Chilly chile, snowboarding, asado, bellavista
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2008
1
17
23
Trip End
Sep 22, 2008
Santiago,
Chile
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The views of the landscape from the bus were amazing - snow capped mountains, lakes and ski slopes. At the border it was immediate that Chile was a much more developed country - even from the general appearance of the Chileans, and the fact that all our bags got x-rayed. The Chile Peso is quite ridiculous - just under 1000 pesos to the pound, one would think things would be cheap but actually far from it
chile
. I reserved a spot at the same hostel that the group were going to finish at, just to see them again and I was told it was a top hostel. I liked the fact that I was able to take the subway and walk to the hostel, (thanks to being organised and doing some research for once) paying only 10% of the taxi price which was well tempting. The hostel was indeed quite cool, and since I only had a couple of days in Santiago, I decided to hit the slopes the very next day. Snowboarding
I've never gone skiing or snowboarding before (cos its wayy too expensive back home) so I thought snowboarding the andes would be an interesting start. I was often told that snowboarding was much harder to start off with, and that my first day is not going to be fun. I sorted out the ski clothing hire that night (forgetting the 1hour time difference between Chile and Argy) and set off to a ski resort called Valle Nevada. For about 60 quid I got all my equipment hire, transfers, lift pass and a two hour snowboarding lesson.. It was about 45 minutes to the resort, the wiggly roads up the mountains made me a bit giddy at first, maybe the altitude was kicking in again! The resort's ski and snowboard school was really good, without the lesson I would have really struggled (even more than I did with the lesson). The lesson was translated into English too (just for me) and it seems that the majority of people on the slopes were locals from Chile
chile
. I was starting to get the hang of things on the little beginners hill were we had the lesson. It's kind of like when you first drive a car, 30mph seems oh-so-fast, it was a good feeling. Eventually I got the confidence to try the whole "green" trail which was marked as for beginners, so I left the beginners area and did the trail. The trail was nothing like the beginners area, I was on my arse every 20 seconds. Fall down, get back up and try again. And again. And again. I could do the heel thing, and the toes thing, but not both simultaneously which meant I'd fall every so often. Also, my ability to turn and/or stop was non-existent, sometimes I'd just throw myself into the snow just to stop myself crashing into people. It was funny seeing really small kids zooming past me at such speed, whilst I was sitting on my arse in the snow. Soon enough it was 3pm and I thought I'd get the lift up to the top of the beginners trail, and if I thought it was too high for me I'd just take the lift back down. My legs trembled a bit on the chairlift, remembering my slight fear of heights but I reassured myself that I wouldn't have to snowboard down and I'd just get the lift.What I didn't realise was that it was indeed really really high and it's not possible to get the lift back down, only up. So I had to snowboard down. For me, on my first day, it was quite steep and had lots of turns.. but I also had the problem of needing to get back to the bus for 4:30
chile
. I had about an hour to do it, which would have been plenty of time for someone with experience, but since I was on my arse every 20 seconds this seemed impossible. Trying to get back in time, I tried to get down as fast as my ability could, though falling a good few times. I arrived at the lift back up to where the bus was at 4:45 and I was hoping that they hadn't left yet.. and to my luck I caught them as they were about to leave, but said I'll make it up to them by starting off the kareoke, sober. (Which was more than fine with me!) All in all, although I was hating it at the time, it was a great day and maybe next time I can improve with practice. Again, the scenery was amazing, and the snow powdery. Meeting the group.
It was great to see the rest of the group again on my return from the slopes, and I spent the rest of the evening catching up with them and hearing on what I missed out of the last week. We all had the hostel's asado and went to the bar for the kareoke night. The microphone wasn't working unfortunately so we all just sang along without it.. it was quite empty in there at first so me and matt went around the hostel and tried to persuade everyone to come along. The highlight of that evening though, was the magician. I'd never really seen a magician in real life from up close before, but boyyy this guy was impressive.
chile
. very darren brown/david blaine stylee. He started off with some card tricks that I thought you could probably learn out of a book, but they soon got more complicated and seemed impossible. The best bit though, was when he was trying to give me a "gift" which was a piece of string, then he lit the string with a lighter and it turned into a watch. I was like ooo hes giving me a watch! Then I looked at my wrist and my watch was gone - the watch was mine! I never really take my watch off - I struggle to take it off myself, and one would think I would have noticed if it was gone and so would the 15 or so others stood next to and around me watching intently.. must have been magic! What was even more impressive, was when he asked someone to pick any random card in their head and not tell anyone. The magician would then shuffle the deck and put it on the table, saying that the card the dude picked is facing the other way in the pack. The dude would then tell everyone what card he was thinking of, then pick the deck up and that card would be the one facing the wrong way. Seems impossible - he must have somehow made the guy pick that card subnciously. We headed out to Bellavista to check out the nightlife.. it was alright but had an early night as quite tired.Toursity Santiago
Full of skyrises, modern cars and expensive food, if it wasn't for the snowcapped mountain backdrop, plazas and spanish speaking people, it's hard to tell where you are. Santiago should be in Europe. As far as South America goes, it is the most developed place by a long run. A day walking around central Santiago was more than enough, seeing government buildings, statues, churches, museums etc.. There are also quite a few parks and malls, just like in any other modern city I guess, but I didn't have time to venture onto those parts. It was quite interesting reading in my lonely planet guide about how Chile has become so developed, and it would be good to find out more about its political history and more about activists such as Che Guaverra.
