Day 57 - A bit of a pushover

Easter Island

Something we didn't expect is that a large number of the moai have been pushed over and are lying face down on the ground. At one time (by the 1830's) practically all of the moai had been pushed over, and have only been erected again in the 20th century. It's generally believed that warring clans on the island paid each other back by pushing over their very important statutes.  About 50 moai have been stood up over the past 50 years and many of the areas have been reconstructed.

We picked up our hire car around 10am and headed off around the island in an anti-clockwise direction, stopping at each site along the way. The first few sites all had fallen moai and platforms (known as ahu) that were in poor condition.

We eventually arrived at Rano Raraku, the quarry where all of the statues were created. The quarry is the most extraordinary sight, moai after moai appearing as if they are walking down the hill out of the quarry onto their destination. There are many moai in various stages of carving - it's almost as if someone yelled, "that's it we're out of here" and everyone downed tools and walked away - leaving the moai stranded. The quarry was on the sides of an extinct volcano, so we also walked up to see the crater lake, as well as more partly built moai in the distance.

After the quarry the next stop was Tongariki, where fifteen moai have been re-erected. They were originally toppled in the island wars and later swept inland by a tsunami.

Further around we saw some rock carvings, and then we stopped at Anakena, a bit different to the rest of the island, as instead of rocky shores and the crashing waves of the Pacific there was an idyllic beach with beautiful sand, waving palm trees and a lovely row of Moai, that until recently had been buried in the sand.

After Anakena the road circling the island headed inland, meaning we were unable to drive to a section of the coast with more moai sites. We drove up to the quarry at Puna Pau where the red scoria topknots (called pukao) were manufactured.

That was it for today's sightseeing, after Puna Pau we arrived back in Hanga Roa. Even though it had taken us all day to travel around the island, it's only 20 minutes in a car from one end to the other.

Tonight we found another lovely restaurant a little outside of town with a great view over the water, and a great vantage point to see the sunset and also watch groups of islanders powering through the ocean in long outriggers.

Day 56 - Happy Easter

Santiago to Easter Island

An early four and a half hour flight to one of the remotest places on earth. Easter Island really is in the middle of nowhere and we were surprised by the size of the plane and the number of people that pour into this island six days a week.

The island has a real Polynesian feel which is hardly surprisingly as it is believed the Polynesians were the first inhabitants. It was lovely to finally break out the shorts and t-shirts again, it always feels more like a holiday when it is warm.

We were greeted at the airport and given leis to wear, then transported to our accommodation. After checking in getting the lowdown (in Spanish) on where to go, we headed into Hanga Roa, the only town on the island.

There are a number of the famous Easter Island statues, known as Moai, on the coast not far from town, so that gave us a quick taste of what we would see later, since most of the moai are spread all around the island. Interestingly they nearly all face inland, not out to sea.

We arranged a hire a car for the next day, then found a nice restaurant right on the water, next to a spot where we could see turtles swimming. We had a couple of drinks and ended up having dinner there, before a long walk back to where we were staying, which was a little bit out of town.

Day 55 - So much rain

Valpo to Santiago

It bucketed down pretty much all night, but there was a welcome break as we were heading to the bus station to return to Santiago. The very nice owners of the airbnb apartment we stayed in drove us to the bus station .... an advantage that airbnb sometimes has over other forms of accommodation.

Today's bus was a premium one .... really comfy seats and USB ports, too bad we were only on a short trip - it would have come in handy on the 10 and 12 hour bus rides!

It was a soggy Santiago we arrived into, a city feels more comfortable when you have been there before and because we now kind of know what we are doing we booked into a cute studio apartment in the Lastarria area, with lots of cafes, bars and restaurants at our doorstep. Last time in Santiago we stayed in downtown and although it is close to the museums and the plazas, it was a bit dead on the weekends and doesn't have the buzz of some of the other parts of town.

Our apartment here also had high speed internet provided via optical fibre .... makes us look pretty poor when a country like Chile can have state of the art internet, but back home we struggle to get a decent network up and running!!

Day 54 - Get yourself a pooper scooper guys

Valparaiso

Rain had been promised in Valpo for the last few days and it finally arrived overnight so we spent most of the day as a lay day and used it do some forward planning. We went for a walk later in the day and even in the drizzle it's still a vibrant colourful city, with so many murals and lovely graffiti. However the streets are also spoiled with the spoils of having so many strays, you need to watch where your feet are going at all times. It's a shame the local government doesn't invest in a few pooper scooper men or maybe even a dog pound.

