Elizabeth's holiday

On the evening of Thursday 23rd Dec [Chilean time] we left Santiago and drove down to Angol, a country town 7-8 hours drive south of Santiago. We left at 7pm as we had to wait for one of the travellers to finish work at 6.30pm that day, so it was almost 3am by the time we reached Angol. Rosemary & I managed to doze in the back seat, but I felt really sorry for the 2 men who took turns to drive. Fortunately, Chile has a very good highway with a speed limit of 120kmph, though most people seem to drive much faster than that. The only thing that slowed us down was the peak hour traffic out of Santiago, and the 5 toll booths we had to go through.

Because it was so late when we got to the farmhouse in Angol, we had to wait until next morning to check out our surroundings. It is a delightful old farmhouse set among a beautiful garden with huge shady trees, flowering shrubs and a cobblestone circular drive. There is also a 2 bedroom cottage near the entrance of the property, where Rosemary's daughter & her fiance are staying. They are spending 2 months travelling around South America, so came to Angol for a week to see us.

Cherries are the main fruit grown on this farm, with hectares of rows of cherry trees in various stages of fruiting. This is the cherry season, but they only have a window of 20 days to get all the fruit harvested, so it is a very busy time of the year. This was the first time I had seen a cherry tree and was amazed by the quantity of fruit each tree produced. Tomas said that they trim the tops of the trees to keep them low enough to be reached by ladders, otherwise fruit-picking becomes too cumbersome and counterproductive. I love cherries so whenever I get the urge I wander through the orchard picking handfuls of cherries. Yum!!

The soil here is very fertile because its is volcanic soil, and all over Angol you find various fruit & vegetable farms. Tomas has 2 other farms - one where he grows wheat, and the other where he grows sugar beet & asparagus. The asparagus crop had already been harvested, so we didn't get the opportunity to see what fields full of asparagus look like. However, we did see a few of them that had grown since the harvesting. All the sugar beet Tomas grows gets sold directly to 1 main buyer in Chile, as all of the sugar in Chile is made from sugar beets - very interesting to find that so few food miles are used for this product.

Apart from the main crops on the farms, there are also several other fruit trees and vegetables grown for their own consumption - such as avocados, walnuts, pears, plums, persimmons, as well as artichokes, silver beet, tomatoes, pumpkins. It is so wonderful to sit down to a meal eating fresh fruit and vegetable produced from their farm :-)

On our first day in Santiago, Tomas & Valentina took Rosemary and I for a long drive to Valparaiso, a coastal town west of Santiago. It was a beautiful drive through the country, following the coastal range of the Andes - Cordillera de la Costa. We sometimes had to drive through long tunnels in the mountains, which was an awesome experience. The highway took us past acres and acres of orchards - walnuts, plums, avocados, olives etc, as well as some vineyards, including the noted winery Veramonte.

The city of Valparaiso is built on a high hill/mountain that goes down to the sea, so there are very steep cobblestone streets traversing the city. I honestly don't know how the locals walk up and down these steep narrow streets! It is a very old city built in the 1500s, with many of its beautiful old multi-coloured buildings heritage listed now in order to preserve them. There is also a huge restoration plan afoot by the local government to restore many of the old shabby buildings to their original standard - there seems to be plenty of government money around. The earthquake that hit Chile earlier this year did a lot of damage to this city. We saw the devastation in several areas, where the damage had not yet been repaired or was too vast to be repaired.

Valparaiso is also a naval base and there were quite a few naval ships in the harbour, and naval men around the place. A little further along the coast, the next city to Valparaiso is Vina de la Mer, which has the Naval Academy. Valparaiso has a strong military focus with a huge monument in front of the harbour honouring the heroes of the 1895 great battle of Chile against Peru & Bolivia, where the Captain, Arturo Prat led his men to victory in the ship Esmeralda. Tomas & Valentina told us that Arturo Prat's mother was a relative of their family. A replica of the sailing ship Esmeralda is anchored in the harbour at Valparaiso and is used for training exercises for the navy.

