Santiago, week 3 – from 22/10 to 29/10/2012

For my third week in Santiago, nothing exceptional until the week end, I just went to Spanish lessons every morning again. Now I learn 2 of the past tenses, and I am able to understand a lot more when others speaks !!

Now I have to practice, that is the only secret ! One beer or 2 helps a bit to start a talking in Spanish 🙂

A few pictures of the international house I live in (with 12 other people) :

Living room number 1, second floor
the house from the street (my room behind the tree, second floor in the corner)
living room first floor
bathroom second floor

Now you visited a bit the house !!

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We went on Thursday to a Chilean Restaurant, with a group of students of Alex’s University (around 30 people) : Los buenos muchachos, where we had everything typical Chilean ! The music, the danses, the singers, the dancing activities (I got on the stage with a guy dancing the typical dances from Easter Island…) and of course, the typical food and drinks !

Trying to danse…

I got a pisco sour (of course, now it is THE drink here) and we ordered some asado (barbecue meat) : at least 5 or 6 different pieces of meat each, it was really good. Of course, we had some local red wine to go with it, but unfortunatelly all the red wines in this place tasted like water… first time I have a wine like that! But all the place was great and fun, it was a really nice night!

On Friday, we started to have plans for the week end : as the forecast looked good, we wanted to go in the mountains… so we tried to plan something and decided to meet around 10 am on saturday and go to Cajón de Maipo, and find a place to spend the night.

On Friday night, at home, we had a French dinner : quiche lorraine, coq au vin avec pâtes, moelleux au chocolat avec glace a la vanille, et baguettes faites maison pour accompagner le tout ! Of course, the red wine was on the table, brought by everybody!

On Saturday, we met with Petteri (a finnish friend) around 10:00 in the city, went to buy food for 2 days (kind of) and took a bus to Cajón de Maipo. around 13:00, we arrived in San José and talk with the person of the tourist info, and decided to go to Embalse de Yeso, a dam, 45 kilometers away from the town.

We got food in the city (because the guys forgot one meal (at least) when they went shopping for bread, ham and cheese 🙁 ) and waited for an other bus. The guy from the tourism office said he could drive us there for $40 000 … (around 60 euros) so we said no and decided to go as far as possible with a bus and improvise afterwards.

And we did. we got in the bus for $900 each (1,40€), went 20 kilometers further, and then we started walking on a dirt road, and hitch-hiking. It took us 4 kilometers and a car stopped, a 4 wheel drive, and drove us to the lake ! we only had 1 kilometer left to find a nice place without wind to set up the tent.

Mission : hitch-hiking

The lake is big and beautiful (and cold as well).  It was windy, so we set up the camp in a small “hole” next to the lake.

Our quiet camp

We started picking up wood for a fire, which was hard because no trees, only small bushes, so not a lot of big wood to burn, only small branches. But we did have a nice fire, and with green bushes we made sticks to cook the choriso. It was nice to eat warm, and the wine was good to drink with, even if it was a bit too cold temperature for the wine 😉

Some awesome sunset colors 🙂

We went to bed soon afterwards, and it was a really really quiet night, really nice !

We woke up quite late because the sun wasn’t shining so it wasn’t too warm in the tents… we took our time to pack everything and enjoy the view, and decided to walk back to the dam, all way along the lake.

The team

It was really nice, the sun was coming out of the clouds sometimes, it was warm when the wind wasn’t blowing!

The walk along the lake

Petteri went swiming in the lake, crazy finnish !!

We kept walking down, to have a view on some glaciers and to see some ruins of houses that we quickly saw on the way up in the car. A few kilometers down, we got to the ruins, played a bit around and we had our last bits of food 🙁

The glaciers

And then we started hitch-hiking again to get to the main road to catch a bus, or to San José de Maipo.

The hike down

A car stopped after 2 kilometers or so, 2 guys with mountain bikes in the trunk, we added our backpacks and jumped in (we almost didn’t, because they said the German people are mean and that there was now way a French person would go in this car :-/  So I said I was canadian, and that worked…)

The hitch-hike for the way down

They were nice and drove us to San José, where it was really warm and sunny, and we felt like ending the trip before going back to Santiago with a cold beer ! So we sat down in a restaurant, asked for beer, and didn’t understand anything what the old guy told us, but no beer, it was not possible…

Pretty sad, we got in a bus to Santiago, got in the metro again, and an other bus, and we finally got home. On the way, still looking for beer, we asked in a mini-market, and the answer was : no you can’t buy beer today, it is an election day ! 🙁  I still didn’t understand it… weird country…

But it was a really nice week end, and now, after one day break, we are ready to leave again, tomorrow (Tuesday) we fly to Puerto Montt for almost 2 weeks ! We will be back on Sunday 11th of November. The plan is to discover Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas and Chiloe Island, camping, hitch-hiking, couchsurfing…

3 thoughts on “Santiago, week 3 – from 22/10 to 29/10/2012

  1. Toujours en activité : bravo pour ces balades en montagne, elles nous font voyager par l’imagination entre 2 600 m (le lac) et 4 200 m (les sommets). Bon voyage à l’Ile de Chiloé.
    François

  2. Bravo pour ces escapades en montagne : elles nous font voyager par l’imagination entre le lac (2600 m) et les montagnes (4200 m). Bon voyage à l’Ile de Chiloé.
    Francois

    1. Et bien merci pour les informations d’altitudes… j’avoue que je n’y ai pas cru aux 2600 mètres d’altitude du lac… maintenant je comprends pourquoi on a eu un peu frisquet !!!

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