As much as Chile doesn't seem a particularly poor country compared to some we've visited, there are still people on the buses and sitting on street corners selling things like individual bandaids and nothing else, that has to be a hard way to make a living. However we haven't seen much in the way of homelessness or beggars, in general it seems most people have a purpose and somewhere to go, though that may just be because we are tourists and hang around in tourist areas.

Day 53 - ¿Eres un gringo?

Valparaiso

This morning we walked along Avenida Alemania, which took us along the top of the Valparaiso hills, with great views along the way and without too much variation in elevation either (yes, we are tired of walking up hills). We ended up at Pablo Neruda's house, which is now a museum. Pablo was a Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet and a bit of a national hero. The house was very interesting, and had amazing views of the city, which inspired him to write this great description of Valparaiso:

"‘Valparaíso, how absurd you are…you haven’t combed your hair, you’ve never had time to get dressed, life has always surprised you.’"

K had read about an authentic Chilean restaurant, J.Cruz, so after Pablo's house we walked down the very steep hill (passing many tired looking tourists heading uphill to the museum) to have lunch, The restaurant was so authentic that when we asked for the menu they said there wasn't one as they only served one dish  - chorillana - so we said we would have that then! It was a huge plate of soggy French fries mixed with fried onions and egg, with beef strips on top. To add to the atmosphere a local came in and played his guitar and sang. The restaurant was jam packed with all kinds of collectables, and the walls and cabinets were plastered with customer ID photos (passport size). People who didn't have a photo had written on bandaids, so we did the same. Although the experience was interesting, we're in no hurry to have any more chorillana after this.

Possibly the effect of a chorillana only diet

We caught the bus back to Viña de Mar as we had decided to visit the Natural Museum. Though small, the museum had really interesting exhibitions - Easter Island (with a statue out the front of the museum), real shrunken heads with an explanation on how it was done, a mummy, and many stuffed animals, which were quite interesting to see as it's not often that you can get up close to a condor or a puma.

Comes with instructions

We stopped in at a shop on our way to the funicular as we headed home when the girl behind the counter asked K, in Spanish, if she was a gringo. When K confirmed that yes she was (of course she is!), the girl asked her if she could teach her to say "my name is" in English (which she did).

Baa Baa Baa Baa Black Black Sheep Sheep

Day 52 - Melbourne is famous for ......

Valparaiso

Give me a "C"

This morning we headed down the hill to join a walking tour and one of the first things they did was take us part of the way back up the same hill on a funicular (locally known as an ascensor) - pity we didn't know about that funicular yesterday. We retraced some of the area we had walked yesterday but this morning we had someone pointing out the interesting things that we had missed, like the set of steps that we had walked up that had been painted like the keys of a piano, apparently done for a photography shoot for a local band, now famous and known as the "Piano Steps". This was just one example of the street art that we saw all over Valparaiso, much of it was quite impressive (not all of it though .... taggers are everywhere!).

Apprentice tour guides

Of course a walking tour in Chile is never the same without stray dogs joining the group - this time we had an incredibly clever dog that left us at the start of the funicular and met us at the other end after climbing the steps! Valparaiso is also famous for mountain bike racing down the stairways and narrow lanes. Since dogs hate bikes (well they do in Chile anyway), they collect all of the strays beforehand  and keep them locked up, then release them when the event is over. Some other useful information the guide gave us was showing us the boundaries of where we, as tourists, shouldn't go as the areas are considered unsafe! Valparaiso has had a bad reputation for petty crime, although we were told it's no worse than Santiago.

 No idea what this means

After the tour we went for coffee at the interestingly named Melbourne Café, which had lots of pictures of Melbourne on the wall. We had a flat white (which they call an "Australiano"), which actually wasn't too bad! We then walked along the waterfront (avoiding the "no-go" area we had been told about just one street back) and caught the Artilleria acensor to the 21 de Mayo promenade, which had some great views over town, and the usual tourist stalls (where K found an alpaca scarf she wanted to buy, but when they were taken out of the huge pile they were in each one she looked at had dirty and faded lines where they had been sitting exposed to the air and the sun).

Not a bad looking (or tasting) flat white

We then caught the bus to Viña del Mar, not too far out of town, which is a beach seaside holiday area with a lot of high rise apartments along the beach. As it's autumn it was a little cool with drizzly rain so the place was pretty quiet, We walked along the beach for a while, having seen enough for today, then headed back to Valpo. Once there, we caught a different funicular to take us up the hill towards our apartment. This one was really old and a bit shaky, they don't look too safe from the outside but they do the job, many of them have been working for well over a century.

Reminds me of someone I know .....

Day 51 - Use the bike!

Santiago to Valparaiso

We're really getting the hang of bus travel in Chile, a couple of hours on a bus is nothing and we are starting to think the same about 8 plus hours as well .... we'd never even consider a bus ride to Sydney or Adelaide though!

