I’ll dispense with the complete story of our holiday, except to say that Laos is a fantastic place. (Some photos of the whole thing may be found here.) It’s not yet quite so touristy as neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam (having to pay the US$1 going rate to the Vietnamese immigration guy at the land border just so he’d stamp my passport was a disappointing introduction to Vietnam), and Laos has only been generally open to tourists since the 1990s. There’s a project to at least double tourism over the next decade, adapting facilities in to bring in more overseas money. The place will probably change a lot in that time, and I only hope the attraction of the tourist dollar doesn’t cause any more of the country to become like Vang Vieng, which ten years ago was a tiny village but has now turned into a giant pub crawl town aimed at young English-speaking young backpackers who typically go there to get hammered.

Laos has a devastatingly war-torn history through the last few centuries, having been hastily usurped into “French Indochina” in 1893 as part of the race between France and Britain to be first to colonise as much of the world as possible. Not long after the communists finally kicked out the French, Laos became tangled in the Vietnam war, and the USA dropped more bombs on eastern Laos between 1964 and 1973 than were dropped during the entire second world war. (Reportedly that’s about one B-52 payload being dropped every eight minutes day and night over 9 years!) To this day, Laos holds the unenvious title of being the most bombed country, anywhere, ever. It’s a sad story, especially having seen how polite and generous the people are, but on the other hand it’s good to see it’s no longer happening. The entire region is full of limestone, dotted with numerous pinnacle structures and caves. During the various wars, people frequently hid in caves, surrounding themselves with Budda statues for protection. Until relatively recently, typical life expectencies were as low as about 45, with about 25% of children dying in their first few years. With roughly 1/3 of the 260 million bombs that were dropped never having detonated, people who live in that region still suffer indiscriminately from tripping unexploded live ammunition.

Slow boats like this are a common
sight in Laos on the Mekong River.

Our holiday didn’t involve much walking or tramping or hiking, apart from the odd three hour staged walk to a waterfall here and there. From what I saw there was a lot of potential scope for tramping around Laos, but it’s not really an angle being pushed by anyone there, as far as I can tell. I asked someone about such possibilities as we spent a couple of days floating down the Mekong River, but I had to repeat and re-phrase the question a couple of times because he didn’t understand the concept of what I was talking about. Walking around in the wilderness for recreation doesn’t make a lot of sense in a place where people already do this as part of their lives. In particular, certain nomadic people live along the banks of the Mekong River, re-locating their settlements as the months go on to wherever it’s appropriate for them to farm and grow what they need, prior to packing up and moving somewhere else so the land can re-generate.

Local people in Laos have far more to worry about than enjoying the wilderness. When you already live in it, it’s everywhere, and you have to think about day-to-day living, recognition of the wilderness as something for leisure or preservation takes a back seat. I’m sure there are parallels here with early colonisation of New Zealand. When the first people arrived 1000 years ago, massive amounts of forest were burned off to make way for humans to live. There was so much of it, after all, and New Zealand bush does tend to be impenetrable on average in its natural state. The pattern was repeated 200 years ago when European settlers arrived, fresh with new farming techniques and newly-developed technology that could be used to turn nearly all of the country’s native wetlands into valuable farm-land, giant thousand year old trees were felled all over for short term gain, birds became extinct and other birds became severely endangered as their habitat was destroyed. Ecologically it was a tremendous disaster, and I’ve often wished for the chance to see New Zealand as it might have been before humans messed it up so much, but these also established a stable economy for settlers who needed to live and sustain themselves in a new land.

Things change over time. Life becomes more comfortable, people get more luxuries and discover ways to live reasonably without spending every waking hour at work. People have leisure time, and they begin to appreciate things around them more, perhaps having reason to notice what’s around them, and see reasons to preserve and protect it rather than unsustainably suck it dry. Throughout the 20th century, New Zealanders established a culture that involved more leisure, getting outdoors and enjoying the environment of their country, whether by exploring the mountains, tramping, climbing, or just by getting out to the campgrounds or having barbecues on the beach. I suppose I’m fortunate to live in New Zealand now and not before — it’s undoubtedly a different world.

