews.
Not that Chile stood much of a chance. I was robbed twice, Sarah once, and we met more than our fair share of freaks, weirdos, creeps and idiots. But even Bahia Blanca offered us an excellent parrilla restaurant to compensate for the prison we stayed in. Pucon was really the only spot that had some sort of balance. Then again, it was virtually custom-built for tourists.
Santiago was a curio. Where Lonely Planet berated the mall culture, we found the multitude of arcades charming, reminiscent of another time, with dozens of small and unusual shops co-existing side by side, particularly in the some of the more unlikely parts of the city around Los Leones metro.Where LP said Santiago was an easy city to like, we found it fairly anonymous, an oversized town, lacking grandeur except around the classic banking buildings. The people could be very hit or miss. At least in Buenos Aires you could rely on the denizens to live up to the stereotype of half-German half-Italians. Instead, Chileans displayed their characterist reticence, which leaves you feeling frustrated with them, and like you are in a country run by women for men, whom they have infinite patience for, even with their childish stupidity and temper tantrums. It gets a bit tiring. The criteria for First World status seem to be somewhat confused; Waitrose products in the supermarkets, produce from around the world, tea. What else? The skyscrapers, stable currency, two or three people doing the work of one, variety in the markets, modern dress only a season late from Europe, iPhones, Apple products in general... you can see all these things everywhere, thoroughout Latin America.
Perhaps what makes the difference between first and second worlds is the bank machines. ATMs in Brazil, Argentina, and others, are hidden away in the banks, behind sealed doors. Nothing in public. But in Chile it is just like at home. ATMs in train stations, supermarkets, corner stores, the lot. It is easy to get money out here. It is also easy to spend it.
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