The bus to the the port city of Valparaiso (meaning "Paradise Valley") was a cruisy 90 minutes, no need to book as they left every 15 minutes from Santiago. Valparaiso is built up on a number of hills, your address doesn't just include the street name and number, but the name of your hill as well ... and some of the hills are pretty steep too!

Use the bike!

We arrived at our nice modern airbnb a bit before check in time, so we left our luggage there and walked downhill to find somewhere for a quick lunch .... we were told the cafes were a block away ... 15 minutes and numerous wrong turns later we found somewhere that was open .... maybe their idea of a block is different to ours.

After lunch we wandered all the way down the hill to find a supermarket, then trekked the long hard slog back up the hill to our accommodation, stopping along the way for a Pisco sour, the national drink of Chile, made of Pisco (a type of brandy), lemon juice, and egg white - very easy to drink indeed!

Based on our experience walking Valparaiso today there shouldn't be any overweight people in town, though that's probably nullified by the effects of the Chilean food!

Pisco sours with a view

Day 50 - Back to the weekday crowds

Santiago

One thing we've noticed in South America so far is that there isn't any of the hassle or haggling we've experienced in other countries, the worst so far was probably the restaurants in the market yesterday, and not much anywhere else. The other day though we did get the old "Where are you from?" question from a guy we think was trying to get money out of us, M answered "Namibia" as he often does, but didn't expect the follow up question "What's the population of your country?" - a quick guess of "approximado dos milliones" turned out to be near enough correct!

We arrived in Santiago late on a Friday night, so we'd only seen the city over the weekend, and downtown Santiago was very different today as streets were packed with people, the shops were all open and there were stalls all over the footpaths as well - lots of people selling things you wouldn't even consider were worth selling, like the guy selling very old, used hard drives from a blanket on the ground. Still no hassle though, except the touts for the restaurants near the market seemed to be worse today.

Not much sightseeing today as we took advantage of decent internet to do some forward planning for our trip, plus we'll be back in Santiago later this week anyway.

Day 49 - Museum Day

Santiago

As most museums are closed tomorrow we used today to visit some of the local museums. First off was the very interesting Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, covering indigenous history and artifacts from all over South and Central America. Lots of weapons, masks, statues and ceramics of course, plus some other very interesting things, such as intricate works of strings and knots used by the Incas for counting and book keeping, an exhibition of funerary mantles from the Paracas culture with great designs, and much more - well worth the visit. We then visited the Chilean National History Museum which we didn't think was quite as interesting, then off to the Bellavista neighbourhood for a late lunch.

Not as high as Cerro Cristobal

After lunch we climbed Cerro Santa Lucia along with all of the other Santiagians (is that a word) who were enjoying a pleasant Sunday afternoon. We finshed our sightseeing for the day with a quick visit to the famed Santiago Central market, although as it was Sunday only the seafood stalls and restaurants were open, with some pretty aggressive touts trying to get us into those restaurants, before heading home.

Day 48 - A dog of a day

Santiago

We started the morning as we like to in a new city with a free walking tour, its a great way to get to find the interesting parts that you want to go back and visit and to get a lay out of the city.

Before the tour we searched for something light for breakfast, but all the shops around the Plaza De Armas seemed to only sell hot dogs and hamburgers. We finally found a medialuna (like a mini croissant), but K wasn't too happy that it was filled with dulce del leche (caramel).

This walking tour was longer than the ones we've had elsewhere, more than four hours with a restaurant break in the middle, but the time was well spent as Santiago has a lot to offer. We enjoyed the Changing of the Guards at Plaza de la Constitucion, with horses, dogs, a brass band and lots of military it was excellent, much more interesting than the one at Buckingham Palace.

Not sure why they need to change so many at once

All through South America we've found that stray dogs are everywhere, and Santiago is no exception. One of the highlights of the tour was the fat stray dog that met the tour part of the way (as he apparently does every day), followed us for a while, then disappeared, only to reappear a little further on - he could almost run the tour! The guide told us that a few days ago the newspaper's front page showed a picture of a protest in the city and the same dog was in the front of the photo! The locals actually look after the strays with dog kennels in the parks and clothing in winter.

"Australian Gold" .... some sort of suntan lotion we think

We finished the tour near the base of Cerro San Cristobal, so we caught the funicular up for a view of Santiago, though the smog had a big impact on visibility, it was difficult to make out the Andes in the distance. After wandering up to the statue of the Virgin Mary, we walked down, then made our way back to our airbnb via an asian supermarket to pick up a some Thai curry sauce to have with dinner .... we are missing the variety of cuisines we have back home.