This is something that doesn’t really exist to the same extent in a place like Laos, at least as far as I can tell. Despite people having lived in Laos (and all of South East Asia) for a very long time, the history means that absolute preservation of the complete environment as it exists today isn’t necessarily at the top of the priority list. People have far more to worry about than preserving every piece of scenery, as Laos is a country that needs to attract more money to help people to improve their way of life. I guess this is where the mineral part of the story comes in, because the other major place besides tourism where Laos is searching for income happens to be mining.

Laos has minerals — it’s uncertain exactly what minerals are there, but it’s believed there’s quite a lot of mineral wealth buried underground. There aren’t many people in Laos with the skills to search for minerals, or get them out, so the present plan has been to involve large international mining companies, especially some of the big Australian mining companies, and give them a cut of the proceeds as part of the deal. The hopeful end result is that local people will be trained up, and over time the country will become more equipped to extract its minerals on its own.

Recently in New Zealand, there has been much controversy just on the mention that the government wants to look at the conservation estate to get a stock-take of what minerals exist and where they are. This is without even explicitly saying that anything will or might be mined, but the concern has been more about what went un-said, and later Official Information Act requests discovered that Gerry Brownlee (Minister for Economic Development) already knew that he wanted to look at opening parts of places like Fiordland, the Kahurangis and Paparoa national parks for mining operations. Mining companies claim this criticism is unjustified and their footprints are minimal, and to many people this will be completely true because obviously people have different opinions on what’s acceptable depending on how important they see things.

I think the outcry is a reflection of the culture I mentioned earlier that New Zealand has built over the past century, with so many people seeing their outdoor environment as a critically important part of their lives that shouldn’t be messed with. If it really were just a stock-take, I’d think it was awesome. Coming from a relatively scientific background, I see it as a great thing to be learning as much about everything as possible. Under normal circumstances, criticising the government for simply wanting to discover more about our environment would seem bizarre, but in this case I sympathise with those who were quick to jump the gun and assume the worst. It’s unlikely that clear details for people to argue over the specifics of will be released for some time, but it seems there’s good reason for concern. I’m also very concerned.

It’s strange having just returned from a place like Laos which is also considering mining of its natural resources, because in Laos my opinion about mining might as well be a polar opposite. It’s possible that the limited amount of what I saw has skewed my opinion, but it at least seems as if mining in Laos seems will have a much more definite and positive effect on the quality of life for the people who live there, as long as it’s done carefully and with consideration about where the money goes.

Some of the 700 monks in Luang Prabang go
about the morning ritual of collecting offerings of
sticky rice from the local populace.

After an overnight stop in San Francisco, we flew into JFK in New York last Saturday (Sunday NZ time), and were taxi’d to our hotel in New Jersey, which is the main base for a couple of weeks while we do some work-related things with a company that’s 5 minutes down the road. And I use that phrase loosely, because as with everything here, it’s a 5 minute drive. It’s actually very frustrating, because although the hotel is quite nice there is nothing nearby. It’s an island in the middle of a freeway, and it’s impossible to get anywhere without driving, which is a a problem when there’s no car. Even food is a problem, because the hotel doesn’t have any proper restaurant — they just expect people to have cars.

Being trapped in a place like this also highlights many little things that I often take for granted. Getting laundry done is one of these things. Obviously there’s no laundromat nearby (without a car). The hotel runs a laundry service that’s insanely expensive (eg. US$3 for each pair of undies), so screw that — I’m washing my stuff in the bath and then blasting it with the heater in my room to get it dry.

