Valparaiso

It’s New Year’s Eve. We land back in Santiago about 11am. We are headed to a town called Valparaiso about 90 minutes outside Santiago. We head to the bus terminal and are told they are sold out of tickets to Valparaiso. We proceed to meet a man that speaks little English and has “transport” to Valparaiso. We are not sure if this is a car with his family or an actual bus. Luckily it ends up being a small bus with a bunch of locals. The driver was acting like he was paid by the minute swerving in and out with not a care in the world. Also the town is normally a population of two hundred thousand but on New Years swells to two million. There are normally only two lanes that go to Valparaiso but on New Years they shut down the other side of the highway and have four lanes. We eventually arrive at a town called Vina del Mar where half the bus gets off. The other half of the bus proceeds to think the driver is taking us all the way to Valparaiso and starts to yell when he tells us this is the last stop (all in Spanish of course). Eventually after a debate the driver wins and everyone must get off the bus. We then follow a crowd to a subway we must now catch. After an hour detour we eventually arrive at city center Valparaiso. Valparaiso is what I think an Italian seaside would be. A very hilly city with tons of stairs and beautiful scenery. We head out to find our accommodations. We met a nice security guard and Katherine pulled a “I am going to act like I know Spanish moment.” He points and speak and points and speaks and Katherine nods in complete agreement. Then we head around a hill and up what seemed like a thousand stairs. We then learn we climbed the wrong hill. We then go back down the hill and up another hill. This is Chris sweaty and out of breath…

What feels like two thousand stairs later we find our room.

Stairs

More stairs

Few more

People selling beer in the street

At this point we are out to find food. After this we continue to walk around. The city is bubbling with atmosphere and everyone getting ready for the new year.

Town of Valparaiso

The crowds starting to gather

There were all kinds of people selling wares in the street

At about 10pm we pick up a couple empanadas and a perfect spot on the hill top to watch the fireworks. We ended up making friends with some locals. It was a great night with a 30 minute firework show. Sorry the camera doesn’t do it justice.

We follow our Chilean friends to a park with music and people partying everywhere. At about 1:30 we are tired and ready to go to bed. We try to say goodbye to our new friends and they tell us it’s early; they plan to stay out all night. We woke up at 6:30am to music and people still parting through the night.

Late night empanada

Chris at midnight with everyone celebrating. By this point we are covered in champagne.

The next day we explored the city and got some great shots from some beautiful spots. Our camera shots do carefully cut out the sleeping people in the parks, the beer bottles and the smell of urine in the streets.

The morning after… Yes, the people in the very back of the picture are still going strong (it is about 10am)

View overlooking the city and coast line

At the end of the day it was sad to call it a trip and start to make the journey home.

On our journey home, we reflect on the year behind and felt so blessed and lucky to do everything we have and have so many wonderful people in our lives. Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way and made this trip and our life as a whole so wonderful. Cheers to 2016!

Buenos Aires

We flew to Buenos Aires and the plane had great path straight over the city. Although we knew the city was big, from the plane window the city seemed massive.

We stayed in an area called San Telmo which is where the artists and writers live but has started to become more hip and trendy. Our host was a woman probably about 40 from Buenos Aires. She gave us a map and a game plan for the city. We start with a walking tour that hit the highlights of the city center. There has been so much change and unrest in Argentina in the last 50 years that the tour guide’s stories were fascinating. He remembered when they had 5 presidents in one week. He also remembers when grocery store managers would shout prices to the front as due to hyper inflation, prices were literally changing from when they went into the grocery store to when they left. We end the tour and waked to any area called Puerto Moderno. It is a new neighborhood with a beautiful river walk. There is a beautiful park on the other side of the river with open space and running trails. We end up eating at a restaurant close to where we are staying which was good, cheap and cheerful.

President’s House which is called the pink house.

Evita’s picture on the side of an office building

One of our favorite parts of this leg of our trip was coming home and talking to our host. She offered us a glass of wine and we would talk four hours about the new president in Argentina, her thoughts on the country and it’s history.

