Day 328
Santiago, Chile, South America!
Yesterday was our country jaunt! We took off at 9pm from the San Francisco hotel, which is the meeting point for all the tours seeing a bus can not fit in the cobblestone street of our hotel, in our 50 seater comfy bus to Valparaiso!
Valparaiso is Chile´s famous pictureque seaside resort town..where Chile´s most famous poet lived! His name is Pablo Neruda (born 1904 Died 1973) and he is a Noble Prize winner. The Chileans hold him in very high esteem.
Every country has someone they LOVE. And who brings the tourists in. Just like Carlos Gardel in Argentina (or Uruguay if you want go get technical..but Argentina has exploited his fame and made money out of his fame! (selling cd´s etc).
On the way to Valparaiso we stopped at a Internatinal Parque called Parque Quinta Vergaro (named after the Vergara family) and there was a huge statue of Pablo Neruda there. Apparently he went on to become an ambassador to France in 1970 & 1971 so he was also known internationally.
But i hadn´t heard of him until we saw his statue and went to his house. It was great to learn more about this famous Chilean!
There were also trees from every country at the Parque Qunita! The Aussie Eucalyptus featured as well.
Talking about the Aussie trees. On the way..we saw HEAPS of Blue Gums!! And in most countries there are a lot of Eucalyptus planted at least somewhere!! Very popular overseas!
The drive to Valparaiso took about an hour and a half and is about 120km´s from Santiago. What a beautiful drive. We went through the wineries (alwyas beautiful!) and saw a lot of little towns as we passed by. We even stopped at a little place that had a Rapu Nui museum (We tried to get to there, Easter Island, but whoohooo the cost to do so was phenomenal....accomodation prices are high there too...would like to go someday though!)
Our commentator, guide, Pedro, was great. He spoke extremely good english and when he talked he changed from English to Spanish in one breath! We learned a few more Spanish words too, which is always good!
We first glimsed the beautiul beaches just on the outskirts of Valparaiso and oh....if i had a week longer in Chile, this is where i´d stay. And more specifically, at a hotel call the Oceanic Hotel that was perched right on the edge of the cliff overlooking the beautiful beach.
Our guide told us a lot of rich Argentines come here to stay and hire aparments for a season for 300 US a night! I can see why. The place is very beautiuful.
We stopped off at the Los Pomairinos restaurant but we decided to grab a burger at Burger King and go to the beach for the 2 hours we had there. No point just sitting in a restaurant eating when we could be at the beach!!
And it was SO gorgeous. We got a bit burnt..arggh. Silly us forgot our sunscreen.
It´s a magical place. The architectural design is one of it´s own. It´s a a mix of neo classical and Victorian. And lots of Venetian designs, influenced by the Italian immigration here.
There were lots of coloured buildings, like a little italy, and it has beautiful pictureqe gardens, parks and lots of flowers. They call it the Garden State! As we drove through the town we saw all the funiculars (elevators) going up all the hills!
We were told there were forty (STEEP) hills and 50 funicular´s!! They are like hillside elevators. We have great pictures of them! There were lots of old trolley buses going up every hill!
You should have seen all the exposed trolley bus wires...everywhere! Looked like a spiderweb of wires in the town!
After the lunch we visited Pablo Neruda´s house..a musuem they call, ´La Sebastiana´. It´s a house that goes up and up and UP! Has lots of levels and peaks at a really high height. The top room was his study. The rooms in the house all had character, so colourful and contained lots of artwork and painted and tiled walls. Such a creative house to go into. I loved it!
Oh yeah, Pablo´s bar was one of the feature´s of the house and i wrote down the SECRET recipe for his famous cocktail called the COQUETELON!
Here it is!
Mix equal parts of gognac and champagne with a few drops of cointreau and orange juice for a subtle flavour.
Sounnds good hey? Must try it when we get home!
The whole town is colourful. Can´t wait to find a computer so we can upload some of the pics we took! (no usb port on this hotel computer!)
Talking of pics....Greg was telling someone the other day that we had over 20,000 pics of our trip..and i´m pretty sure they thought he was MAD! ha! Anyone want to come over for a photo night? hehe
And that was our Day At The Sea!
We returned home about 9pm, ate at the mall then headed back to Paris Londres, ventured inside the oldest church in South America, which is in the same street as our hotel, Vegas, and collapsed into sweet dreams!
What a gorgeous way to end our stint in South America!
xxxxxx
