Tahiti

Can't even maintain their jetties around here. Tsk

Okey doke, we're presently in New Zealand.  There's not been any updates recently as you and I are waiting for Chantelle to write about Easter Island.   So I'll jump ahead and write about all the staggering nothing we did in Tahiti afterwards.  She'll catch up in a couple of weeks or so.  I did replace the stock image at the top of the blog with an Easter Island picture of my own though, so that's nice.  Not that you lot noticed 

Just awful

We got off the plane at 2am to be greeted by these stalwart local representatives from the tourist board.  It was a bit odd to breeze in on an EU passport though.

Bonjour

It turns out I'm as adept at gesticulating my way through French as I am in Spanish.  It's a knack. 

I'd avoided getting a haircut through all of South America, with the intention of waiting until New Zealand, but it was an untenable situation - my mop was becoming sentient and raiding the minibar while I slept.  Anyway, 'twas resolved by a local barber with minimal misunderstanding and with both ears intact.

Godawful

Anyhow, we spent four nights in a resort doing next to bugger all aside from sitting by the pool and snorkeling.  We  did manage to test the waterproof capabilities of Chan's phone (Sony Xperia Z - advertised as IP67; adverts feature underwater photos being taken) to destruction, which thus far has been fine with being taken in the bath etc.  Apparently the sea does bad things to rubber seals and the phone dropped dead right as I was taking some awesome photos of some coral and trigger fish. Oops.

We gritted our teeth and bore it

Otherwise, it was no hardship here.  It was expensive as hell though, regardless of where you ate, drank or shopped.  The insistence on using products flown in from France (Carrefours abound) can't help.

We popped into town briefly to see what there is of Papeete, which doesn't take long.    Here's some more photos:

So that was a pleasant, if uneventful stop.  If we were on a specific trip here, rather than on the way to New Zealand, we'd see the other islands and pick up a jetski or something.  As it was, we caught our breath in preparation for the next big road trip.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch:  Wir haben Tahiti besucht. Es war sehr schoen aber wir haben nur ein wenig gemacht. Das geht weil wir entspannen und bereiten für unsere nächste große Straße Reise in Neuseeland konnten. 

Street Dogs, Crazy Tapas and Autocracy

The last stop in South America was Santiago.  We actually stayed here twice: one night before Atacama, and three nights after we flew back.

The first night we popped out for a Indian meal. Despite the country's name, they really don't like spicy food in Chile and so the curry was a bit mild, but was definitely one of the better I'd tried since leaving the UK.  No poppadoms, though.  I managed to struggle on.

We had a chance to bimble about town for a bit before catching our flight.  This here is the Palacio de La Moneda, the seat of their government.  It was half destroyed in the military coup of 1973, but was restored in the 80s.  Generally not accused of stupidity, General Pinochet built a bunker underground the palacio in case in anyone ever returned the favour. 

The guys on horses outside had a bloke who's only job, it appears, was to follow them around, cleaning up after the horses.  I'd still rank it above being an estate agent. 

I've not really mentioned before the sheer number of stray street dogs we've encountered in South America.  It's been a phenomenon everywhere but nowhere as pronounced as Chile.  In Chile there are near a million street dogs, half of whom are in Santiago.  They are largely either abandoned by their owners for a variety of inexcusable reasons, or are a product of a culture that doesn't spay or neuter its pets.

Most of the dogs you encounter in the street are friendly, as they are often fed and watered by local people.  They often have cardboard kennels put out for them, or are given knitted doggy cardigans during the winter.  They are universally streetwise: catching buses and getting off at particular stops or waiting at lights to cross the road. The dogs that loiter outside of the government buildings often join in whenever political demonstrations congregate in front of La Moneda, loyally following whatever group is energised that day and barking enthusiastically at the police.

"Vive whatever this guy says"

I like dogs, so the occasional mutt of four different heritages that fell into step with us was no hardship, but I don't like seeing so many dogs going without a home. Especially when there are no real animal cruelty laws here, and where there aren't a million cardigans to go around during the often fatally bitter winters.

This guy followed us into a restaurant and hid under the bench when they tried to shoo him out. 

One old scrote we saw was going around with a cute Labrador puppy, using the admirably direct call of "Money, money, money. I want the gringo money. You give me money." while holding said pup aloft.  I was quietly bemused until Chan pointed out that he would no doubt abandon that pup when it got too old to be lucrative.  I hope he gets mauled by an avenging pack of vigilante labradoodles.