We’re here because the company recommended it. They’re nice people and the recommendation was made in good faith, but perhaps without realising that we’d have a few issues with renting a car and driving to places. I might learn to drive in this kind of environment one day, but I don’t want to be thrown in the deep end. We’ve arranged daily transport to and from where we need to be, and the work side of things is going well at this time. Outside of this, though, I can’t wait for this stage of the trip to be over. It’s just so complicated to organise simple things, such as what to do for dinner after getting back quite tired at 6pm.

A couple of San Francisco’s
trams on Powell Street.

We did get out a little, though. On Friday (a very long Friday), I spent the afternoon walking around a small part of San Francisco to get a feel for the place. We stayed at a hotel on Geary Street, and I walked down Market Street to The Embarcadero, and around to Fisherman’s Wharf before heading back up Powell Street. There wasn’t a chance to really do anything, but I hope I’ll have a better idea of what to expect when I next visit.

Part of Times Square.

On Sunday afternoon (local time), we figured out how to catch a bus into New York, and had a look around. I went up the Empire State Building, which I hadn’t ever imagined would be such a human conveyor belt. The way they churn people through the system is very efficient. There was quite a good view from the top — very flat and lots of buildings. Best of all, I can now say that I’ve done it. Later, we went for a wander towards Times Square, and saw the giant indoor ferris wheel at Toys R Us.

I suppose the first thing one tends to notice about a new place is all the differences, and the the biggest difference I’ve so far noticed in the USA is the very non-explicit attitude to asking for money. Tipping is the most obvious example of this, and it’s what I was most concerned about before I came. (Who do I need to tip? Am I tipping the right amount? The usual suspects.) Coming from a culture where you simply expect that people get paid proper wages for doing their job, and that if money is expected for something then it’ll be explicitly asked for, it takes a lot of getting used to. If someone offers to help when you’re looking at a map, you can never be quite sure if they’re going to try and demand a tip afterwards. It’s just a conventional difference, but it’s one I’m having difficulty getting used to.

The other manifestation of this difference is with the convention of almost never including tax in an advertised price. So, of course, an item or service advertised as $9.95 will actually cost more than that. A side-effect of this, which I still haven’t worked out how to cope with, is that things end up costing very obscure amounts. I suppose a bus ticket is advertised as costing $4 because it’s a nice round number, but when it translates to $4.43 at the time money actually changes hands, I’m confused about what the advantage was to advertising a round number in the first place. I’ve ended up with a wallet full of shrapnel, and I don’t know what to do with all the 1 cent and 5 cent coins that build up.

Another difference that I didn’t expect is just how much the whole society here still seems to depend on cash. I don’t know where I obtained the impression, but I thought that the USA had become a society built around plastic a long time ago… yet cash is prevalent (perhaps because so many people need tips) and there are still coin phones all over New York City! Having noted this, there’s also a lot of trust with credit cards. Places just swipe them without requiring signatures and without requiring PIN numbers, and you just have to hope that they’ll charge the right amount. I’m quite annoyed about this, too, because the hotel in San Francisco handed me an invoice for $111.86 but my online credit statement says they charged $186.86. I’ve been harassing them for several days now to try and get back the $75 they overcharged, but in the end I might need to go to Mastercard and dispute it.

Oh, and Television is as useless here as it is back in NZ, except in different ways. It’s about 40% commercials, and most of them are advertising health insurance or medical treatments. The mind boggles.

It’s not as bad as I probably make it sound, though, and I think it’ll be much better once we’re free to roam around more. New York seems like a fascinating place, and it’s huge. I’m just frustrated that I’ll be stuck in a hotel prison for the better part of 2 weeks to begin with, and having to think very seriously about how to arrange simple little things that I normally take for granted like edible food and laundry when they’re simply not available at the hotel. All this because I don’t fit into the stereotypical American frame of driving a car everywhere. I’m looking forward to the time when I’ll get to go and visit Shaun in New York City, and perhaps be in a better position to figure out the subway and get around by myself and actually see things instead of being stuck in a place that ends at its parking lot.

