Rest Stop in San Pedro de Atacama
San Pedro is strange and unusual town. Out in the Atacama desert it’s the launching point to visit the Salar de Uyuni from the Chilean side of the border, or the finishing point if you’re running that circuit from Bolivia like I had done. It’s a good way to start the visit to Chile, as Chile is very much is its own country and you’d be forgiven in thinking you’re not even in South America anymore.
Chile runs almost the entire length of South America, sandwiched between the Andean Mountain range and the Pacific Ocean, and this isolation from the rest of the continent is very apparent in everything that is Chile. The two most well known stereotypes of the Chilean people are their odd dialect of Spanish and their passion for the arts. As I’ll quickly discover, both these stereotypes are more
than just a little true!
Walking through the streets of San Pedro is like walking through a made up movie set. Dirt streets are lined with adobe brick homes and restaurants, the sky is clear blue, and you sit down for a meal and are presented with something straight out of the most expensive western gourmet chefs’ cookbook. It’s utterly bizarre. And while you dine on a smoked salmon entrée followed by a stunning dish called Pollo al Pil Pill (chunks of chicken breast in a hot bowl bathed in chilli and oil), the staff heap more cut up wooden crates onto the bonfire that roars away in the middle of the courtyard.
The downside of fine dining in the desert is it’s pretty damn expensive. I had to check the exchange rate a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t getting it wrong.
Everything in Chile is just about double the price than in say Peru, and coming from cheap Bolivia it’s a little daunting. San Pedro is a weird place to be serving only this type of food – I can only guess as to the reason being that people want really good food after spending 3 days on a tour. Still, some cheap cafes would have been welcome.
Back in Peru I had a local tell me that she didn’t know what language Chileanos speak, but it’s not Spanish. No one outside of Chile can understand them, and they don’t speak, instead they sing. I’ve got to say, this is pretty much spot on. They speak impossibly quick; and we’re not just talking just a few fast talkers but
every single person. You’re bamboozled by an incomprehensible string of words
that all run into each other with no break or pause for a breath. And just as
you’re trying your hardest to pick up any keyword buried in the verbal tsunami, a musical tempo flourishes through the sentence and you’re distracted by how beautiful it actually sounds. I had one girl on a bus ask ‘permissio’ (‘excuse me’ in Spanish) and I was literally stunned by how much it sounded as though I was in some real like musical stage play.
Chile is the birthplace for Latin Americas most famous poetics and novelists. There is an undercurrent of art in just about every part of life here. At first it’s
actually quite confronting, as art and funky restaurants merge and are run by
dreadlocked ferals sporting a bull ring through their nose. Facial piercing is insanely popular, if not a little over the top of and firmly into the realm of the ridiculous with teenagers wearing hardware nails jammed through their cheeks (I’m seriously not joking). Expressions of art run through their language, literature, restaurants and physical appearance; it really sets Chile apart from anything else in the rest of South America.
I booked a ticket to La Serena that was leaving from the nearby city of Calama. I couldn’t find the ticket office for the bus to Calama, so I just boarded the next bus
that pulled up. This wasn’t a problem, but when I reached Calama and waited for
the connecting bus to La Serena, I came across one really annoying thing about
Chilean transport.
The buses in every other country have been excellent, with Peru having the nicest and most organised bus services. However in Chile they have great buses, but a complete absence of organisation. Even though there are numbered carrils (the place where the bus parks), you aren’t told which your bus will be arriving at as they seem to just pull up to what ever happens to be free. So you’re left to wander around looking for the bus company you booked with and checking the sign on the bus that it is going in that direction. This proves to be more difficult
that is sounds, as some bus companies use other bus companies, and twice now I’ve been looking for a Pullman branded bus only to find out afterwards it was an Atacama 2000 bus or an Itchen. It’s pretty aggravating to miss a bus because there’s literally no way to tell what bus is yours without asking every driver.
