Chile - Featuring Two Metaphors for ´Just Passing Through´

Like a dodgy chicken vindaloo, we have passed rather quickly through Chile in the past week (only the 5 days in the country). The first 24 hour plus bus trip of pur travels from San Pedro de Atacama to Santiago wasn´t too bad an affair, despite a 3 hour roadside stop after the electronics failed. The Chilean equivalent of AA had no answer to the problem so a new bus saw us complete the stretch in a little over 27 hours.

The only other hiccup was a short layover in Antofogasta where Mat caught a Chilean in a turtle neck (never trust anyone in a turtle neck!) with his hand in Mat´s bag. After securing the bag, this turtle neck wearing thief got one hell of a verbal barage from Mat, finger pointed sternly as he quickly exited the station, probably to play polo with some other turtle neck wearing Chileans.

Our brief stay in Santiago allowed us only a day to explore the city, which we found surprisingly enjoyable (general advice was not to bother with the place). As with all things South American, beautiful colonial buildings, churches and landmarks celebrating a history much longer than New Zealand´s fill a day of sightseeing. Of specific note was the Cerro Santa Lucia, a park/haven in the centre of Santiago with fantastic greenspace, Romanesque fountains and city views as far as the smog allows.

On a more random note, we must comment on the peculiar ´Santiago Soundtrack´ that accompanied our day in the city. The city centre of Santiago is laid out in a similar fashion to Christchurch (as are a hundred other cities in fact), with a square mile lay out of right angle intersecting streets. Within the square mile every building has external speakers fixed to them, spaced every 25 metres, all playing from the same CD. We therefore enjoyed our day in the city to the ´Santiago Soundtrack´, which is a collection of 80's and 90's hits minus the vocals but with the soulful sounds of the panpipe or Casio synthesiser keyboard in their place - 'Open Your Heart ' by Madonna, 'Simply The Best' by Tina Turner and 'Heaven´by Bryan Adams featuring prominently, as did a game of ´Guess That Tune´.

We also decided to have another crack at a Chinese meal with Wonton entree. In our travels to date, we have tried unsuccessfully on three occsions (Belize, Mexico and Peru) to order an entree of wontons. In two instances, the wontons arrived as a dessert (and in the case of Belize, a bloody good dessert), while Peru managed to deliver them between the main and dessert.

We are happy to report that we succeeded in getting out wontons as an entree, but must unfortunately add that they were under cooked (pastry was wobbly and chewy suggesting they hadn´t seen the deep frier in their journey from the freezer to our table) and contained 1 gram of meat between them (so technically were not wontons but in fact defrosted pastries). However, after the dumplings arrived containing what can only be described as Jellymeat (catfood for non-Kiwis), we were happy that the wontons were relatively meatless.

From Chile we have moved into Argentina via the beautiful and spectacular Andean mountain range. For once, luck was on our side with the road opened after three days closure due to snow, only to be closed again the day after we crossed due to a truck drivers strike. Apart from the scenery, the road it self was to be marvelled at, especially a section of 23 hairpin corners as the road switch backs on itself upo a particularly steep section.

Our first stop in Argentina has been Mendoza, the home of the world´s best Malbec (red wine). Always keen not to offend the locals, we have both indulged in the local specialty, which at the lower end can be picked up for US$3 a bottle at a restaurant, or US$0.50 at the super market (something that will please Bart Senior and John Ridley who have a strict policy of NZ$5 a bottle for red wine). One nights indulgence, over a bang up Argentinan meat meal with a fellow Kiwi, however proved to have nasty consequences the following day...

The day in question involved a return to the Andes for skiing at Penitentes. After a couple of succesful early runs, for one of us (the ginger one who loves the Makos), the last of the Malbec in the system wore off and the mountain air and swaying chairlift all became a bit too much. The 15 minute lift ride was spent with head hung over the safety bar emptying the contents of the stomach, while the next two hours skiing involved numerous stops to sit in the snow and regain ones composure. Apart from these minor inconveniences, the skiing was great.

Our final day in Mendoza began with a trip to the local zoo, where the animals are either locked in the smallest cages possible or allocated a portion of the zoo to occupy at will. The decision on whether to lock is not based on the animals ability to mame a human, but totally reliant on the ability of the zookeeper to coax one into an enclosure. Thus the view of the lion exhibit was somethging special. It almost proved too special for Mat whose travelling wedding ring (our real rings await our arrival in London) nearly joined the lions as it flew off his finger during an excited finger point while exclaiming ´Look how close we can get). Thankfully it hit the 3 foot wall in front of the lions and bounced back.

And to conclude our time in Mendoza, we made a pilgrimage to a couple of the local wineries (only 600 to choose from). The intended full day tour on bicycles had to be shelved after Caroline´s back packed up, so to the gringo bus it was. As far as wine tours go, it was interesting enough, though as usual, the tastings were kept far too short,

Now in the last blog, we mentioned that we were cutting through Chile like a hot knife through butter (second metaphor for Chile in this blog) in order to take a southern detour through Patagonia. Well, ´Anal Mat´ has run the numbers and the detour which we´re allowing two weeks for involves an additional 6,500km of bus journeys (Cape Reinga to Bluff four times in two weeks!!) which equates to approximately 85 hours in the saddle. Thankfully, though only a mildly redeeming factor, Argentinean buses are quite classy and feature a bus attendant, in-ride service and the odd game of bingo.

For those of you who know Bart Senior, he´s having a mid life crisis and has shaved off the moustache after 29 years of maintenance, now only answers to the name Reno (short for Renagade) and has started up a new business importing Ug Boots. Well, at least the first part is true...

And for those of you in Aotearoa of no fixed abode, consider registering in the Selwyn district and giving your Mayoral vote to John Morten - 'Working for you and with you' (www.johnmorten.co.nz).