Our New years trip

Wed 29th Dec- Mon 3rd Jan

Wednesday night Karim drove us the two and a half hours to the sea side city of Vina del Mar. As we approached the twin cities their luminescent glow was overwhelming, with hundreds of thousands of lights welcoming us, making our first impression a memorable one. On one stretch of the coastline sat our destination of Vina del Mar, and to the cities left was its older neighbour -Valapriso. Karim had organised for us to stay at a Bed and Breakfast near the beach so we could easily attend the New Year’s celebrations and witness the fireworks extravaganza, which was to be the biggest in all of Chile apparently. He dropped us off, and we called it a night.

Thursday we went for a walk around the Vina del Mar. Karim was exacting, our hostel was only a couple of streets away from the beach! We walked along the cities esplanade to look for somewhere to get some breakfast as our Hostel only served cold toast with a side of bitter coffee. Hailing from Hervey Bay where you can’t walk along its esplanade without tripping over a café or some type of eatery, we were surprised that there wasn’t a single shop, café, kiosk to take our tourist dollars and feed our gringo bellies. We walked along the beach front, counting dogs and trying to read bible revelations that were written on the rocks. They were written in Spanish of course and ironically floated betwixt the ungodly sight of the rubbish that littered the otherwise picturesque scenery. It made us feel pretty proud to come from Australia and New Zealand. We may get some rubbish on our beaches, but nothing like what we have seen here. Not to ‘trash talk’ Vina del Mar exclusively on this enviro-eyesore either, for most of the communities, towns, cities that we have visited in ‘all’ countries in South America have taken their waste management out- with- the- trash so to say, with literally piles of rubbish and discarded material which aim to challenge the senses upon confrontation. I was surprised to hear that even Santiago doesn’t have domestic recycling bins in the scheme of things either.

We walked past a restaurant that looked like some kind of ship that had crashed into the shore, the cities casino, a floral clock and a bunch of Christians that were on some type of rally. One of them even ran up to us to give us a hug and told us that God loved us! We should have told him that cleanliness is next to Godliness and to clean up the fucking beach and to hose down the bums that have be it prime real estate, but again communications were down.

We ended up in the town centre with all the shops and finally found something to chew on there. We had a little walk around the centre, then ended up back on the beachfront. The esplanade took us past a market, military buildings, cannons that lined the boardwalk and finally to where guys and gals were doing tricks on bikes and rollerblades. From what we saw, although Vina del Mar’s beach isn’t well kept its well used, and as the afternoon wore on more and more people arrived to soak up the afternoon/evening sol.

One of these folks was a young guy practising his ‘free-walking’, moves on the beach. We saw him doing back flips off a high wall onto the beach. We asked to take some photos which he happily agreed to. He was using objects surrounding him as props for his flips. He was amazing to watch. We also saw some great sand art and a man that did spray paint art, but on the cover of books. A big day for artistic inspiration!

New Years Eve!! Our day was spent looking around Vina del Mar a little more. Pete then had an afternoon nap, while I wrote postcards and had a vaso of wine at a nearby corner café. Not realising what time the shops closed we almost missed them, lucky we found one with its door half closed so we could get some drinks and supplies for the evening. After having our last meal for 2010, a Chilean hot dog, we stayed at home until we joined the masses down the beach a bit before midnight. There were thousands of people crowding the promenade, covering the beach and filling the beachside apartment balconies. All ages were out and there was a real buzz of celebration in the air. As midnight approached the vibe got electric and the people started chanting and screaming, the energy was contagious. Congenially no fights broke out and we didn’t see any drunk people falling over themselves or slum dogs- something unfortunately we think we would have seen in our home countries in great supply. There was not a big police presence either, which was interesting to see due to the size of the crowd.

The countdown was a little vague as there was no loud speaker or radio to keep time. We got the hint that we were in the future when people up the beach started screaming, hugging and kissing. Then the fireworks began. There was about six different points where the fireworks were set off over the water, and we had picked the perfect spot as one of those points was right in front of us. The fireworks lasted for about twenty minutes and didn’t disappoint. When it finished we made our way back up the beach with the masses of others to our hostel and called it a night watching TV. Talk about party animals!!

Saturday.

After a sleep in to recover from our ’big night’ we walked into town and went to Quinta Vergara, a beautiful park that had huge roses of every colour and even had trees from New Zealand. On site is Palacio Vergara, an old palace and in the grounds there is also a huge newly erected open- air amphitheatre that would be amazing to listen to music in. We had a look around, went up to a lookout that didn’t really show us as much as we expected, then headed back to the hostel.

Karim picked us up that evening to take us to dinner. He had a special restaurant in mind which was located in Concon, another little costal town not far from Vina del Mar, usually only fifteen minutes drive away. We had forgotten about it being New Year’s day and therefore it took us over an hour to get there. To add hunger to car-cabin-fever there was a great big line up out the door of the restaurant! Two and a half very hungry hours later we arrived back in Vina, only to end up going to a restaurant two blocks away from where we were staying!! We did get to have an English speaking tour and did see the sunset sink into the ocean, so it wasn’t all bad. Pretty funny though-thanks Karim.
Sunday.

We hopped on a bus to get us to Valparaiso, the city down further on the coast surrounded by hills- Vina’s more worldly and slightly stern older sibling. We looked at the its port and walked its streets at sea level, which were tattooed with uninspired graffiti. It struck us that every direction seemed dull and grey and there were an insane amount of low hanging overhead powerlines that make the phrase ‘watch your head‘ seem more urgent.

Walking up the city’s steep sprawling hills the scenery started to change with more vibrant colours appearing. The greatest part for me were discovering the decorative murals that were to be found around almost every corner: garage, door, wall.

The houses higher up into the hills were famously colourful with a lot of character and as we walked we would get a great view of the harbour. There were cool little shops and stalls scattered around the place too. We walked so much that day and were happy to put our feet up when we got back to the hostel!

We drove back to Santiago on Monday after Pete and I had to yet again walk around for ages to find breakfast. This time we found a McDonalds where we ate cheese burgers. Back at Karim and GiGi’s place we had a lot of washing and organising to do as we had booked an overnight bus to Pucon- Karim’s home town- middle Chile.

Until next time we write, take care of yourself and we both hope that 2011 brings you all health, happiness, laughter and adventure xx

Our New years trip

Vina del Mar, Chile