It’s actually only 2 weeks of work, and that part is really over the border in New Jersey. I’m tagging an extra week to the end to take a look around New York during which I hope to be accommodating myself on the floor of a friend’s apartment. I suspect the time of year is very against me and so far I’m not planning to take a lot of outdoors gear with me. If anyone can suggest some interesting walks or outdoor things to see that might be conveniently accessible in the region during the early to middle part of the winter month of February, though, I’d be interested to hear about them.

We managed to get to Peru and have been here for about 4 days. It turns out that pedestrian crossings in Lima don´t really mean anything, which is the exact opposite of Santiago. In Santiago, everyone stops for pedestrians everywhere, even when they don´t need to. In Lima the drivers line people up when they step out onto the road.

The tour company didn´t collect us from the airport as we´d been led to expect, so after waiting for ages we eventually took up the offer of one of the taxi vultures, and accepted a ride to the hotel. (GAP, the tour company, is supposed to be refunding us for the taxi fare.)

A local from Lima, whom Stacey had met in Argentina a few weeks ago, gave us a tour of the rich parts of the city on Thursday night after we arrived (50% of people in Lima live in what are referred to as “marginal habitation zones)”. The next day we signed up for a city tour from the hotel, and saw most of the same places, but in the daytime. We almost saw the changing of the guard outside Peru’s parliament buildings, but the tour guide pulled us away before it finished. (They were on a really strict timeline, apparently.)

We had a wander around the Inca Market and the Indian Market (pretty similar, but on opposite sides of the street) for a few hours on Friday afternoon. At first we were thinking they were less aggressive than the markets in Santiago where the sales-people hide in tiny caves in the wall of woolly knitted things, then leap out at you as soon as you glance at something for longer than half a second. After a few hours of wandering around Lima, though, we´re not as sure any more. Every shop in the market sells almost exactly the same thing, and it was getting really tiresome having to find our way out, and constantly being asked to come in. It´s clear why they do it, though, because if you leave their shop after looking at something, there are a million other places nearby where you can buy the exact same thing.

On Friday night we met other people in our tour group. The one that we’re on seems to be at the GAP maximum size (15), and that doesn’t include the two extras who are also tagging on because they know a GAP tour guide. Looking at some of the other tours we’ve crossed over, they all seem to be filled to maximum size, so we’re getting skeptical about whether the average size of 8 people is really representative of what we signed up for. The people in our group are great, though. They’re all British, except for the two Norwegians, and the two Canadians who have British accents. (No Americans, yay!)

On Saturday afternoon, we left in a bus to a small town called Pisco, where every house has windows and doors barred. The bus dropped us off two metres from the door, we had dinner in the restaurant at the hotel, and next morning the bus collected us from the same place it left us. We were also told not to walk far if we had to go outside to get money from the ATM or whatever.

From Pisco (on Sunday) we went for a boat ride to some nearby islands (I can’t remember the name) where there were lots and lots of different species of birds, and we took lots of pretty photographs. Then we hopped back onto the bus for a one hour ride to an oasis further in the desert. Everyone else in the tour went for a dune buggy ride and did some sand-boarding around the sand dunes, but we decided to just go for a walk up one of the dunes. We got about half way up before deciding it was far too hot, and we’d rather go down again.

Last night, we arrived at a hotel in Nazca (home of the ‘Nazca Lines’)., and this morning we were taken out to a cemetary which had some well preserved mummies from three different societies (depending on how far back in time they were from). Then we went to the airport to go for flights overhead in tiny little Cessna’s, so we could actually see the lines in the ground that were left by people who lived there 2000 years ago. Stacey was feeling a bit sick at the time, so didn’t go on the flight. (Stacey’s feeling a lot better now after getting some more sleep.)

One observation so far is that when we order something at a restaurant or cafe, we almost never actually get it. eg. We ordered some schnitzel at a place in Lima, and 10 minutes later realised it was a vegitarian restaurant. We´re still not sure what we ate, but it didn´t look like the photo on the menu. It´s also really common to get different bits of a meal at completely different times. (Last night, at least one person received their rice about 30 minutes after the hot part of the rest of their meal.)