On a positive note, I learned of a great initiative in one of the city's poorer areas, Maipú, which accounts for 200,000 of the 500,000 dogs in Santiago.  The local council recruited 12 street dogs into the Canine Brigade: an initiative to take street dogs who've had pretty terrible backgrounds and give them crime prevention training so that they can can patrol the streets.  This way they serve the dual purposes of providing security and demonstrating how any dog can be trained and given a home. They patrol in shifts and are looked after by the municipality for the rest of their lives when they get old.

This is Jimmy: a St Bernard/Akita mix.  He is a good boy.

Getting back on track - the second time we stayed in Santiago (after we got back from Atacama), we rented a flat in one of the city's innumerable apartment blocks.  Santiago is a bit of a monster: of the 18 million in Chile's population, 7 million (38%) live in the Santiago area.  This means the town tends toward the vertical.

Checking in was a bit of a cluster, to be honest. Absolutely no-one spoke English, which I generally have no problem with - it is their country and I'm the visitor- but not when you're advertising to foreigners *in English*, advertising that you speak English.  But we eventually managed to the right person, who lived in another flat and apparently managed about 20 flats in the building, going by her jailer's key chain.  The view was nice, though.

The general lack of English acumen in the service industries in South America has been surprising, actually.  Any Europeans, Americans or Asians who're not from Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries will try to get by in English, but many places we've visited speak very little of it.  Not a complaint, just a surprised observation.  You'd think it'd be in their own interests.  It'd certainly be in mine; I have enough problems speaking English to Americans.

Back to Santiago.  We cooked for ourselves while we were there, since we were now in possession of a kitchen. The cost and volume of things in the local supermarket was a lot more in line with what we expect in Europe, rather than the vast volumes of everything you'll find in the U.S that made cooking a single meal for two so uneconomic. There were some odd things, though.  Several items were behind locked glass - in the same way that razor blades frequently are in the UK- specifically: instant coffee, sardines and butter.   They weren't particularly expensive or short in supply (this isn't 70s Poland), but you had to ask someone to get them for you.  Odd.

On the coffee note:  They don't like coffee in South America.  Or rather it isn't even close to as popular as in the U.S and Europe. Brazil exports the most coffee in the world, but in São Paulo you will get Nespresso in restaurants.  Similarly in Chile - all you will find here is sachets of Nescafe instant and hot water at breakfast. What they do have in Chile is this:

They call it Café con piernas - coffee with legs - and it is a bit tragic.  Basically, your middle-aged businessmen come down to these coffee shops at lunchtime to be served bad coffee by provocatively dressed women, who are often on a slightly raised platform in order to facilitate a better view.   These places range in tawdriness, from the mildly offensive minidress-focussed place above, to de-facto strip joints where you buy coffee from girls in bikinis in UV-lit dark rooms. Terrible, expensive coffee at that. Chile is actually quite socially conservative, so these places are a bit out of character.
The funny thing is that Starbucks is a bit of a driver for social change in that Women can go there and drink indifferent coffee in an environment that isn't overtly objectifying.

Keeping it upbeat, we visited the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights), a museum commemorating the victims of the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 -1990.

Brief summary for those not up on Chilean history: The socialist government of Chile was overthrown by the combined armed forces and the national police in 1973.  They took over and ran the country for seventeen years.  They spent apparently most of that time imprisoning, torturing and killing anyone left-of-centre who was too noisy about it.  They conspired with the other military dictatorships of South America to cooperate in killing each others' targets abroad too - a notable example being the car-bombing of a political enemy in Washington state.
This being the cold war years, and the Pinochet regime being not-communist in a continent that is playing with Marxism, Chile was supported to a greater or lesser extent by the UK and US.  Indeed, prior to the coup, the CIA spent money sabotaging the economic efforts of the socialist government by paying agitators to be industrially disruptive. 

The museum states its mission is that of learning from history and providing a resource for future generations in order to prevent this kind of awfulness happening again.  I think in that respect it fails. It does a grand job of detailing the abuses of the Junta and providing a chronology to its outrages, but provides almost nothing about the causes or the run-up before the coup.  Nothing on the political and economic situation in the early seventies.  Nothing of the Pinochet government's policies beyond the violence (I think the relative economic success of the country today probably doesn't mesh too well with the message of the museum).  Very little detail is provided about the regime coming to an end - which it did voluntarily after a plebiscite went against them in 1988.

I think if you're trying to educate in order to prevent another couple of decades of murder, you'd be best detailing the causes as well as the effects, especially as the regime did (and does) have a lot of support from the populace.  That plebiscite was only lost by 44% to 56%, even after it came out how many people they'd killed, so there's probably an issue there they should address.  

