We arrived in Chile very tired, but there, we had finally managed to organise Couchsurfing! This meant that we were going to have to speak to people and seem lively instead of just crawling into bed. The guys who were hosting us sounded very relaxed on their profiles and in the messages we exchanged, so I wasn't too worried. Also I thought being encouraged to stay up until normal bedtime in the new time zone would really help avoid jet-lag.

The two guys, Pablo and Jaime, were very nice and, although they were very chatty, they understood that we were not exactly lives and souls of the party after our flight. Pablo was from Uruguay, which was very interesting and useful, since we hadn't yet decided whether we were going there; Jaime was a native of Chile. They told us that the rest of South America doesn't think that Chileans speak Spanish, but some other related language and Argentinians, and especially the Uruguayans sound more like they are speaking Italian because of the slow, sing-song way that they speak Spanish, which is much easier to understand.

That night we both slept for fourteen hours. Excellent! From 10pm until midday. However this meant that my avoiding jet-lag plan hadn't exactly worked, but at least we'd caught up on some much-needed sleep. We had thought we would wake up at 8am, after all who can sleep longer than ten hours?

Joanne neither up nor down

We went out for a wee look around. Pablo, Jaime, and the guidebook has told us there wasn't really much for tourist to do in Santiago except climb both of the cerros, which you can do in one day. Since half the day was gone we decided to go for the smaller one, Cerro Santa Lucia, as it also had the advantage of being closer to Pablo and Jaime's flat. The weather wasn't great, but we hoped we would get a view of the Andes, which we had been told you can see from the city. When we arrived the previous day, the weather was so bad that there was no chance, but it had improved a bit since then. Even on the walk to the park we could see hints of the Andes between the buildings. It's really nice to see such massive mountains from the middle of the city.

City and mountains

Santa Cristobel (the other hill)

A snogging couple in the park

When we entered the park and climbed up the wee hill it was lovely and the view was much better over all the buildings. One very nice thing about the park is that it was full of couples snogging. After Asia it was really nice to see some affection between people; Joanne and I had just spent the first seven months of our honeymoon [I like that phrase :-)] having to be careful not to hold hands in public in case we offended a local. What a change: some of the behaviour in this park would certainly not have gone unnoticed in Glasgow. From the top of the hill we could almost see the Andes clearly but there is too much pollution to see them properly. We found a place near the hill selling empanadas, which we had to have as they are a national speciality. They were quite nice, but rather reminscent of a Greggs pie. That was lunch.

Pollution and mountains

Big mountains, ugly city

Nice fountain in Cerro Santa Lucia park

More of Cerro Santa Lucia pretty bits

On top of the city, looking down on pollution

Later we headed to Bella Vista, which the guide book says is a trendy part of town and great for night life. On the way we were intercepted by a student who was handing out poetry to make money, because the government is increasing the fees and it's impossible to live, he said. We had heard a fair bit the previous night about the relative political inclinations of Chile and Uruguay: in Uruguay health and education is free; in Chile you pay for everything. As we were travelling for a year, we had become quite hardened to begging; for one thing, our trip would be severely curtailed if we gave to everyone who seemed in need; for another thing it becomes very annoying when you are constantly targeted as an obvious walking piggy bank. Consequently we hadn't given much in India, probably about the same frequency as a middle-class Indian, and in India there was a lot of need. It may seem callous, but after refusing so many needy people in India, there was no way I was giving money to some poet-student who looked pretty well dressed. When I told him we couldn't afford it, he said please just a token, so I handed him a 100 Peso coin and he responded “It's too much of a token”, and refused to take it, so I just said OK and walked off. We still hadn't got used to the money at that point and, in fact, it was more stingy than I had intended to be! How are new-comers to the country supposed to understand a currency that only manages about 1000 to a pound? Mind you, writing this I've changed my mind: what beggar in Glasgow would have refused 10p? In fact in Chile the cost of living is much lower, so this is probably equivalent to 50p, although I have no idea how much glue costs in Chile.

Soon after we were lingering outside a bar with a sign for pisco sours, which we were obviously going to have to try as they are a national speciality, although if you ask Peruvians, apparently, the Chileans stole this speciality along with Ceviche from them, who invented them first and have the best ones. Later a Chilean guy would tell us that this is because the best lemons come from Peru and, since both specialities rely heavily on lemons, Chile could never has as good versions as Peru. As we were dawdling there a few locals came out, in high spirits, and invited us to join them. It was the girl's birthday, they told us. I didn't see the harm, although I felt a little nervous about a random encounter with strangers in South America, which I had been looking forward to with apprehension, slightly, all the way through safer-than-Europe Asia. Nevertheless, I felt our trip to Cuba had missed a little from not mixing enough with the locals whenever they seemed a bit shady (which was all the time), so I thought stopping off for one pisco sour would do no harm. The pisco sours were great, and the people we very nice and friendly, so we stayed for a beer too. Then one of the three left and soon after the bill arrived. The “brother” of the “birthday girl” threw in only a few coins even though most of the bill was theirs. I complained that their bill was much more than that and he put in a bit more, but I didn't feel confident enough in my smattering of Spanish to involve the staff and just decided to pay the extra 1500 Pesos. They had still been expecting us to meet them later in Bella Vista, but I told them that there was no way we were meeting them later if I had to pay so much extra towards the bill. If they had asked before, I might well have said yes, because the chat was good and it's only actually about £1.50, but they had broken at least one principle, so that was it. £1.50 to be encouraged to look up “La cuenta distinta” for next time didn't seem too costly.

