ANTARCTICA / SOUTH AMERICA  - DAY 21-23 - SANTIAGO

Blogs: Day 1-2 Iguazu and Itapu | Day 3-4-5 Buenos Aires | Day 6-8 Falklands | Day 10-14 Antarctica | Day 15-16 Ushuaia | Day 17 Punta Arenas - Patagonia | Day 21-23 Santiago

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ROAD TO SANTIAGO

After 16 days on the ship we finally docked in the tiny port of San Antonio and exited the ship.

We said good bye to our newly made Australian and American friends with promises to stay in touch. What a great time we had with them on the ship!

We like to combine things.   As we are flying out of Santiago instead of catching the bus to the city we instead bought a tour of the coast and wine country with a drop off at our hotel in Santiago.

Kill two birds so to speak.

Our first stop was in a little town called Cartagena (not to be confused with the Cartagena in Columbia!!) where we visited some Chilean poet's home, now a museum. Kinda boring but a very nice view of the pacific ocean.

The coast is very rocky but they have beaches in places. This coast is the vacation destination for locals from Santiago. We stopped off at a beach front restaurant for lunch which was absolutely excellent with a fabulous view of the beach.

Next stop was at a vineyard where we had a wine tasting. Pretty awesome, the area is called Casablanca. As you can tell Chileans don't have a lot of imagination when it comes to city names, they just steal them from everyone else!

Finally we arrived in Santiago

Nice corner room with an excellent view.

SANTIAGO

Lots of shanty town areas.

Every building, monument, statue and even churches are defaced.

Let's understand one thing here, Santiago is a shit hole! Especially compared to Buenos Aires.

I did not see that coming, I honestly believed that given Argentina's past it would be way worse than Chile, which I sorta kinda respected. NOT anymore.

Buenos Aires is pristinely clean. Santiago IS NOT. The whole country is horribly dirty. Trash everywhere, graffiti on every single conceivable surface on a building. No one seems to care. Just piles of crap as far as you can see. On the river banks, on the side of the road, in the city on steps and the sidewalk.

Stray dogs abound (they call them community pets). No one cares, there is no program to neuter them or take care of them in any way. They just live on the streets. EVERYWHERE!

And of course lets talk about the protests. They are protesting the lack of free healthcare, education, and social security for old people. And their way of protesting is looting, breaking windows and covering the entire country in ugly graffiti most of which says "Kill the police". The whole thing started because they increased the price of public bus tickets by 30 pesos (that is 4 US Cents).

Unlike Argentina, where all health care and education is free, here it is not. Everything is privatized in Chile even the water supplies. So they have to pay for everything.

However they only pay 11% income tax, so if they want all this stuff for free, that will probably have to change!!

Got a feeling that if their tax doubled they would start breaking shit again. Good luck, Chile!

There is clearly a lot of crime here, every store and home has heavy steel burglar bars.

Chile is EXPENSIVE compared to Argentina. Cigarettes $8 a CARTON in Argentina, $5 a PACK in Chile. Beers run $5-7 in a hotel in Chile, and only $2 in Argentina.

Another interesting thing is that there are no bidets in the bathrooms here, unlike Argentina. Guess it says there is a lot less European influence in Chile than in Argentina.

Also, our hotel in Santiago has 54 TV stations and not a single ONE in English. In Argentina the hotel at least had CNN, FOX and BBC in English!

THE ANDES

We also learned the difference between wine grapes and table grapes.

Table grapes are grown in such a fashion the the vines interconnect and the whole vine area looks like a table top.

Wine grapes on the other hand are grown in rows that are separated in order to allow the sun to shine through. Table grapes need water, wine grapes need sun.

You can see the difference between the two below.

Today we went to the the Andes mountains, about a 2 hour drive from Santiago. Along the way we stopped at a park to see petroglyphs.

This involved a fairly arduous climb up a steep hill. While the petroglyphs were not even worth a photo, at least we got a decent view of the wine vineyards below us.

The drive along the way was very pretty with mountains in the background and grape vines everywhere.

Table grapes for immediate eating.

Skins must be thin and flesh mush be moist.

Wine grapes grown in rows.

Skins must be thick and flesh full of sun's nutrients and goodness.

There was only 5 of us on the tour, so much fun! The young couple from Iran and Russia and they work on military bases for The US Dept. of Defense. Like that's not suspicious at all!  LOL  We ALL had a fabulous day and yet another example of....

People don't hate. 

Government tell us who to hate.

For lunch they served us empanadas and lots of wine!! White and red. Superb lunch. I LOVE Empanadas!

(Did I perhaps mention this before?)

When we arrived at the base of the Andes, we were faced with THIS! 29 hairpin curves and NO guard rails. What fun!

These yellow things are actually man made tunnels on the road up the mountains to protect the roads (and travelers) from rock falls.

The area is very prone to rock slides and avalanches. This whole side of the mountain is covered in up to 6 feet of snow in the winter and it forms part of a ski resort.

The view from the ski lodge at the top of the mountain - 9000 feet.

This lagoon is very unusual at such an altitude and is CRYSTAL clear.

And finally...

You know you have a high crime rate when your local liquor store owner keeps his security gate closed and you have to order what you want through the bars.

He then puts your stuff in a bag raises the gate a few inches to shove it out and slams the gate down again!

I have bought whisky in strange places all over the world, but this one takes the cake!!!