Anyway, now we’re waiting in the Nazca Hotel’s Internet cafe, which keeps locking us out when we try to type stuff.

The day after the bus trap of death, we headed to Puerto Varas, which is a small-ish town that’s very touristy. An hour or so down the road from the more industrial town of Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas sits on the edge of the largest lake in Chile, or possibly the second largest depending on which tourist guide you listen to. In New Zealand terms, it feels a bit like Taupo. We thought our bus ride was only supposed to be about three or so hours, but it ended up feeling much longer than that. (It takes an hour by itself just to drive from Castro to the edge of the island of Chiloe, and then it’s a 30 minute ride on the ferry.)

Within the actual town of Puerto Varas, the most interesting highlight was probably the local museum, of which we only noticed and knocked on the door having seen it from the bus. It’s looked after and maintained entirely by a local artist, Pablo Fierro, who has spent much of his life painting the houses of the area, and preserving elements of local history. The longer we spent walking through the displays in his museum, the more amazing it all seemed given the amount of detail he puts into his paintings and the 18 years that he’s so far spent working on them. He was continuing to work on yet another portrait when we arrived, and was very happy to chat with Stacey about everything that he did, the local region, and so on. We got a couple of photos of his museum with him working in the window as a memory.

We reached Puerto Varas late in the afternoon. There’s a different bus terminal for each company, and none are in the middle of town. By the time we had found the backpackers’ we were staying at, and sorted things out, it was starting to get dark. Coincidently though, this had meant that our walk into the town centre co-incided with quite a nice clear sunset, with a view of one of the three nearby volcanoes over the lake. This was a nice prequel to a very average dinner that we had at the local cartoon dinosaur restaurant called Dino’s. (Just because it looks cheap and nasty doesn’t mean it’s cheap.)

Our main other reason for going into town was to figure out how we’d spend the next two days that we had in the town. The people in the local information office were very keen to help us select an expensive boat ride over the lake (about NZ$60 each), towards the border with Argentina. Having been informed that there were lots of places to walk on the other side of the lake, we signed up that evening for the next morning’s trip.

The weather next morning began in a dreary way, and the couple from Brazil, whom we met also waiting at the tour’s pick-up point outside the local casino, were a little concerned that we wouldn’t see much. It didn’t last, though, and as the bus finally pulled up 30 minutes late, the rain was easing and the clouds began to clear.

The bus first took us around the edge of the lake, and after 45 minutes we arrived at an entrance to the local national park, which had some touristey 10 minute loop walks towards some rapids and waterfalls. We had 30 minutes before the bus left, and after walking down this twice, Stacey and I followed another track along the river. We didn’t get very far before deciding we had to turn around to catch the bus, but later that evening (during the stop on the way back), we went that way immediately and found that it led to yet more rapids.

The boat on which we traveled was a catamaran, similar to the sort that zooms around Lake Taupo and Auckland Harbour with lots of people, often tourists. This was very similar. There are a few ways to get through the Andes from Chile, and all the affordable ways are by road. The very expensive way is to catch catamarans through lakes in Chile and Argentina, jumping on connecting buses between them and staying at least one night in an expensive hotel along the way. Although we were staying in Chile for our day-trip, the boat we were on was one of the connecting services for this itinerary. We shared the ride with a group of older people in a tour group from the USA, who were keen to walk around waving video cameras and patriotically wearing badges to indicate which state they were from. They were doing the complete trip to Argentina, and scheduled to stay at the expensive hotel on the other side of the lake.

