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Round the world!!!
a travel blog by
Pete+Rochelle
4 1/2 months with no work, no keys, no responsibilities- doesn't get better than this!!!
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Living with the crazies.
Concepcion
,
Chile
Tuesday 25th- Friday 28th January
We had movies that were in English on our bus-finally! This might not seem like something write home about, but let me tell you that normally they’re in Spanish with Spanish subtitles! Go figure. We were so happy being able to follow the movie’s plot that we ‘almost’ didn’t mind that it was the worst E-grade crap we have ever seen. They were so bad they became enjoyable.
Conception is a city still recovering from major earthquake damage when a 8.3 earthquake hit them last year. It is also a university town so it has limited accommodation, with most of the rooms in town going to the student contingent. We were a little worried about the fact that our Lonely Planet bible only had three places listed in which to stay. Two were in the same building. We some how remained optimistic and when we hopped in a cab at the bus station we asked to be dropped off at the central plaza, hoping our luck would be there. As it turned out our cab driver ended up asking us if we had somewhere to stay and offered to take us to look at a place he knew. Well the room ended up more than our budget would normally allow, but we decided on ignoring that for one night so we didn’t have to stress. I have to admit by this time I had had enough of the whole trying to organise finding somewhere to sleep and trying to understand what people were saying and just wanted to stop thinking for a while. We still had the fun job of trying to find where the other hostels were that would hopefully be cheaper and more kind to our pockets in the coming days. To cut a long, very boring story short, we walked up and down the street the hostels were supposedly on to find that none of them existed any more. Awesome!! Luckily we found the information centre with the most helpful English speaking guy who had a list of places to stay and even rung them to get prices for us, because at that stage I was loosing faith in having any pleasure staying in Conception rapidly and was ready to just pack my bags and leave in the morning. Oh, I should mention this was the second spot for the information centre also- the first one wasn’t there anymore either. We checked out a place that was dirt cheap. It was very basic, but it had everything we needed so we booked in for the next two nights.
With that settled, we went out for dinner and saw everybody drinking beer with something around the rim. A customer told us what it was and said we should try it. Which we did, and did we regret it! I can’t remember the name of it, but its beer with lemon juice and a salty, chilli flaked crust around the rim of the glass. It was terrible, see pictures for more proof.
Wednesday.
Markets!
We spent the morning watching the Mighty Boosh and Peep Show, an English comedy series which is quite funny, before heading off to our new hostel. We were then off to a café that had Wi-Fi before Pete and I went our separate ways, him to play guitar, and me to check out the huge craft fair that was on. It was pretty big, but filled with the same things over and over again. I’m getting bored of the same thing in markets all the time. Pete likes this though, as I’m not as excited to go to all the markets now and I don’t want to buy everything in sight.
Our weird little friend
That night we went to one of the many uni pubs for a drink. We were not far off leaving when this guy, Nickolas, who spoke very basic english approached us and told us that he had a friend who was Australian who would be so happy to meet us. We said “okay, where is he?” His friend wasn’t at the pub, and had to go through a series of phone calls to track him down. In the mean time Nickolas and his friend decided to sit with us, his friend not really speaking english at all and Nickolas just saying the same thing over and over again. “I love my friend and you met him make him so happy.” After over an hour of us waiting to see what was going to happen thinking that we were on the verge of another misadventure, Nickolas told us we had to walk fifteen minutes in the direction away from our hostel as Paul was at a restaurant. How do you tell someone who doesn’t speak English that if their friend was so excited to meet us why didn’t he come here? We left with the false promise of calling this Paul guy the next day and counting our loses.
Thursday.
Concepcion University
We had been told the university was quiet impressive and went for a walk through the grounds to check it out. We weren’t disappointed. There were lush grass areas, statues, big murals and even little ponds where swans and students hung out and mutually contemplate how the uni survived the devastating earthquake without much damaged? Pete was very taken aback by it, especially since the rest of the city was nothing to look at.
We made our way to the most exciting looking thing ever-Plaza Jurasica. It was park that had big plastic dinosaurs through it. We saw it in the cab on the way into Conception, and were excited about going there. The dinosaurs were huge and you were allowed to climb over them and do poser photos. There only ended up being about five Dinos though much to our disappointment. Still, we took our photos and it was the first of its kind on our trip, which is always good!