After that we were in need of more food and the only thing we thought we could afford was another empanada. Pie for lunch and pie for dinner: a good Glasgow diet. We did get to Bella Vista alone and it was a great wee area. Actually it seems to be just one street. Litres of beer for only 990 Pesos and the whole street is jumping with activity. It wasn't great, though, that everyone smoked. We had got used to it in China, but New Zealand had made us sensitive again. The city and now, especially, the night life really reminded me of Barcelona. The lively atmosphere mostly. The architecture in Santiago doesn't have a whisper of a dream of Barcelona's, but the atmosphere is just a nice. And who cares how ugly the city is when you can see the Andes between every pair of buildings? One unexpected difference is that the people are much whiter in Chile. I had expected the people to look pretty much Spanish, but a bit darker due to mixing with the indigenous people. Now, there are plenty of people like that, but there are also a lot of locals who look northern European, which I was not expecting. I didn't realise, but there were a lot of later immigrants to South America after the original colonial days, and they have certainly left their genetic mark.

written by

The Happy Couple on September 4, 2009 from Santiago, Chile

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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First off I have to apologise for the number of photos crammed into this bog entry, but what are you suppose to do in somewhere like Easter Island? There are some bonus ones at the end.

The six hour flight from Santiago to Easter Island was quite rough and when it came to the descent, the pilot had to back off and try again. In the end we spent two hours circling around around the island waiting for the weather to break. A few of the passengers were becoming visibly anxious and after a while we both started to wonder about the amount of fuel they carry for the flight; after all if they are completely unable to land, where can they divert to? - it's probably back to Santiago. Nonetheless we landed in one piece, prompting spontaneous clapping from the passengers, something I've not seen for many a year. Clearly there were a lot of relieved people on board.

Our flight path for two hours

Of course, the weather was still awful when we arrived, but this didn't stop the hostel manager from putting garlands around our necks when we introduced ourselves, as if we had arrived at some tropical paradise. The airport was tiny, though, and this combined with the garlands combined to give me a very quaint first impression of the place. It's the most remote inhabited place on Earth, over two thousand miles from Chile, and somehow I felt really aware of it as soon as we landed; maybe it was just the amount of time I had to meditate on that fact while we should have been landing, but I think there is more to it than that; maybe the way the skies look or the way the air smells or the way the sea moves. The drive to the hostel was a bit uglier than I was hoping. It may just have been the weather, but I wondered if we had made a mistake to stay there for so long.

The only other new arrivals on the minibus to be picked up with us were school children, and lots of them. Alarm bells were already starting to ring. We were booked into this hostel for three nights and we were planning to ask whether we could stay an extra two, despite what the website had said, because we really couldn't afford to stay at the place we had booked into for the last two nights. Were we really going to have to spend five night with a school party? We hid in our room and spoke to Guillermo, an Asturian who was already resident in our “dorm”. We had originally been booked into different dorms because the hostel was so heavily booked: with Joanne in a female dorm and me in a mixed dorm, but the manager must have taken pity on us and re-allocated us to Guillermo's dorm. The “dorm” looked like it was probably one of the owner's children who had been kicked out to make more space (and money). Seeing how easily he could re-shuffle we asked about the extra two days and were told it was no problem, saving us about US$100. We would be able to eat! By the evening the weather had improved and Joanne and I wandered down to the sea for the sunset.

The coast on our first night

When we woke I went through to the dining room, excited at the prospect of the free breakfast, while Joanne finished showering. I sat down and waited to be served; the table would need to be cleared first. But nobody came. After waiting some more I noticed that there were a couple of undisturbed places at different tables and I was so hungry that I collected together enough unused crockery, including a couple of plates with bread rolls covered with a paper napkin, and two glasses of juice, each covered with a napkin. Was this really how breakfast was supposed to work? We scavenged a little meat and cheese from plates in the middle of several different tables and half-used jam and butter. That was breakfast. At least there was coffee too.