We had a wonderful seafood lunch at a harbour-side restuarant which was a converted rescue boat, at half the cost it would be in Australia! We tried the local delicacy of Machas de la Parmigana - clams cooked with parmesan cheese, as well as conger eel, tuna, salmon & seabass, accompanied by salad Chilean style and crunchy Chilean bread rolls, washed down with Pisco Sour, a traditional Chilean drink and icy cold white wine. Yum!!

We returned to Santiago via Vina de la Mar, another long picturesque drive. We passed a lot of farms along the way growing small crops such as tomatoes, corn, artichokes, as well as orchards of lemons, oranges and kiwi fruit. An amazing feature were the vast number of avocado farms planted along the sides of the mountains - they would be extremely difficult to harvest!

We got home from our long drive around 9pm and then went out to have dinner with some other of Rosemary's Chilean friends who live in Santiago - a most wonderfully gracious couple with a beautiful 5 bedroom apartment in one of the better areas of Santiago. People at Santiago eat very late, so we didn't get to eat dinner until nearly 11pm and finally got home at 2am in the morning! A very long but wonderfully exciting day :-)

Rosemary & I only spent 2 days in Santiago before heading to Angol. In Santiago we stayed in Tomas' apartment - he and his sister Valentina are both friends of Rosemary and knew her when they lived in Australia many years ago. They are delightful friendly and gracious people, who met us at the airport and waited until nearly midnight for us, because of all the delays and dramas with our Aerolineas flight. Definitely a budget airline, with poor facilities [eg no soap in the toilets from takeoff!],poor service and dishevelled unkempt looking staff who were very rude to boot.

Tomas' apartment is on the top floor [13th] of his building and has great views from the balcony, of an extinct volcano and snow-capped Andes. I will have a go at attaching some photos:-) I was also excited to discover a child care centre across the road from Tomas' apartment - I heard the voices of children so went to investigate. There aren't many child care centres in Santiago, as most of the rich people hire maids to look after their children. Valentina's daughter Angel returned to work when her baby [now 10 months] was 3 months old, but she was cared for at home by a maid, whom Amphora loves to pieces!

Santiago is a very beautiful modern city, well-designed with tree-lined streets. The only eyesore is the overhead wires that loop between posts on the sidewalk.There is a huge circular road that encircles the city centre, from which feeds roads to other parts of the city. It is named Avenida Americo Vespuccio, after the Italian cartographer who drew the first maps of America, and after whom America was named. There are some beautiful suburbs in Santiago where the rich people live, however on the outskirts of the city are all the shacks and shanties where the poor people live, which I found very distressing.

It was beautifully sunny in Santiago, with a temperature between 33 and 36 deg C on the 2 days we were there. However there was always a breeze blowing that cooled things down, and there was no humidity like in Brisbane, so it was quite pleasant.

Santiago does get a fair bit of pollution hanging over the city, mainly because the city is surrounded by mountains. There is a burgeoning middle class in Santiago, evidenced by the hundreds of cars on the roads. In fact, in an attempt to curb traffic problems and reduce pollution, they have a system where cars with certain numerals on their number plates could only drive on certain days of the week, or else heavy fines are applied. So on the days they are not allowed to be on the roads, they are forced to take public transport. Sounds a good idea to me!

Well, Ro & I are halfway there! We both met up in Auckland and have been waiting for the connecting flight to Buenos Aires and then to Santiago. Its been a long day of much waiting, several security checks, long queues and hardly any seating! But I've met some lovely people - both staff and passengers. Its amazing how friendly everyone is, especially when you smile at them and start up a conversation.

The bad news however is that I lost my camera at Brisbane International Airport. Can you believe it?! It must have fallen out of my bag while waiting for the check-in counter to open at 5.30am this morning. Only realised it when I had gone through customs and was about to board the Qantas flight to Auckland. Had some lovely shots of my 3 darling grandchildren waving me off at their gate, in their pyjamas!

Oh well... things can only get better now :-)

Wow! Its all systems go today with getting last minute things done and finishing my packing. Nearly started to panic when I couldn't find the folder where I had stored all my e-tickets, travel insurance documents and Lonely Planet Guide to Chile. After nearly turning the house upside down, common sense eventually kicked in and I realised that I had all that documentation stored on my computer and I just had to reprint it!! Whew! What a relief:-)