I need to mention that by this stage we realised why our accommodation was so cheap (check out the kitchen shelving). Pete realised after channelling his ESP that the hostel was more like a hospice. No one there spoke a jot of English, but one spoke enough to let us know that one of ladies staying there was crazy! Loco. Alright! How to make us feel comfortable! Our only real solace was our padded room where we had a TV that was burry and fuzzy. Pete had the hugest sneezing fits from all the dust and we were woken up one morning with shouts and screams! You get what you pay for!! Friday morning we didn’t even have showers as the water was either scorching hot or freezing cold. We just woke up, packed up our stuff, and got out of there as fast as we could. Truly you have to go to really conceive Conception!
written by
Pete+Rochelle
on February 2, 2011
from
Concepcion
,
Chile
from the travel blog:
Round the world!!!
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Sorry everyone!
Chillan
,
Chile
Hey! Sorry we haven't updated you all for a little while, we have had limited use of expensive and slow internet. We have a couple of entries left to do to finish off our South American adventure, once Pete has edited my spelling they will be up! Bear with us- its almost over! xx
written by
Pete+Rochelle
on February 13, 2011
from
Chillan
,
Chile
from the travel blog:
Round the world!!!
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To boredom and beyond.
Chillan
,
Chile
Friday 28th-Sunday 30th
Have you ever been so disappointed by something, yet at the same time been so pleasantly surprised? This, people, was our experience in Chillan, a town so well known for absolutely nothing that even our friend Karim was surprised we were headed there. Here’s the thing though, our Lonely Planet bible told of a couple of small attractions that we thought were worth a look, so we took a chance on it. Once we were there we thought we had taken a wrong turn into Snores-Ville, yet we were soon to discover that that if you add a splash of good- humoured human nature to any tragic tale you’re more than likely to conjure a happy ending.
Check the chips that we got!
On its surface Chillan was a quiet, spread- out town, one and a half hours as the bus drones, inland from Concepcion. Graffiti and murals were abound, as were the car-part, bit-part stores. A place where we had a big lunch and four beers for only $17AUD. You will be also pleased to know that Chillan boasts cheap accommodation too, devoid of crazy folk!
Our first ramble we went on was to the information centre to find out about the places that interested us, which were: the great murals that ‘represented Chile’s cultural maturity‘, a huge weekend market, and beautiful waterfalls that were a bus ride away but rumoured to be well worth the discomfort.
The broken musuem
Our first disappointment was hearing that the building the murals were in was closed due to earthquake damage. Oh well, still things to do, we thought. After that knock back we asked about getting to the waterfalls, to which we were assured it was very easy to get to as buses left every half hour from the local transport station. Something for us to do after the markets the next day. At lunch we looked at a map and booklet on Chillan we got from the information centre and saw a museum that looked interesting. It had the word music in the description so of course Pete wanted to look. It was a few blocks away but we went for a walk in the scorching heat only to find that the building was not only closed, but completely destroyed from the earthquake the town had last year. Oh well, still more to do tomorrow, so we thought. We did go out for dinner at a great little buffet restaurant so at least our bellies were satisfied.
Saturday morning we headed to the markets. Rumour had it that they filled a whole city block and to be fair they were rather large looking. They were filled to the brim with the greatest amount of fruit and veg we had ever seen. The souvenirs took up a small fraction of the stalls, all of them pretty much selling the same tacky token trinkety thing. Not as we were anticipating, but the bananas tasted fan-tastic. We weren’t worried though, because we were off to see some waterfalls!
What were we thinking? That there was something to actually do in this part of the world? Well we were wrong again. We made it to the bus terminal around 11.30pm, only to find that the buses stopped going out there at 10.30! That’s right, so by now we were well and truly over it. Nothing had gone our way and we had seen jack-shit in two days, from a town that seemed to have a lot we were given little. To add insult to irritation, we couldn’t get back into the hostel. It was one of those places where you didn’t have a key to get in, you had to ring a buzzer and someone came to the door. That’s what’s supposed to happen anyway. We knocked and knocked and waited and yelled until finally someone from a hostel across the road came over with a key and let us in. Apparently the owners had gone out. How nice for them! Maybe they knew something we didn’t and had some thing to do!!
Disillusioned, we opted to go out for some afternoon drinks when we were invited into another room in the hostel by a bunch of Chilean guys who were in a band. We ended up spending the afternoon playing music with them and speaking very broken english. They were a lively, friendly bunch with big personalities and amazing musical talents that played traditional Chilean music. We received free cd’s and Pete even had them playing along to his music as well! Merrier from meeting the guys we headed off out for dinner where we ended up in a quiet restaurant that had wi-fi. It didn’t want to work on our computer so they gave us their computer to use. They also used the computer for translating so they could explain the menu to us. We were given free nibbles, our glass was never empty long and our waitress tried so hard to have conversations with us. Then, when we decided to leave after midnight, they offered us a ride home. The hospitality we received from this family which owned the restaurant, and the fact it was pretty much the first place where we had people go out-of- their- way for us was another bonus to our otherwise boring evening.