Now that that's set the mood, we're going a bit foody again.  Chan was reading in the in-flight magazine for Sky Airlines about this Spanish Chef named Sergio Barroso and his slightly demented tapas restaurant in Santiago.  Sergio is a bit of an experimenter, previously trained at the triple Michelin-starred "molecular gastronomy" (my eyes just rolled so hard that I need to sit down for a bit) restaurant El Bulli.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure.  It's called Restaurant 040 because it's at 040 Antonia Lopez de Bello.  So there we are, ten minutes early at 40 Antonia Lopez de Bello and all we see is a blue roller-shutter door.  After some vacillation, we call the restaurant up and they tell us that we're at 40 whereas we should be at 040, which is beyond the next junction, in a different district and therefore where they start counting again.  Of course.

Anyway, after they dispatched the sommelier to come find us, we're sat down and told that there is a set meal tonight of 8 dishes and 2 desserts. It was something else.   Brace yourself for the food portraits:

Snail with avocado - not to my preference but was very good. Don't eat the gravel.

Blowtorched clams with miso.  Gravel optional.

This is a local fish in ravioli made from thinly-shaved slices of avocado, with gazpacho. 

Teriyaki cookie with rice and shrimp

Octopus nigiri on polenta

Right, zoom in on this one.
This is Silverside fish on brioche with bones on top.  It tastes better than you'd expect.

Chan came in with snapshots of the original article to make sure we got this one.
This is a creamed potato, egg and pancetta thing served in quail's egg shells

Brioche with beef and caramelised onions

This was Churros made from a banana and coffee meringue with whisky and white chocolate mousse

I think this was orange sorbet covered with caramelised orange on a stick.

So, yeah. It was good.  What was better was access to the restaurant's exclusive speakeasy -Room 09- on the roof.  We proceeded to get heroically (but classily) shitfaced.  Pisco featured. As did gin. When we came to leave, we descended the spiral staircase just to find that it goes beyond the ground floor and directly into the swimming pool. So Chan is standing there for a good five seconds, wondering why she is wet to the knees. Our non-English-speaking Uber driver (I was in no condition to explain where the flat was, so the app did the work for me) listened to Chan giggling all the way back, bemusedly.

We trusted you!

The following day I was monstrously hungover. Chan - who does not get hungover- took us to the museum of contemporary art. In the cafe there, I inadvertently had the ideal hangover meal as I was at the mercy of the set menu.  So after accidentally drinking two bowls of wholesome veggie broth, a fresh-pressed juice and somehow eating a salad of chicken and Quinoa (they grow it here, so it doesn't make you a twat to order it), I felt pretty good.

Santiago (St James) himself.

The last thing of note was another walking tour we joined.  Our guide was occasionally upstaged by a Labrador/(possibly)Collie street dog that always follows his tours, but who was very friendly.

We picked up some local facts, he pointed out those creepy-as-fuck cafés up the page and gave us some history of the people and of the architecture.

This is to do with the native tribes being displaced or something

The local parks have a lot of gift installations from around the world, the largest being from Germany.  East Germany (being a touch socialist themselves) took in a load of left-wing exiles during the unpleasantness.

America sent a bust of old Abe.  He gets a bit of a hard time with graffiti and whatnot, as the U.S support for Pinochet does not go unremembered.

So with that ends our stint in mainland South America.  Chile was an agreeable place to finish.  It is better developed than Brazil and less dysfunctional than Argentina, although both those countries had their own charm.   Everyone (pretty much without exception) has been very friendly all over the continent, and we've seen things I genuinely hadn't imagined before. It was the section of the trip I was most reticent about - knowing next-to-nothing about most of these places, beyond guidebook warnings of violence and theft in darkened alleyways- but it's been really rather special.

But now we must leave as we have an appointment with some big fat heads...

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch:  Santiago war Scöhn.  Wir haben in einem Wohnung geblieben, aber dass ein bisschen chaotisch war.  Es gibt viele Straßenhunde hier. Ich mag Hunde, aber wenn ich sie ohne Familien sehen, es macht mich traurig.  Wir haben eine fantastische und aufwendigen Mahlzeit gegessen. Es war eine geheime Bar im Obergeschoss, wo Chan und ich bekam sehr betrunken. Sie ging in den Pool nach!  Jetzt müssen wir Südamerika verlassen. Wir haben einen Termin mit einigen großen, fetten Köpfe...

Into the Atacama

The driest place on the planet (that isn't at a pole) is the Atacama desert.  Naturally one must pop in when one is in the same continent, if only to say "Huh, this is a very picturesque blighted hellscape, don't you agree darling?".