The first night when we got home it was very hot again above 40 degrees. Chris booked a room with no air conditioning go figure…

After such a good tour the day before we decide to do another one the following day. On our way to the tour we decide to stop at the oldest and most famous cafe in the city. It is a beautiful building. We had a typical breakfast consisting of cafe con leche and medilunas. This next tour was focused on the suburb of Recolleta. This is probably the wealthiest neighborhood in Buenos Aires. The highlight (no pun intended) was the cemetery with Evita’s grave. Chris truly became fascinated with the history of Argentina and Evita’s story. After the tour we headed to a suburb called Palmero.

Oldest cafe

Look close, this is a very old building in front and a new modern building at the back

Chris posing as Christopher Columbus

Evita’s Grave

Palmero is an upscale place where people go out. The trend we started to notice was the slow to non existent service at restaurants. It was truly unbelievable. Never the less the shops were fun to walk through and this is truly where the people were. It had been a long day at this point and nearly 8pm. Katherine had heard that the book stores were open late and wanted to check out the scene. She had envisioned a late night Barnes and Noble where you could get a drink and sit and read for hours. Although they were open late this was more like a flea market than a Barnes and Noble. We were staying up for dinner and a tango show which didn’t start till 10:30.

We finally sit down to dinner about 10. Katherine comments that this is perfect as we will have our dinner before the show is done. Dinner isn’t served till after 11:30, the performance is over but we are still hungry. Luckily the place is only two blocks from our house. Don’t get us wrong, the food was great just don’t come hungry.

The last day we go to La Boca a poorer suburb but home of the Boca Juniors Argentia’s best soccer team. They also have a fun cobble stone neighborhood and a cool art museum. Check out the view.

Boca Juniors stadium

Boca Juniors jersey

Colorful streets of La Boca

That night we go to what Chris considers the best dinner at a restaurant called El Establio. We decided to split the big fillet which was cooked perfect and could have easily served 3-4. The night was December 30th, so most people are done with work for the year. A common tradition on the last day is to throw paper from the year out your work window and onto the street. There was paper everywhere on the streets.

Paper in the streets to celebrate the end of the year.

Buenos Aires was a great city but it is now on to Valpariso for New Years.

Mendoza

Christmas Day starts with a flight from Punta Arenas to Santiago. Not surprising the city of Punta Arenas is very quiet today. We are both thankful the winds are light and turbulence is minimal. We make it early to Santiago and have a chance of catching an earlier flight to Mendoza. We race through the airport, first out of security, then back through security for international. Wait a second they want some piece of paper that they gave us when we arrived. Both Katherine and Chris have trashed this piece of paper. Switch to a different line, hurry up hurry up, two new pieces of paper. Through security and run, run, run to the gate, The plane is there and a women at the counter. Wait, wait, the plane is pulling away from the gate and we have missed the earlier flight option… 6 hours now to wait until our original flight.

Good news, we now have time to eat at both Ruby Tuesday and Johnny Rockets on Christmas (very limited Christmas Day airport restaurant options). We finally arrive in Mendoza at 10pm. The cab drivers inform us of the “fare of the night” otherwise known as an inflated fare. Only a two dollar USD increase so we pay the fare and go to our accomodation. The new Argentinan President was elected less than a month ago and the currency has deflated greater than 30%. We stay close to the city center in a woman’s house name Rosa. She is 65 and has a guest house out the back. It is quite quaint and perfect for us. We decide to walk around with Chris looking for a famous glass of Malbec Vino and Katherine an Agua con gas or sparkling water. The city is quite lively with a number of restaurants open given it is approaching midnight and Christmas. The temperature is a perfect 75 degrees so it doesn’t feel like Christmas. We end up just buying a bottle of water and heading back to the room. The infamous Malbec will have to wait for another day.

The next day we set off for a biking winery tour. 70% of Argentina’s winery region is in Mendoza. We catch a bus 20 minutes to a town called Maipu. Once there we get our bikes from a company called Mr. Hugo’s. It is a family run business out of his house which now has a 100 bikes. He provides a map and optional helmets upon request.

Katherine’s parents recently did a bike ride of the El Camino trail in Spain. These shirts are from that ride with the yellow arrow pointing the way. Katherine and Chris decided to do the El Vino trail instead : )

It is a very warm day near 100 degrees. We stop at 4-5 wineries and have lunch at this beautiful winery. The view is to die for and a perfect spot for us. We notice South American’s take their holidays and their Sundays (more to come) very seriously. Over half of the wineries were closed because it was the day after Christmas. Although Katherine and Chris were sad to miss the wineries, no work on holidays is definitely a concept we can get behind.

