Good news: WE FOUND GOOD COFFEE IN CHILE! Victory is ours.
Although Chile is richer and more developed than most countries in S-America, we still felt like we were in S-America again, after leaving pretentious Argentina (they really are trying their best to be European) to Chile. Reggaeton wherever you go, street food, stray dogs, and don´t forget about silly crimes, like criminals robbing a whole ATM machine to try and later get the cash inside (we spent our first night with locals, looking for an ATM machine that hadn´t been removed by robbers). Oh, sweet old South America!
We went to a music festival in Santiago, called Lollapalooza, among million other Icelanders. Only that we met only 6 of them in person. That weekend we saw Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Band Of Horses, TV On The Radio, MGMT, Peaches, Bjork, Tinie Tempah and had a blaaast. If you overlook the fact that it was a non-alcohol festival and that you didn´t camp, the atmosphere reminded me bit of Roskilde festival. But besides the atmosphere, there is not much more comparable.
We toasted water at the non-alcohol festival.
After a successful music festival, it was time to end the festival, not as successfully. For some peculiar reason, the festival was in no co-operation with the public transportation system of the city, and the metro system closes around 11 PM - at the same time as the music festival. We still tried our luck. But so did thousands of other festival-goers as well.
So there we were, in the crowd, slowly making our way into the metro station - inch by inch. When we were only a few meters from the entrance, almost making it inside, they started to pull the gate closed. I swear this resembled the moment when they closed the gates in Titanic.
But due to relentless objections of the crowd, the gate was re-opened. Not that that helped out, with all the tickets being sold out and all. BUT, what can I say, Una and Svandís don´t give up that easily, and somehow we made our way to our hostel. VICTORY IS OURS.
The day after we took a bus, among with Begga (a fellow Icelander that we got to know at the festival) to PUCÓN - a small, cute town surrounded by volcanoes. But not only is it surrounded by volcanoes, but are earthquakes quite common in the area (and well, just overall in Chile). At first I laughed when the hostel owner in Pucón explained to us how to get out of the house in the case of an earthquake. I wasn´t supposed to laugh.
The main attraction of PUCÓN is to climb one of the volcanoes, a common activity in a nice weather. There was not nice weather during our stay. We waited for 3-4 days in Pucón for the travelling agency to let us go up, without any luck (but I really don´t blame them - later on we got to know this Australian guy who had gone up the volcano, and according to him a girl nearly died during the ascent).
But what made our stay in Pucón worthwhile, was the lovely, but peculiar hostel owner.
In tourist places like Pucón, hostel staffmembers often come to terminals to lure the newcome and badly-slept tourists to their hostels. When arriving to Pucón, this certain hostel owner convinced us of his hostels quality. When walking to the hostel with him, he gave us one of the most interesting first impressions I´ve ever experienced. You know those yellow toyboxes that are inside kindereggs?
Liiike this one.
Well, halfway to the hostel the hostel owner whipped out one of those kindereggboxes from his pocket and started talking about a Russion fellow, named Michael, being in the box. He showed us the box more closely and what do you know! It was marked Michael. Then he went on about how he always kept Michael´s ashes with him (even under his pillow when he slept!) and how he sought company in talking to the egg/Michael. This storytelling took form in very bad English, so it wasn´t until we got to the hostel that we could ask each other if we´d really gotten the story right. Which apparently we did. And still we stayed at his hostel, after hearing him talking about how the walks around with the ashes of this Russian guy in his pocket.
Well, of course we had to ask questions - my head was already exploding from unanswered questions!
Who was this Michael?
Had he also been a guest there?
Why was he dead?
Why were his ashes in a kinderegg box?
Was that where we would end if we stayed there?
Well, so when questioning him in Spanish later that day, we got all the answers we needed - kinda.
Michael had been a Russian guy who had been planning on a S-America trip with his friends, when he found out he had cancer. Not giving up on his S-American dream, he asked his friends to bring his ashes with them to S-America once he was deceased, and leave them all across the continent. Unfortunately, his friends had the same bad luck as we did when they stayed in Pucón, and did not succeed bringing his ashes to the volcane of Pucón. They, therefore, left them with the hostel owner, who promised to put them in the volcano when he had the chance.
