South America Part 19 - Hello Chile (and Valparaiso)

We arrived in Santiago airport around lunch time (white western midday lunch time) and the airport had more taxi touts than Lima Airport (surprisingly). You basically couldn't fart without getting touted. We had a few stalkers who wanted to continue to tout us while we were using the ATM machine.

Once we got our bearings - we figured out we had to catch a bus to the Santiago bus terminal in order for us to catch another bus to Valparaiso. On our way to the bus terminal - it looked like outer suburban Santiago had caught the Gungahlan McMansion disease - except Santiago had four lane roads and Gungahlan doesn't. Santiago was also incredibly dry looking - nothing was green and it had the whole Peru arid feel.

At the bus terminal - I raced around and attempted to order "two completo super panchos" - but got two tomato ones instead whilst Ant got some tickets for our second bus journey. The bus trip to Valpariso was uneventful and stress free - everything felt very efficient and some of the roads along the way to Valpariso were rather "f··· off" including two giant tunnels thru some a mountain range. The road down to Valpariso had the whole Barrosa Valley mixed with Toowoombah feel - where else do you have giant vineyards with a few giant jesus crucifixes and jesus billboards.

When we stepped off the bus at Valpariso - I was touted by a woman who wanted us to stay at some hostel. I said the usual "no gracis" and walked away. When Ant got touted - he suddenly realised that this was the place we had booked into! She walked us down to the hostel (only a minute away from the terminal) and checked in.

Valpariso is a port city of Chile (supposed to be the biggest port in the country) and has a bit of a San Francisco feel to it (hilly, sea side) minus the cosmopolitan feel. We walked for ages (it is surprisingly long and lengthy to get anywhere) and walked down to the tourist dock area where you get touted by people selling boat rides. After getting completely ripped off by some Churrio dealer (it is hard to understand the numbers - especially when one Australian dollar buys 389 pesos) - we wandered into the downtown area - where most of the buildings looked very european / martin place in Sydney.

To try and kill some time - we took a stroll down the local shopping area and walked into our first department store in South America - "Ripleys". The place looked like a down market "The Warehouse" with s$$$ and bad clothes chucked in big piles everywhere. We kept going up on the escalator and made it to "Happyland" (logo looked suspiciously like "Disneyland") - an amusement parlor and the food court. We decided to spend $3AUD which got us 12 tokens at the parlor - and played a bit of Air Hockey, broken Jurassic Park Pinball and Tekken 3 (with the buttons all round the wrong way).

Ant was feeling hungry (at the non Latino time of 7pm) so we attempted to find some food. The food court was full of panchos, panchos and more panchos (hot dogs). One of the stores was called "DoggyS" - I hope the "S" doesn't stand for style. I refused to eat any more fast food or hot dog crap - so we walked around town in an attempt to "find something healthier". Restaurant after restaurant - everything either sold panchos or sandwiches (not the healthy ones but the ones that are like hamburgers with s""" loads of fries). Variety and healthy options...not. If Argentina was a vegetarian's nightmare (and admittedly - you could find vegetarian options in places) - Chile was a dietitan's nightmare. Even the food in America - at least you could find salad amongst all the fast food s$$$. The lack of variety makes you appreciate how lucky we are in Australia to have such diverse food.

Anyhow - we managed to track down a chinese restaurant - and we ordered a set menu. When we entered the place - we were the only ones there and they had to switch on the lights. The meal was better than the chinese at Goulburn (which isn't saying all that much).

We walked back along the trainline (which runs along the shore line - but you can't see it because the port is in the way) and some idiot shouted out "f%%ka ya" to us out of a taxi. Thank you for capping off a culturally rich evening in Chile.