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  Chillan, Chile
Wednesday, December 12, 2007

We´re SO tired of long bus trips - it was about 32 hours from El Calafate to Bariloche, about 5 more to Osorno, and then another 8 to Chillan, and that doesn´t count the time waiting in terminals. 2 days in a row we were served lunch on buses that consisted of three different types of ham and cheese sandwiches (one on white, one on wholemeal, and one in a white hamburger bun), and one morning they just didn´t bother to give us breakfast (it was an overnight bus) even though we didn´t arrive until 2pm. I´m not sure if we´ll ever voluntarily eat ham again.
We saw the contrast between Argentina and Chile even as the bus came down out of the snowy Andes that we passed between (I think it was the first time the young group of Israelis in front of us had seen snow). Most of Chile gets much greater rainfall than Argentina, and the sub alpine forest was notably lusher, with frequent waterfalls.
The countryside is far more green and tended looking than anything we have seen so far, particulary compared with the huge arid rubble that seems to make up about half of Argentina

Blood and guts - the best kind of education

. Chile is, afterall, the most developed, affluent country in South America. Like Argentina, unemployment is on the decline, but we haven´t seen the poverty here that was evident. In 4 days in Chile we´ve been asked for money by one kid in a mall, but frankly he looked well fed and well dressed. The pavements are also in better condition, with high heels in evidence again. It´s also a big contrast to see the efforts of the Chilean government to look after the population - there are lots of adds on TV about smoking harming children, gun amnesties and food safety. The bus we travelled in had a little screen telling you in real time how fast the bus was travelling, and informing us that it had GPS installed and the ministry of transport would be alerted to any breaches speed or other road safety regulations. Also little things, like putting a temporary fence and road cones around a small unsealed patch of road, contrast completely with Buenos Aires particularly, where fair warning of a 1 metre deep trench in the footpath was the fact it is there.
Our bus dropped us off at Orsorno, where we had a few hours for dinner after buying tickets to Chillan and finding accomodation there. We strolled down to a large supermarket, where we wandered about for about an hour, exclaiming with delight (like complete dorks) to each other things like, ¨look, guacamole!¨, ´look, peanut butter!¨. Other pleasant surprises included pesto, sandwiches that didn´t have ham and cheese in them, pita bread, wholemeal pita, milo, vegetables that weren´t floppy, tissues, yoghurt (real yoghurt, not syrupy flavoured drinking yoghurt), and raspberry jam

Cultural differences in Chile were quickly evident

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In Chillan the next day (a small, modern, attractive city with wide leafy avenues, due in part to being demolished twice by earthquakes, most recently in about 1939), we were impressed at the huge town market, filled with handicrafts and more fresh fruit and vegetables that we had seen since we arrived in south america.
It turns out to be about the same price to eat out at a cheap restaurant here as it is to buy a few things from the supermarket - a hot meal of the day, with bread and a side salad, costs about US$3, which is the same as an average loaf of sliced bread here.
Even more surprising then, is the lack of variety on offer in restaurants - in one place a salad consisted of a line of sliced tomato, a line of boiled corn, and a line of boiled peas (boo!). Salads don´t seem to get much more exciting than that. Coffee means Nescafe - black, or Nescafe latte from a machine if you go somewhere fancy. Most places we´ve eaten in have been oddly like Denny´s, only without the token ´ethnic´ dishes. We´re really looking forward to getting to Valparaiso tomorrow, where we will finally have kitchen facilities to let us take advantage of all the great produce.
Today we visited the Mexican school here, donated by the Mexican goverment after the most recent earthquake. At (nobel prize-winning Chilean poet) Pablo Neruda´s request some famous Mexican artist whose name escapes me (only Douglas cares, so I´ll email when I get a chance) did these huge murals in the library, filled with severed bits and bloody, firey struggles for independence. The PTAs at Oaklands and Kirwee Model Schools would never have agreed to anything like that, but I can´t think of a better way of engaging 10 year olds with constitutional history.
On a slightly random note, we saw our first pilgrimage last week from the bus - hundreds of people walking about 10km down the roadside, bringing traffic to a crawl, going to a shrine at the top of a hill. I was surprised that most of the people were quite young - it seemed a very sociable thing to do - you grab a picnic lunch and some friends and make a day of it. There was one guy actually bearing a 2m cross, but it was made of bamboo so I suspect he didn´t really wan´t to know what the burden was really like over that sort of distance.

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Jesús del Supermercardo (Jesus of the Supermarket)

Not another Cathedral - the 1940s one at Chillan

Roadside Shrines

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