We flew to Calama, the closest thing to civilisation, before making our way to San Pedro de Atacama.  San Pedro exists in the middle of several points of natural beauty and therefore serves as hub for adventurous tourists and some truly certifiable cyclists.   The town looks poor, but as far as I know it might just be scruffy because everyone apparently insists on building their own place - sometimes in a heroic triumph of optimism and economy over competence and utility.   The preponderance of unbaked adobe brick (if nothing else, this trip has left me well versed in brick) would mean that half the town would dissolve in a day of British drizzle.

Forsaking the numerous tours offered in the area, we hired a vehicle to see it all for ourselves.  This time we got something more appropriate in that we had a diesel-chugging behemoth 4x4 pickup truck. Behold El Monstruo:

 

Leading to several yells of "It's gripped; It's sorted; Let's offroad!" before totally fucking up the diff lock and stalling.

Suitably saddled up, we set about it.  I did forget my passport and immigration receipt on the second day, which made for some awkward conversation at a police checkpoint near the Bolivian and Argentine borders.  They wrestled with whether to press the issue after it became clear that I was clearly an imbecile who couldn't speak Spanish.  Ultimately they erred on the side of laziness and waved me on with a scornful look.

The desert is dotted with volcanoes, salt flats and the occasional lagoons, and is home to a fair abundence of wildlife. They have guanacos here -as in Patagonia- but also llamas and vicuñas (a smaller variant with different colours- the national animal of Peru, no less): They also have the occasional donkey.

Flamingos also feature - especially at the Chaxas Lagoon, which is home to three varieties.  They live off the brine shrimp found lurking in the salty water. Brine shrimp are a bit weird, by the way: they lay eggs that can lay dormant for decades, being hatched when required.  There were also a few lizards and other birds knocking about, eating what the Flamingos kick up when they're looking for food.

There was also a rather inprobable valley filled with vegetation, which was originally irrigated by the local natives and was improved upon subsequently.  It was very modestly reminiscent of Zion national park in that it was a very green oasis full of life in the middle of desolation. The caves cut into the cliffs and the remaining petroglyphs are also a bit similar to the Pueblo villages we saw in New Mexico.

The first night, we were taken into the hills by the local astromical institute to do some stargazing. The absolute absence of metropolitan glare and the sheer space available make this area particularly suited for staring into the inky nothingness above.  Our Canadian guide -equipped with a very nifty green laser- pointed out the constellations, even thought they were all wrong and upside-down due to our being in an unnatural hemisphere. The aussies in attendance were somewhat baffled by the absence of the southern cross.  It is all a matter of latitude, my dear loaf-stealers. There were ten telescope of various types, pre-trained on astronomical bodies which we could walk around and observe.  Then there was a Q&A session in the lodge with cocoa.

I took a stab at some long exposure photos while I was there.  We have a bridge camera rather than an SLR, and the stabilisation circuit is playing up (I bought some screwdrivers in Santiago - it will rue the day) but here you go:

The first obigatory thing to do in this area is to visit Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) at sunset.  A stout fellow from Mexico named Diego helped us out at the admin point on the way in, in that he had change for the ticket and could translate for us.  The day was running out so we threw his bike in the back and he came along with us to see what there was to see.  This first picture below is called Las Tres Marías (The Three Marias), because that is literally what they call anything they find that has three things in Latin America. This area is where NASA tests it's rover vehicles, as it emulates forbidding alien rocky terrain rather well.

The second obligatory thing to do is catch the geysers at El Tatio at sunrise.  Unlike Yellowstone, where you can watch them gassing off all day, it's so hot here you need to come first thing where it's so cold one can witness brass monkeys frantically searching for a welder.  The rest of the day, they're just bubbling holes in the ground.  So we got up at Jesus fucking Christ o'clock in order to drive the 90km up there in time for sunrise at 06:00.  It was quite pretty, even if my extremities turned black and fell off.  They don't bother with the Yellowstone-style secure boardwalks over tested solid ground here, so occasionally hapless tourists fall through the crust and have a bad day. Exciting.

Chan managed to get the hire car $171, rather than £171 as listed on Europcar's UK website. And the getting up early meant we got three days' worth of careering about for two days of car, so that was nice.  It's busy in Chantelle's head.  I'm just here to drive and lift things.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben die Atacama-Wüste gereist. Es ist die trockenste Wüste der Welt, sondern ist die Heimat von vielen Lamas und Flamingos.
Die nahe gelegenen Geysire sind spektakulär, aber wir mussten sehr früh aufstehen, um sie zu sehen. Es war sehr kalt. Wir besuchten auch eine astronomische Institut und blickte zu den Sternen. Die Wüste, ohne all die Lichter der Stadt, ist sehr gut für Sternbeobachtung.