Back to the Pacific Ocean in La Serena
Arriving in La Serena first thing in the morning I set off to find a hostal. I ended up staying at a placed called the Gregorian, a place run by Walter but very obviously decorated by his grandmother. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many
plastic frilly things in a bathroom and a lounge room so decked out in kitsch figurines and wall hangings that it actually becomes cool and museum like. There
must have been only a couple of other people that stayed in the hostal while I was here, which is one of the nice things out being in a country in their non-tourist season; not only do you have the place to yourself, the prices drop and even the bus companies here do promotional discounts.
The downside, however, of being in the off season is that there is a reason the
tourist numbers drop off, and that’s that the weather isn’t the greatest. The first day arrived it was gloriously sunny and I decided to explore the city rather than visit the beach. Sadly the weather turned fairly overcast the following days, but I still had to pay a visit to the beach. I hadn’t been to the beach since Huancayo in Peru and needed an ocean breeze fix. I was also determined to have seafood at the beach and stopped in a place that served a Piala de Marisco – or seafood bisk. The bowl was piled with mussels and a few stray prawns, and while it was good it really wasn’t fantastic for the price of $6000 pesos.
This would be a common theme in Chile, where the food is really hit and miss regardless of how expensive or cheap it is. They also have food with the same name as other countries that aren’t what you expect. I entered a restaurant that had chupe on their Menu del Dia (Menu of the Day). I was a little too excited by the prospect of having chupe again, my absolute favourite food from Peru (if not this entire trip). But no no no, Chilean chupe is not the same as the Peruvian. In fact it’s not even remotely the same. In Peru it’s a delicious soup akin to laksa, in Chile it’s a horrible gooey mount of rice, seafood, and god knows what else. It was like eating Clag glue and paper, but more sickening. Needless to say, I didn’t finish it.
When I think I’ll spend more than a few days in city I need to find a good café (well ever since Bolivia) and a good pub. I definitely found them in La Serena, and they’d probably be my favourite so far out of this trip. The café sat just off the
main plaza and served an incredible cappuccino, so good in fact I had to have two on every visit. And as a plus, I think the waitress had a thing for me as she
started giving me two cookies with the coffee instead of the usual one. Ahh
favouritism!
The pub was a place called Peregrino. They had pretty good food at a reasonable price and an overly enthusiastic waiter that I couldn’t help by tip each time because of how awesome he was. The best night visiting this pub was when I sat down one evening to writing up the blog entry for the Salar de Uyuni tour. They had a pair of microphones set up, and it was a Friday night so I assumed they’d be a band playing. Nope, not a band. Instead two guys sat at the microphones and did two book readings to the now packed pub. I had no idea what he was reading or what he was saying, but it was a great experience to watch and see how appreciative the audience were, hanging on every word and applauding. This was Chile really showing me where its heart is, in books and poetry.
Just like Chile to be different from every other country, their beggars are a new breed I hadn’t encountered before in any country I’ve travelled to in the world. Gone are the sad grisly faces, gone are the tattered unwashed clothing, gone is any evidence that they’re actually poor and in need of money. Well dressed and on a few occasions carrying groceries, they come up with palms out asking for some coin. The strangest beggar would have to have been a woman that sat next to me in the park and upon realising I didn’t speak much Spanish she simply pointed at my pocket and said “Money, money, money”. I have to admit, she was at least straight forward. It wasn’t until a local shooed her away that she left to rejoin her son playing on a scooter.
It was time to leave La Serena and continue my journey south towards Santiago. A couple of hours away from Santiago is the city of Valparaiso, a UNESCO city and the official cultural capital of Chile. I booked my ticket to Valparaiso, and after missing the first bus and swearing I’d never book with Pullman Buses again (and also some actual swearing too), I bought a ticket with the countries largest bus company, Tur Buses.
After waiting a few hours I boarded the bus and was off.
One response to “Hello Chile. Am I even in South American anymore?”
Two biscuits with your cappuccino? Maybe she was taking pity on the poor undernourished gringo.