Joanne by the Volcano

We had originally planned to rent bicycles but, considering that the weather seemed quite unpredictable and the difference in price was almost nothing, we opted for a moped again. The weather held for most of the day and never turned awful like the previous day. We intended to spend that first day seeing as many of the major sights as we could, reckoning we could tick off all of the moais in one day. We set out up the East coast of the island and found the terrain to be rather worse than we had hoped, but we had been warned that the roads are not much good apart from the main ones. Soon we found ourselves at a volcano, which was odd because we hadn't intended to head that way. It was an excellent bonus though. I've never seen a volcanic crater before and this small volcano offered excellent vistas over the town, Hanga Roa, the only town on the island. From up there (not really all that high) we could easily see two sides of the island and, were it not for a couple of other hills, we would have been able to see the whole thing. It really is tiny; it's about the same size as Bute. To think of an entire civilisation isolated here, without any outside contact, is incredible; for the whole of the known universe to be just sixty square miles, I find mind-boggling. Every single person would know almost every piece of ground that the entire civilisation knew of: reality was bounded, and they could walk from one end to the other in a day. How comforting that must have been. Or maddeningly boring.

Hanga Roa from the volcano

just slightly to the right: the other coast

First moai!

We corrected our navigational error and found ourselves on a much nicer, bigger road. After a while we were starting to wonder where the moais were, when Joanne spotted something. It was quite exciting but a bit of an anti-climax. I had refused to even take a photo of the moai in town because I was convinced it was a reproduction or at least not a very good one because it was much smaller than I had expected, but this first one we found out of town was even smaller and in worse condition. Also, according to the map, we had already missed a few on the way. Considering the time we had taken for the detour to the volcano, we thought we should press on and return another day to find the missing moais if time allowed.

It's not very big

Old boys on the pish

Joanne's next sighting was a vital one, and not so easy. We had been expecting them all to be sign-posted for the tourists, after all how many other reasons are there to go to the island, but so far there had been only small signs you would see after the moais. In this case they weren't so easy to see because the were all lying face down like old boys from Partick a bit worse for wear.

First really big one

Before we went there I had read that some of them had been vandalised by the islanders before any Europeans arrived, so it wasn't too much of a shock, and at least these ones were pretty big so we could get a much better idea of how impressive they must have been while still intact. The moais all stand (or stood) on an ahu, a platform built up from boulders. The island literature says that these have a sacred significance, so you must not walk on these. How this can be true when the islanders themselves desecrated the sites I cannot grasp, but I applaud any emotional blackmail the archaeologists can play on less respectful, but superstitious, tourists.

See how big!

The quarry

We picked our way up the coast, from site to site, missing several more, and they were all demolished. Some of them were huge things, though, and we could still appreciate the awe they must have instilled. But we were becoming a bit impatient: where were the really incredible sites? We started to skip sites deliberately if we knew from the guidebook that it was just more of the same. We still stopped for a really large one or a particularly intact ahu, but we wanted to move on to the big hitters. Near the far end of the island from Hanga Roa we passed close to the volcano Rano Raraku, where we knew we could find half-carved moais in the quarry there, but we continued because just round the corner was Ahu Tongariki the most complete site on the island.

Joanne and stray moai at Ahu Tongariki

Ahu Tongariki

Finally we could feel the full force of the awe that these statues are presumably meant to inspire: fifteen of them lined up along the coast, the biggest enormous. Of course the whole site is rebuilt. What I hadn't realised before going to Easter Island is that not just some of the moais were vandalised, but almost all of them were toppled. This site had been destroyed twice: once by the islanders and then the ahu itself was demolished by a tsunami in the 20th Century.

Ahu Tongariki

Despite being repaired, the site is lovely. I'd had a discussion, verging on argument, with the American archaeologist we met the first night in Xiàhé about restoration. I agreed that I hated things to be over-restored, like many of the sites in Sukhothai, but he would leave everything exactly where it lay when archaeologists found it. What on Earth would be the point of fifteen giant stone statues lying facedown when the restoration involves little more than standing them up and sticking their heads back on? It's very impressive, it's very beautiful, and I don't care if it's not how the Europeans found it. Actually the first Europeans there found them all standing up, so I have a theory that it was actually later Europeans who knocked them all down but, when they later felt guilty about it, made up a story about the natives having a civil war; after all who wrote the history?

Ahu Tongariki

Finally totally awed by the scene, I felt obliged to pay a little tribute to Matt Harding, whose Where the Hell is Matt? videos contributed a significant nudge in finally getting it together to go on this big trip. If his videos don't make you want to see more of the world then nothing will. I don't think I quite captured his dancing but I gave it my best shot.

Matt

Me

Next we headed up to the quarry and got some nice shots, but we didn't pay to go in because the ticket only lasts one day and includes a couple of other sites on the island, which we reckoned we would be able to see all of another day. Instead we continued on to the beach at the North End of the island, which is a lovely fine sand beach with several moais looming in the background. We narrowly avoided getting stuck in the mud on the road on the way to the beach, but made it back completely unscathed and very please with the day we had.