A beautiful and satisfying story (but I still don't forgive the ashes being kept in a kinderegg and even less the guy always walking around with it).
The lovely hostel owner and Michael.
So, in the end we left Pucón without climbing the volcano.
Easter, me and Una spent with a Chilean family Una is related to. We got to know Chilean cuisine a bit and had a nice time. In Chile they eat lots of avocado, bread, tea, cornflour and empanadas. We quite liked it - it was at least a mager step upwards from Argentinean cuisine - the only food Argentina can be proud of (in our oppinion), is steak and wine. Besides that, Argentinean food is a bit disappointing.
After some days with the Chilean family, we decided it was time to go to Mendoza - with a small pitstop in Maipo valley for some Chilean wine tasting.
We like our wine.
Our bus from Santiago arrived to Mendoza at 5:30 AM. We had been imagining ourselves spreading out our sleeping bags in the terminal and sleeping there until the sun came up - but luckily, a hostel had yet again sent a staff member to collect the unaccommodated tourists. Although it was super nice to be able to lay into a bed straight away, we ran fast away to another hostel when the bunkbeds collapsed and we discovered the fungus in the kitchen.
Once at another hostel, everything got a lot better and we had a great time in Mendoza. We went horseback riding, did a tour to see Aconcagua (the second highest mountain in the world), did a bike tour around the wineyards of Mendoza, and last but not least - we went skydiving. Being in Mendoza, the wine capital itself, I felt nothing to be more appropriate than joining our two main activities - winetasting and skydiving. So I did a winetasting while skydiving.
After Mendoza we were going to go to Salta in northern Argentina, but decided to make a pitstop in a small, cute town called Cafayate. Cafayate is surrounded by incredible mountains, cactuses and some ancient ruins from a former indigenous tribe, called Quilmes. The Quilmes were quite interesting - they were able to fight back the Incas during their time, and they fought against the Spaniards for 130 years. Until the Spaniards simply relocated them to Buenos Aires - hence, no more Quilmes.
Salta was our last stop in Argentina. It´s unbelievable how more S-American everything got, the Norther you went in Argentina! Salta and Buenos Aires are like ebony and ivory - I can barely believe these two cities are located in the same country.
Cafayate.
Now that I´ve finished my time in Argentina, I think I can tell you a bit about the culture - or at least how I experienced the culture.
Argentineans are more reserved than other S-Americans - well that is perfectly understandable, them being descendants from Europeans and all. But they are still super friendly.
Although being friendly and always seem to be ready to help you out, it´s not a good idea asking them for directions - because if you do, you will most definitely not end up on your destination.
Argentineans seems to be proud of being descendants of Europeans, but they push it a bit and sometimes they come out a bit presentious. Like I said before, they can be proud of their meat and wine - but besides that, they don´t seem to have any typical Argentinean cuisine (that is if you don´t count the Alfajores - cookies filled with caramelized milkcandy, eaten on almost any occasion), but seem to have unsuccessful Italian restaurants on almost every corner. Although they try and maintain their cuisine Italian, they seem to have snatched the Siesta from the Spaniards, so everything closes between 1-5 PM. At this time of the day, the towns are DESERTED. Then around 5-ish, it's like the towns come back to live and everyone goes out on the streets, to the park, to drink mate (some kind of Argentinean "tea") and etc. And then they eat dinner sometime between 22:00 and 00:00. You can imagine how surprised we were when we were told in Cordoba that we wouldn't find any restaurant open until 21:00.
Anywho, so all in all, although Argentinean culture didn't charm us as much as we expected, we still got to know lovely people, saw beautiful landscapes, tried out some marvellous meat and wine, and had a nice time.
So after a pleasant stay in Argentina, it was off to Chile again for a few days, and then finally, into the real South America: Bolivia.
Stay tuned.
-Svandís