Pete and the band
We were quickly reminded of the situation we were in on arriving at our hostel. Upon pressing the buzzer to get in, yep you guessed it no one answered. After ten minutes and calling and knocking on the front door and it being about half past midnight on a dark street, we decided to go and harass the man across the road again. He didn’t come over to let us in this time, but called them the owners of our hostel, and five minutes later they showed up in a car, no apologies, tango nada. The worst part is being angry with someone who doesn’t speak your language. Whatever you say they just look at you and shrug. They could have at least told us where the party was.
Chillan. A funny little place where even the tumbleweeds grind to a holt. At least when we were mind numbingly bored we could always count on counting dogs.
Check out the dogs nose!
The church
written by
Pete+Rochelle
on February 15, 2011
from
Chillan
,
Chile
from the travel blog:
Round the world!!!
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Goodbye South America
Santiago
,
Chile
Monday 31st Jan- Wed 2nd Feb.
So we have finally come to it- the end of our South American journey. Arriving in Santiago we again stayed with Karim and Gigi for our last couple of nights, did last minute shopping in the city. The real fun started when we had to pack our bags and after a lot of grunting and shoving, we did a lot better than we expected. We still had kilos to spare. We decided to end our big holiday in style with a tour of the local and internationally renown vineyard: Concha y Toro. Gigi brilliantly helped us with booking the tour and getting all the information for the metro and taxis, as the vineyard was situated a bit out of town.
The day was hot with not a cloud in the sky, perfect conditions to indulge in fine wine. The vineyard was so very grand. Our tour guide, Philippe explained that the big colonial building on the vineyard grounds was the ‘summer house’ of the founders. If this was their ‘summer house’ I would have liked to have seen the size of their other seasonal digs. The ‘summer house’, overlooked a beautiful park that occupied sheep, horses with its deliciously green grass, and the adjacent fields played host to giant trees that lined dusty well warn paths. Philippe informed us that we weren’t allow to enter any building as they were now used as offices so we couldn’t go inside for disturbing the workers.
The stunning grounds.
Purple grapes were abundant swinging on grapevines situated next to the house. Philippe told us the difference between growing green and purple grapes. He said the green grapes were grown down by the coastline more, as they loved the water and the winds and that the purple grapes needed really dry and still conditions, so inland protected by the Andes were their spot. Which explains why New Zealand makes a better white then a red; its simply not dry enough. The vineyard used a drip- feed- process to water the grapes. This technique made the vine think that from the lack of water in the soil it was on the verge of dying (a bit grim I know), so the vine put all its energy and nutrients into its fruit. From this process which really is the agricultural cousin to Chinese water-torture, you’re left with a rather small bunch of grapes due to the lack of water in the fruit, but one hell of an intense flavour. Their motto was quality over quantity when it came to their grapes, a sentiment that was to be trusted after we tasted their wine. After Philippe’s rehearsed speeches we were allowed our first glass, a wonderful blended chardonnay and Philippe showed us how to smell and taste the wine. He also topped our glasses up when we were finished. Good Philippe.
We were then shown the big cool rooms where the barrels of wine were kept, and the original cellar, which was over one hundred years old. This thing had been through major earthquakes and was still standing! We were told the story of their signature and original wine, Ciaballer de Diablo, or The Cellar of the Devil. On creating his signature drop, legend has it, he stored it in the cellar for safe keeping. In a short while he then began noticing that barrels were mysteriously disappearing, so to stop the theft he started a rumour that the devil lived in his cellar! Strangely everyone believed the tale and not another barrel was taken! Who needs CTV when you have superstitious Catholics I say. We were afforded another top-notch wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon. A bit too intense for me but Pete was satisfied.
Can you make out the devil at the end?
We finished off our day with lunch and more wine in the restaurant and was serenaded by three American singers that we had met on the tour who sang on various cruise ships. They sang ‘Danny Boy’, which was quite surreal considering our surrounding I thought, but they sang beautifully.
It was a very long trip back to Karim’s with our heads full of wine, our condition providing the only cure for to suffer Santiago’s simmering- hot, jam-packed metro cars-sleep
Little Renzo!
