See our Santiago pictures
Our first few days in South America have been spent in the centre of Chile's dirty great capital, Santiago, in a place called Hotel Plaza Londres. A double room for nine-quid-a-night - far nicer than the 30 quid-a-night crowded dorm we paid the night before in Sydney.
The hotel is a tad eccentric: the one window in our room was boarded up for the first two days we slept there, but today we returned to find that the board had been removed. "Daylight!" we thought, until the hotel handyman painted over the glass to block out the light again.
It may be hard to fathom but hardly anyone speaks a word of English here. Fancy that - a foreign country where we're forced to speak THEIR language. So, you can't work out the restaurant menu? Well it looks like you're eating chicken and chips again, because 'pollo y fritadas' is the only thing you can decipher.
Amy and I have struggled through these past few days pretty well, though we did have a case on our first night when we couldn't get rid of a waiter. We'd yet to finish decoding the menu and needed to buy ourselves more time. 'Two more minutes please' and 'one moment more please' didn't work, so I had to resort to the age-old failsafe of sign language to shoo him away until we'd finished working out our order. (I've yet to resort to the traditional English way of communicating with a foreigner - repeatedly speaking slowly and clearly in English until they understand).
So far the only Chileans we've come across with perfect English were the two con artists we met in the street yesterday. They claimed to be studying medicine at the local university but said they couldn't afford to continue their studies unless we gave them hard cash. Just think of the sick and needy children they'll be unable to help unless we coughed up some money. Despite the duo being a tad mature for starting a medical degree (they were in their 40s), the student card they showed us as proof was so pathetically doctored with absolutely no attempt to make it look authentic that we took pity on them and gave them the aquivilant of 90p just so we could move on.
Other than that particular instance, we've blended in quite well. Yesterday an American approached me and stumbled through a question about the toilets in our hotel, thinking I was Chilean. "Donde est una banos?" he asked. "They're over there, mate," I said.
In Santiago at least, Chileans look and dress just like most Europeans. In fact, we could be in Rome for all we know - especially with all the pictures of the Pope hung through the streets (like Italy, there's a lot of Catholics in Chile and the many churches are stunning).
What have we done in Santiago? Slept alot. The Australia-to-Chile jetlag is a killer. We've also visited the mad house of the Chilean Noble prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda (deceased), browsed some museums and drunk lots of wine. At under a quid a bottle for top quality merlot, who wouldn't?
Friday, 8 April 2005
Saturday, 2 April 2005
My precioussssssss
You hardly expect to see celebrities at the top of mountains in New Zealand, even less so an actor from the most iconic film the country has ever produced. Yet there, putting on his suncream, was Andy Serkis who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
We'd ridden a cable car up a mountain in Queenstown and spotted him having a coffee with his wife, kids and in-laws. We felt a bit guilty at first by interrupting him during a weekend off work with his family. That'll teach him for being famous.
However, he was very pleasant, pointing out The Remarkables mountain range in the distance as the Mordor range from the films. In return, we gave him some tips for the Luge - a plastic go-kart track we'd just tackled. Was so amazed that immediately afterwards that I had to phone my LOTR-obsessed dad to gloat down the phone (even though it was about 3am in the UK!).
As a gimmick, the cable car operators take your photo on the way up in the hope they can flog it to you once you come down again. As we passed the photos at the bottom, my eyes drifted from ours to a grumpy-looking Serkis with his brood. I thought about buying it but Jody dragged me away claiming I was turing into a stalker...
Jody writes:
We met my friend from back home, Meriel and her friend Sarah, in Auckland the other day. They're a few weeks into a three-month holiday through New Zealand and Asia.
After spending five months travelling, meeting up with an old friend felt like a flashback to a former life. As we're now half-way through our trip and about to embark on the next big chunk of our journey - South America - a drink with an old mate is what we needed. We also got the lowdown on the things our friends haven't told us since we left. Some of the gossip was a shock!
We met Andy Serkis!We'd ridden a cable car up a mountain in Queenstown and spotted him having a coffee with his wife, kids and in-laws. We felt a bit guilty at first by interrupting him during a weekend off work with his family. That'll teach him for being famous.
However, he was very pleasant, pointing out The Remarkables mountain range in the distance as the Mordor range from the films. In return, we gave him some tips for the Luge - a plastic go-kart track we'd just tackled. Was so amazed that immediately afterwards that I had to phone my LOTR-obsessed dad to gloat down the phone (even though it was about 3am in the UK!).
As a gimmick, the cable car operators take your photo on the way up in the hope they can flog it to you once you come down again. As we passed the photos at the bottom, my eyes drifted from ours to a grumpy-looking Serkis with his brood. I thought about buying it but Jody dragged me away claiming I was turing into a stalker...
Jody writes:
We met my friend from back home, Meriel and her friend Sarah, in Auckland the other day. They're a few weeks into a three-month holiday through New Zealand and Asia.
After spending five months travelling, meeting up with an old friend felt like a flashback to a former life. As we're now half-way through our trip and about to embark on the next big chunk of our journey - South America - a drink with an old mate is what we needed. We also got the lowdown on the things our friends haven't told us since we left. Some of the gossip was a shock!
Where are we? Back in Sydney, strumming our fingers until we fly to Chile on Monday. The silly thing is that our Chile flight goes via Auckland (where we were this morning), but the airline wouldn't let us get on there so we've had to fly all the way back to Oz to catch the Chile flight. I suppose we are in the land of boomerangs after all.
Amy and I are looking forward to staying in countries where we can afford a double room again. To save money, we've mostly been in crowded dorms in Australia and New Zealand and it's driven us crazy. And with five months of travelling without so much as a sneeze or tummy bug so far (even though we wolfed down ice, sushi and salad in Asia, despite warnings from home), South America will be the ultimate test for our bellies. Bring it on!