That night we “splurged” and went out to a fancy steak dinner. Total bill with tip was $45. Chris had the fillet and Katherine homemade pasta. We started with Empanadas and a bottle of wine. Sorry no picture but you got to go to the wine cellar to pick your bottle of wine. We arrived at dinner at 9:30 and didn’t leave till after midnight. Let’s just say there is no hurry in this country. Mendoza is famous for the night life which starts even later. We decided to get an ice cream cone and call it a night.

The next day was Sunday and we have devoted it to exploring the city. It started with the well known cafe con leche and a crossiant. Next we walked to the famous park/lake. It felt like Wash park (popular Denver park) and we truly felt like we fit in. There were so many active people. We also stumbled across the Mendoza athletic club doing a tango class. If only pictures had sound. You could hear the music for miles.

Tango class, it is packed!

On the way back we walked around town. We then headed towards the market which was closed. On Sunday’s after 2pm the city shuts down. It was literally a ghost town. We ended up exploring some of the beautiful parks. We headed to dinner about 7. Katherine told Chris just to be patient but he didn’t believe anything would open. We settled on a burger joint at 8:30. We ate dinner on the street and could see restaurants starting to set up at 8:30 or 9pm. The transformation of the city was literally amazing; we were shocked. However, with a flight in the morning we decided to call it a night.

One ice cream is never enough… this is #3 of the trip.

Punta Arenas otherwise known as the end of the earth…

Holaaaaaaaa We had to extend the “a” because we are sending greetings all the way from the end of the earth. Punta Arenas is the Southern most city in all of the world. Don’t worry we aren’t the only ones to have found it, there are plenty of stray dogs. Although as in Santiago, they pay you no mind.

Punta Arenas has an average sea breeze of 30 miles an hour otherwise known as the arctic chill. The flight was quite turbulent, which we learned was typical (we can’t imagine a bad day). We took a cab from the airport about 20 minutes to our B&B. We then went to explore and get a bite to eat. It was about 4:30pm. Little did we know a number of the restaurants close between 3-7pm, so options were sparse. We settled on a quaint Pita place but it was no Pita Pit. After a quick bite we continued exploring the city and looked for a travel agency to take us to Torre Del Paine and Tierra de Fuego. We found a one man shop that promised us a English speaking guide for Torre Del Paine with the bus picking us up at 5:30am and dropping us off at 10:30pm. We decided to book the tour and look for dinner before calling it an early night. Looking outside we estimated it was approximately 5pm but due to the summer solstice it was actually after 9pm. We found a delicious place to eat called La Marmita. To our surprise the place was packed and it was after 10pm. We headed to bed at midnight with the night air still looking dusk.

The next morning we awoke to sunlight as sunrise was around 3:45am. We get up an hour later to load the tour bus with 10 of our closest friends. The tour guide starts by announcing she speaks no english. Fortunately, there was another family from Oklahoma who had a son living in Chile who translated for us. Alas all was not lost. It was about a four hour drive to the park. Once in the park the roads were all dirt which made the travel slow. Despite the pace, the scenery was still picturesque. Our day consisted of rain, 50km winds and a little sun in between. The true hikers do a trail called the “W” which is 5-7 days of camping. After our experience we hit the highlight post card shots and determined one day in the elements was plenty for us. See a few of our best pictures.

Chris with extinct Patagonia animal

Floating ice bergs in the background

Windy

For our last day in Punta Arenas, we took a day trip to Tierra De Fuego. The island is split between Argentina and Chile with most of the population on the Argentinian side. Tierra De Fuego is an island that requires a ferry crossing each way. The day we went there was a 40-50 mile an hour breeze. Shortly after we make the first ferry crossing which is more exposed to the open water, they close the crossing. Thank god we bought motion sick pills the night before as it was rough. See picture of Katherine above at the first crossing.