It was a perfect ending to our stay in the great continent. Things had gotten a little unexciting towards the end, but Santiago came through for us. After a sad goodbye to Kairm and his family (who, by the way have one of the cutest babies ever!) we were on our way to a thirteen and a half hour plane ride with english movies (yes!!) and losing a day to time difference. We were ready for english speaking people, cooler weather and my Mum's cooking in my home country of New Zealand. So we'll let you know how that one goes soon! Please excuse the speed of the blogs- internet availability was the reason for a while, now taking a holiday from our holiday is. We are almost at the end though, what a trip it has been!!
written by
Pete+Rochelle
on February 18, 2011
from
Santiago
,
Chile
from the travel blog:
Round the world!!!
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Home sweet home
Auckland
,
New Zealand
Friday 4th- Sunday 13th Feb.
What would be the most exciting things about going home? Seeing all the family? Yes. Mums’ cooking? Of course yes. Receiving copious amounts of love from your nieces and embrassing your nephew? Defiantly yes. But the most exciting thing of all was ordering a cup of tea at the airport, in English! Complete bliss! Hearing someone say ‘sweet as’ also gave us a bit of a giggle.
The week was a very chilled out one. My Mum picked us up from the airport, drove us home, and we were greeted by the most amazing sight. Dozens of our photos from our trip all A4 size were covering the walls of our bedroom, going in the order of our trip. Mum had even carefully placed stickers on some of them. We weren’t expecting it and we stood there for ages just looking at our trip in big pictures in front of us. The great thing about it too was feeling excited and proud about our trip again. Our last couple of weeks in Chile hadn’t quiet gone to plan and we were feeling a bit flat about it all (as you may of guessed by the blog entries), so the pictures reminded us just how much we had done. So good on ya Mum!
Mum & Matt the cook!
My sister Tanya and her partner Karl put in the most brilliant welcome home breakfast of: sausages, bacon, eggs, tomato, mushroom, baked beans, spaghetti and much to Pete's delight- HP sauce. Thanks Sis! On the Saturday we had the ‘annual bbq’- so I could catch up with my old kiwi friends and their babies (ladies be warned- I think there is something in the water in Auckland, babies everywhere!).
The girls with a kiwi singer
On Sunday the girls and I also checked out a free music concert in the park that the council puts on every summer. A great excuse to sit on a blanket, eating icecream, listening to kiwi music with our friends Chris and Michelle and their two boys. Pete took this opportunity to stay have the house to himself and watch movies in silence. Our umbilical cord was finally broken!
Madison & Jayde
Brodie
We spent the week chilling out with the family, seeing my Grandad, catching up with friends and meeting avid blog fans (Hi Yvonne!). We spent a day at Auckland Museum with Madison, Jayde and Brodie, my nieces and nephew and Mum took us to a second hand shop so we could buy some new cheap clothes. How nice it was to get rid of the tops I had worn for four months to Tanya and wear something different!
Tanya & Karl
Our big excitement for the week was going to Tree Adventures. It’s a place where there is a series of courses that are erected between trees and you have to go over the obstacles to make it to the flying fox at the end of each course that gets you back on the ground. We were harnessed in at all times, starting low to the ground on the first course, ending up about eighteen metres above the ground on course nine. Pete had to stop on the fourth one- his height was restricting his movements with the safety wire and he hurt his arm, so he was on camera duty. Jayde and Madison made it to the highest course for them, course eight, even doing some of the courses twice. For ten year olds they were amazing, and every time I freaked out I looked at them swinging between trees up high and thought myself silly. It was a little scary, hard work, but great fun. My body hurt the next day, but it was worth it.
Gorgeous little Sabina
It was great as always to be in my home country with my family and for once it didn’t rain! We are now back in Australia, catching up with Pete's family in Mackay, getting to know his little nine month old niece Sabina and trying to get used to the heat while enjoying his Mums cooking. Its back to the real world for us, thinking about where we are going to live and getting jobs, all that fun stuff. What we do know is that we have had the trip of a lifetime, one that will keep us going for a while, and give us fuel for our next one. We saw some awe-inspiring sights, met some wonderful people and got to play with monkeys!! Defiantly a highlight.
So this will be the end of this blog. We hope that you have enjoyed our adventures, laughed at our misadventures as we have. We survived the Amazon, the Inca trail and most importantly, each other! Thank you for your comments and keeping up with us. So until the next trip, goodbye!!! xx Peter and Rochelle
written by
Pete+Rochelle
on February 26, 2011
from
Auckland
,
New Zealand
from the travel blog:
Round the world!!!
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Mackay
,
Australia
written by
Pete+Rochelle
on February 26, 2011
from
Mackay
,
Australia
from the travel blog:
Round the world!!!
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