Chile Part 4: Talca, Santiago and Concepcion

Ok I tidied up the last entry to include the remainder of Santiago. You can take a read if you were curious as to what you missed. I took a train down to Talca. I so much prefer trains. I think I am always going to travel in them as opposed to buses. There was the first bit of rain I had seen since Bolivia, where coincidentally I rarely saw the sun. Also I realised I had developed a fear of small towns at night after having my nose smashed. Though in Pucon and here in Valdivia the fear has been drastically reduced, so I will put it down to post-traumatic nose disorder. I am tired, but writing this to MSTRKRFT so that helps. Really want to see them again, but don't think they are heading down here anytime soon. I met a couple of very uncommunicative Germans and stayed in a pretty cool hostel. Can't remember the name, but one of the best I have stayed in. Not expensive for here and you got cable tv, breakfast, excellent service and the owner is really interesting as well.



I got up really early, having bought a load of stuff from the supermarket and headed off into the National Park Altos de Lircay. I think thats spelt slightly wrong. I wanted to see Siete Tazas as well, but it was not looking like that would be possible. I took the bus there and slept all of the way. At the other end I met a German dude and we decided to hike the park together. Only he was going to try to hike from one park to the other in 4 days and I was going to hike with him to the mirador and walk about a little bit. Almost the same. Ah I have just reentered this blog. Last time I was writing in in the pleasant surroundings of Valdivia and now I am writing in the total shithole that is Rio Gallegos. On the plus side my new phone has a radio, so I get to listen to some good and sometimes dodgy music. Ah radio. Ah so where was I. Ah yeah hiking in the park. We hiked up through the ridges and the park looked like those in the Rockies in the States. Multicoloured. After being bored by the green and brown monotonous scenery of the Andean countries, it was nice to be back in a place with reds, oranges and yellows as well. A real mix of different colour schemes and styles. Very pretty. The path wound through the the campsite at the end. Number six. There I dropped my tent and went hiking with the German to the mirador. It had great sweeping views of the valley and the walk down would be a steep one. I opted out. Could not be arsed to walk back up the hill afterwards and you could see most of it from here. Ah I have crappy Argentine news in my ear about corrupt Rio Gallegos governors. At least its not adverts. Yeah 'I get fire from your tongue' seems some random group. Need to change channel. I opted to go back and hike up to the basalt or granite plateau. There I met a group of Chilean girls and chilled there looking at the sweep over the valley. The German and I had been farting around with topographical maps to work out which mountain was which. We weren't the best at it. Hope he made it back after camping up in the snow. From there I hiked across the top of the plateau to a beautiful lake, which included some hiking in snow (which was cold due to the holes in my shoes) and met some starving Chileans. I gave them a packet of crisps when I passed them again on the way back. Hiking through all these parts had taken the Germans 3 days. Took me less than one. I really think these lazy bastard hikers are not pushing themselves as much as they could do. I ran down the hill as I love running downhill parts of hikes. Takes less energy and a lot less time as you are just running with the gravity. My nose was starting to return to an appearance normal at this point. I rebroke my little left toe by kicking a rock on the way back and then just turfed in early into my tent.

The next day I was up with the sun. Well almost up with the sun. I decided to hike back out of the park as I had seen everything worth seeing and I had tested the tent. It was seemingly working fine. My stomach problem had maybe been from unfitness, as after hiking and my nose was broken it seems to function fine. I got out of the park and just missed a bus, so I had to sit there eating stale bread for an hour or so waiting for the bus. Eventually I got back to Talca and found out the Brazilian would get to Santiago the next day so I should head back. I did not do much. Just watched a lot of CSI, did my laundry and watched Liverpool get knocked out of the FA Cup. Hahahahah. Better for us. Fucking scousers. Torres, Benayoun and Gerrard got injured as well. Excellent as we would play a weakened Liverpool next week.

In the morning I got up early and got chatting with an Israeli guy who had been hiking around the middle of Chile. In the afternoon I took a bus back to Santiago to meet Marcela. I wanted to see Alex (the Colombian from, Manizales) as well but it depended on her. The hostel cost me $20 in Santiago. Damn this country. Too expensive. I met Marcela and we chatted before heading to meet Alex at his Colombian restaurant. She was tired and went back, so Alex and I went and chatted in a cafe until around 4am. Was good to catch up. Both me and Marcela realised early on that we both have strong, differing personalities and we were bound to end up clashing at some point.

In the morning I got up and met a girl from Sao Paolo. Very cute. We chatted for half an hour or so and then Marcela joined us. We went to Alex's house to have breakfast and bought a load of stuff from the supermarkets. They are not cheap in Chile. There is almost no point cooking. If you eat out it will cost you around the same amount of money, more or less. We had breakfast and then the other two went in the rooftop swimming pool. I did not have any clothes for it so had to stay on the side. Then I went and got a long overdue haircut, while the others went siteseeing. I cooked up a rather flat dinner. Always disappointing when you cook for some people for the first time and its a bit crap, as they will assume that is your level of cooking ability. Oh well. We went past a weird church that looked like it was constructed in four different time periods and then molded together. I still don't know why people bash Santiago so much. Its clearly a good city and one of three I would consider living in for a short period of time in Chile. We took a night bus to Concepcion and did not end up sleeping at all. Was a strange bus ride. Oh well. I was hoping Concepcion would be the only other expensive place in Chile that we stayed, but that was optimistic.

We arrived at 5am and the hotel would not let us check in until 7am. Shitty. We were both tired. Neither of us had really slept in the last few nights. There seemed a bit of game playing so I just went to sleep. Marcela went and chatted with the hotel owners and their son, who ended up hanging around with us a fair bit. Spurs and Liverpool both drew, while Man City lost. The Saints crushed the Cardinals. Excellent. They were in the NFC title match against the Vikings. Was going to be a good matchup the weekend afterwards. We walked around the town and saw a really cool little art gallery. Had a good mural painting that was very similar to the work od Diego Rivera. We then went to the local musuem, which was focusing on Mapuche history. Marcela did not fancy climbing the hill, so I set off to get a view of the city from the higher places. I always like to get the high point views. Its not a very pretty city. The rest of the city was shut down as the elections were the next day and they did not want any drunken voting.

The next day we were up and had some fun before breakfast, but it was pretty obvious we did not have great chemistry. This had been clear to both us really. Oh well. Onwards with the trip. Gloria needed a bit of help, so would give her a ring on skype. We went out to see the beaches of Concepcion. They were a bit rubbish strewn and just a bit rubbish in general. Water was still too cold. It was interesting to wander around some of the suburbs of the city though. Chilean small towns all possess a lot of multicoloured architecture. Very pretty. We even found a hobo lying in a tyre on the beach. Made for a fun photo for Marcela. The son had made us both perosnalised letters for when we left, which was a nice touch and then we took a bus to Temulco. Its a bit of an industrial shithole and the direction giving was so bad that we ended up wandering around for a while before we eventually found a bus to Pucon and we were heading to the Chilean version of Bariloche.