The island is mainly desolate and home to incredibly harsh conditions. There is a fairly large military population on the island because the government provides them hazard pay due to the conditions. The main attraction on the island is a colony of penguins which are the second largest of their species. The penguins were recently discovered and do not migrate like other penguins. Upon arrival at the penguin colony (a 3-4 bus ride over unpaved bumpy road), we walk to the penguins which isn’t far but feels like you are in the middle of no where. They are pretty and you can truly appreciate how rugged the terrain is.

Penguins!

These male penguins puff their chest to get the attention of the ladies.

After leaving the penguins we find out that because of the rough weather our ferry is delayed 2 hours. We stop in the biggest town (I use that word loosely) on Christmas Eve and go to the only open restaurant. It is owned by two very elder sisters who are a little surly but we can’t complain when they are the only restaurant open on Christmas Eve. The only items on the menu we can understand is specials of the day. Katherine and Chris have only eaten a package of lemon cookies, a small Pringles can and two of the infamous nestcafes. We are praying for dinner to be good but our record to date is about 50/50. Never the less the dinner is a very dry breast of chicken and a filet of meat. We catch the ferry back with both of us thankful for a good meal and happy to be together. Until next time…

Santiago

After 24 hours of travel (3 flights, 2 average meals), we finally arrived in Santiago. Our room had amazing views of the Andes and the largest building in South America; at night the building would light up in a light display. The best part of the view is the churros truck at the bottom of the picture – yes please.

Day one consisted of walking the streets and eating the local fare. We stayed in the Bellavista neighborhood which doesn’t get going till late. This is a picture of Chris chowing down on chorrillana, which consists of french fries, onion, fried egg and steak. In Chris’ right hand is the popular pisco sour. As dinner went on, we decided to switch to red wine. Our lack of understanding resulted in ordering a bottle of red wine vs a glass! The bottle price was cheaper than most glasses of wine in the US.

We then walked the colorful streets and found a seat in front of a local bar. Yet again our limited (really lack there of) Spanish had us ordering double. Chris order a cervesa and Katherine had another pisco sour. The waitress brought us two of each. We then learned it was happy hour and the bar was serving two for one. Noting the time to be 11pm, our “late night” out was really still happy hour in Chile. We didn’t make it out late enough to learn when happy hour ended, but crawling into bed at midnight – one bottle of wine, 3 cervesas and 3 pisco sours later – we felt we had made a solid effort.

The next morning we walked to the Plaza de Armas for the free walking tour. The tour had a start time of 10am. Arriving to the square early, we ventured off for breakfast. We walked and walked with no open shops in sight. Upon finding the breakfast mecca of historic Santiago, we were sorely disappointed to find people eating hot dogs. The traditional hot dog is covered in avocado, tomato and mayonaise. We passed on embracing the local cuisine for the morning. We ordered a coffee, which comes from a 7 eleven type vending machine. We later learned coffee is not part of Chilean culture. They do serve coffee in the business districts, but they call it coffee with legs. Basically, coffee served by beautiful women and only served during business hours Monday – Friday. An experience we must return for.

Hot dog stand

As the tour started it was noted that all grandiose buildings were French in style and previous government buildings. We also learned that every city center started with a large church. After walking through the center we ventured to a park with a pretty view of the city. We were lucky to have a chamber of commerce day and could see for miles all the way to the andes mountains. The guide said in the winter because of the topography that the pollution gets stuck in the city between the Andes and the other smaller mountains to the west. It gets so bad at times that they restrict the use of cars on certain days.

After that we walked up to the house of a famous romantic poet. Although I think the poems lost something in translation.

For lunch we headed to the Central Market. It is known for fresh seafood. It reminded me of the Seattle Fish Market. It was fun to explore the market but the seafood was a little to fresh for Katherine. We found a local place to eat in the market and Chris had a seafood stew. It was tasty although Katherine had seen enough and didn’t eat anything. Picture of the Central Market, which primarily sells only sea food.

Next we explored the graffiti art neighborhood. It was interesting although sometimes hard to tell whether it was art or graffiti. The highlight of the neighborhood was this hole in the wall steakhouse. We ordered a huge filet, and pequito bottle of wine. The steak was cooked to perfection and the wine was good to. We had a special variety of wine called Camerere which is only made in Chile but started in Bordeaux.

Lucky three legged ‘piggy banks’ the Chileans use not for money but for wishes