The big trip: "Buenos Noches!" "No!"

I dare say that Chilean Spanish is more difficult than Argentine Spanish. I try to so hard to understand not only the gist of what is being said to me but each word as well. Sometimes it backfires. So sometimes I try another approach. Case in point... I am standing at the checkout at the supermarket and the clerk asks the woman in front of me if she has a membership card. She hands it to him, he scans it, says something else unintelligable and hands her the card back. So in my ultimate cleverness, I decide that when it's my turn and he says what will probably be the same thing about a membership card to me, I will just automatically reply with a "no" and he will assume I belong there as much as the next woman (or in this case, previous woman). Except he greets me with a "buenos tardes". "No!" I quickly reply. It's only about 3 seconds later that I realize all he said was "good evening." It's too late to say "buenos tardes" back and not look more like a weirdo than I probably already do. So when the bagger greets me with a clear "buenos tardes!" I reciprocate; very loud and clear and smily. Dork.

We arrived in Chile last week (I think). We crossed the border wthout incident. The drive was only 7 hours but the whole trip took 9 as we spent 2 hours at the border, standing in line to check out of Argentina only to go stand in another line to check into Chile. There were so many signs about declaring your fruits, meats and other animal products that we assumed the sniffing dogs were only there to make sure we didn't smuggle in a ham sandwich from Argentina. When Michael told me that people sometimes slip stuff into the sides of your backpack before it goes into the cargo hold, I realized "oh yeah, they're probably sniffing for drugs." No, I haven't forgotten we are in South America but at that point, I was more concerned about holding onto my lunch.

Santiago was a fine city but the highlight was our free guided tour. Our guide, Filippe, was filled with so much passion about every single thing that came out of his mouth that we thought his head would explode.

Filippe, our empassioned guide

The National Theatre, complete with cracks from the last earthquake

A hip neighborhood in Chile where we ate dinner

The not-so-hip river of Santiago. The govt. wants to clean it up and build commerce and trade along the edge. Could be a promising place for long term arts projects. Probably will not happen, says Filippe. He didn't have much faith in the govt.

A typical dish of chile. I forget what it's called. Under the yummy corn souffle-ish top was chichen, beef, eggs and olivs. Slightly weird. Good beer though.

"Bless you" in Danish.

Another random kitty

One little street in Santiago was called New York cause it looked like Wall Street. It did, actually.

He also added, "In Chile, we care about the homeless dogs, we feed them, give them water, and even give them sweaters in the winter." Most of them still look pretty healthy, still some look fat.

We tried our first pisco sour and umpteenth empanada. Both were tasty.

Off to Valparaiso with its many many loosely hanging electrical wires, wall murals, steep streets up to the different barrios and the ascensores, mechanisms of cheatery for those who don't want to build up their thigh muscles any more than they already have to if they walk from downtown to their homes. When we got in our first one (the oldest in town, Ascenso Concepcion, from 1883) I was a little apprehensive as I thought it was like a funicular or a ski lift and we would be trapped in yet another death pod, suspended in the free air. But it doesn't leave the ground, not really, so my fears were quickly dissolved. We also took a boat ride around the harbour and learned absolutely nothing from the guide. But saw sea lions and lots and lots of boats and containers. So we were satisfied.

On top of Cerro Concepcion

Random cool house

View from Cerro Concepcion

A very active harbour

A look up the steep ascensor

Ascensor to the right

Container central

No, we didn't go in. But we did go to the Irish pub for Belgian beer. Lots of Danish choices too.

Antique store. Cat not for sale.

The best empanadas so far

We felt a bit uneasy about our life jackets that have been used every day since the Titanic sunk, but luckily we didn't have to find out of they worked or not

Technically we were not supposd to take pictures of the naval ships....

Seal taking a breather

Sea Lion

I mused that I thought Valparaiso was like an old run down town that is trying to be hip and bohemian but can't really get it together. Michael thinks the opposite, that it doesn't care how it looks, and by default is really cool. We both agreed that it was very eclectic in its styles.

The highlight of Valparaìso was the Pablo Neruda house. I admit I couldn't tell you much about him before this trip but visiting his house/museum was really cool. Now "Odes to Common Things" is next on my list of books of poetry to read (it's a short list so he should feel honored).