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You're probably getting bored of us extoling the virtues of every country we've been to while you are stuck behind your desk back at home. It'll be somewhat refreshing therefore for you to hear that we don't really like Chile. For the particularly resentful, you'll be even more pleased to hear that we are also unable to leave…
Now, nearly every other country we have been to so far we would be more than happy to be stuck in for a few weeks. Maybe if this were a short holiday from work then even being stuck in Chile would be just about bearable as an excuse to go home late. As it is, Chile is just rubbish!
Let me explain.We always expected that we would lose some stuff along the way over the course of this year and so far it's not been that bad. A t-shirt, jumper and pyjamas in the Gilis, another t-shirt in an unknown place, a penknife in Bikaner and (until recently) the worst of the lot, my oakley sunglasses in a food market in Laos.
Now, we add to the list: 2 x passports, debit cards, credit card, hand written recipe book from all the countries we have visited so far, dive log books with all our Gili dives written up a bunch of our electrical stuff and most important of all, 1x boomerang
How you ask? Well, after 4 days in Santiago (which were boring but needed to catch up on sleep after the 15 hour time difference between New Zealand and Chile) we were on a bus platform 10 mins from getting on the bus when we realised we had no water. With 20 hours of road trip ahead we decided to go grab some. Back inside bus station, I put down my bags outside a shop with Eleanor on watch, I go into the shop and within thirty seconds I hear my name being shouted. There is a bag missing and we have no idea where it is…I run off to look for it on someone and see nothing. I go back, track down the police and the police asked what happened. Actually, we don't know - Eleanor heard a sound and looked away for a second. When she looked back the bag was gone. She heard and saw nothing.
We convinced the police (who didn't speak any English and had strong Chilean accents making the Spanish hard to understand) to go to the CCTV room and run the tapes and this is what they showed.
Me and Eleanor turned up at the shop, I go in. Man on a horse, wearing a red poncho and sporting a handlebar moustache trots into view amongst the crowd. He fires his gun to the roof, the horse rears, he screams 'Arriba' and gallops towards Eleanor. He stoops to the right and flicks a short leather whip out which wraps around the bag and with another swift flourish the whip pulls the bag onto the horse and the man gallops off. Eleanor meanwhile, saw and heard nothing…
Ok, ok, I admit it. That's not true, sorry Eleanor, actually the cctv guys tried to claim that they didn't actually record from the cameras (which they do but they didn't want to get involved in a police report involving us Gringos). We got taken to the police station and told to wait. 4 hours later, we are still sitting there being ignored and we discover that no one wants to deal with us as they don't speak English and didn't bother trying to find out if we speak any Spanish. Another hour later, midnight and well away from anywhere in Santiago we know, we get everything sorted out with a lot of difficulty.
Anyway, don't ever loose your passport in South America. The foreign office is completely useless and unhelpful. As of last October nowhere in south or central America is able to provide replacement passports, instead you have to apply via post for a 4 to 6 week process in the US. Why? Well, a 2006 national audit office report suggested the FCO could save significant money if not all offices kept the equipment and necessary security measures in place to provide the passports. Despite increasing numbers of stolen passports every year in the area since 2006, public sector swiftness meant that 4 years on the suggestion has been implemented with what would seem, from first hand experience, very little thought as to the implications and practicalities.
They gave no advice on where to go to get appropriate police reports. No advice on where to get appropriate photos (difficult with Chilean standards being different from UK) and when they did, they were not actually good enough quality. They finally decided that they could give us a passport from their office after all (one week later) and so we waited a week, travelled down to Puerto Varas (20 hours away) and then back to Santiago to get our passports. On arrival we called the office to be told the person who was authorised to issue the passports had unexpectedly quit and as such we were back to square one and had to apply to the US. This, it turned out, was a lie as they had actually fired the said lady but had forgotten to ask her our to complete our forms first thinking that we could make do with a newly introduced emergency passport which didn't actually work for us as it limits you to 5 countries (we have 8 left to visit), we can't leave the UK if we come back until we have a full passport (and we plan only to be back for a week before going to Africa) and we would need visas we would not otherwise need as Argentina and the US don't accept emergency passports without them. Oh, and they cost 100 quid each not to mention the week of our time they just wasted giving us somewhere between 4 and 6 weeks before we will be able to replace our full passports. Assuming the applications are ok.
So, let's forget that, where did we go in Chile? Santiago, Puerto Varas,Chiloe, Valpraiso and they were all ok. Very European, some pretty houses and buildings. A few nice snow capped volcanos to look at in Puerto Varas that were quite stunning. Despite a huge costline, the beaches were only ok.
The food? Again, alright but not hugely varied - a lot of steak and chips, less fish but when it was sold there wasn't much variety but we have had some lovely Merluza (Hake) dishes including with a shrimp sauce and just plain fried and some excellent surf clams covered in parmesan. Also, they are good at some German influenced bean soups with lots of smoked pork in the stock such as porotos con reinadas.
Snacks? Chileans love hot dogs (called panchos or completos) which they smother with guacomole and cheese or salsa verde or, well, just about anything. Really, it is not an exaggeration to say that on any one street there will be more than 3 or 4 places selling hotdogs and throughout the day you will see Chileans stuffing them down….
The cost of accomodation was much higher than we had expected at around 20 to 25 quid a night and so was the food.
The wine? Well, that is a redeeming feature, we had a few great bottles of wine in Chile - lots of cabernet sauvingnons that are cheap and fantastic.
In some ways I feel that we may be unfair to Chile given we started out on the wrong foot but I don't think that has affected our view too much. It is more that we enjoy going places that are not just far away but also feel far away. Chile is in a lot of ways European but without the flare of places in Spain, Portugal or Italy. In my personal view, it is just a little average. Not bad, not great. Average. Not somewhere I would advise going to or not, just totally ambivalent.
So, sadly, our first real disappointment of the trip and more sadly we have been stuck here for 3 weeks when we had only intended to come for a week. The last week has been spent travelling between Valparaiso and Santiago negotiating with the Argentinan Embassy around getting a visa for our emergency passports which they have never seen before. So, we're looking forward to leaving and getting on with our trip…hopefully to somewhere a little more fun.
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