The catamaran docked at the small town of Peulla, which is part of Chile, but whose only connecting road goes through Argentina. Unfortunately on arriving we found that there wasn’t actually a lot of hiking as we’d been informed by the tourism office, and if we wanted to kill the three or four hours before the boat left again, we’d need to sign up to an “excursion”, which was one of the activities available at Peulla. There were quite a few on the list, but the only two activities for which we’d have time would be either a 4WD trip, or “Canopy”, which is basically eight Flying Fox rides in a row between platforms high up in the trees. The most annoying thing about this was that they were all very expensive, and signing up for any activity would pretty much double what we had already paid just to get here. In the end, we decided that we probably wouldn’t bother to do this type of thing in New Zealand though, so we chipped away at our bank accounts a bit more.

The couple from Brazil chose to sign up for the 4WD trip because they wanted to see a llama, but Stacey and I decided to try the flying fox thing. Apart from the price, this turned out to be a lot of fun. The two guys running it were very professional, and they carried my camera around to make sure we had lots of photos of us flying through the trees like monkeys (in Stacey’s words). As we were the only two people who had signed up for this activity, it flew by very quickly, and we still had to kill another couple of hours by sitting down and eating chocolate.

The boat ride back was a bit quieter, although we were still now sharing it with a different group of people who had arrived from Argentina, on their way through the Andes to Chile. The cloud had completely lifted by now, making all three volcanoes that surrounded the lake very visible.

Very scenic.

Castro is a small town situated on a beach-front of an inlet, roughly in the centre of the island of Chiloe. It has a large fishing community and lots of seafood, none of which we tried, and a whole lot of churches that are apparently on a world heritage list somewhere. In fact, the whole of Southern Chile is full of churches that are historically interesting, and the taxi driver back in Santiago had impressed upon us that we should really go and look at some. We’ve yet to do this, though.

Having arrived at Castro and discovered that seafood and churches were the main attraction, and having walked around most of the town and surrounding hillside on the first day, we decide to hop on a local bus for a 2 hour ride to the nearby national park. We can’t find any decent maps of the park, except for the standard tourist cartoon fun map, which includes smiling animals and pictures of buses that are 1/20th the width of the entire island. We hope to be able to find some better maps by the time we arrive at the park entrance, however.

The trip is only hindered when the bus gets stuck in a particularly muddy part of the road. Trying to reverse out of it doesn’t work, and within a few minutes, half of the passengers are outside the bus attempting to push. It’s far too heavy, though, and trying to dig out the back wheels also doesn’t work.

We’re milling around outside in the mud, and a chatty local woman wearing a blue track-suit, taking the opportunity to have a smoke, jokes to Stacey not to worry — this happens all the time. A few minutes later, another local assures Stacey that this has never happened before.

Within about twenty minutes, a big truck has driven up from a road-works site in the opposite direction. Having attached a rope to the front of the bus and reversing back along the road, it is able to tow the bus out. The driver indicates that we’re away again, and everyone cheers.

During this time, we’ve had an opportunity to chat with a group of young French tourists who had jumped on the bus at a small town called Chonchi. They’re also planning to go to the park, but they’re not going direct, as they’ve decided to go to a new hostel for the night in a village situated about a kilometre outside the park entrance. They’ll first need to find the hostel to drop off their things, and hop off the bus as we arrive there. We wave goodbye.

Not long after, we reach one of the main entrances to the park. The driver stops and lets us off once we’ve eventually realised that we’d almost gone past it. After a short walk over a fence and through some trees, we reach a camping and picnic area that must cater for hundreds of people at the right time of year. Right now, though, it’s deserted. A light is on in a nearby office, but nobody seems to be around. Eventually once we’ve had a look around the available display boards, we pick up our things and start walking along the only obvious track.

We still don’t have any useful map, which is a little frustrating. The information board at the entrance contained several maps, all of which scale the entire national park (or the entire island) into the space of a few centimetres, and none of which included any useful detail. The main information on the board besides these maps is a chart displaying rare birds that might be seen in the area, and a few paragraphs that define what a “National Park” is, in a very general context.

After a few minutes into our walk, we begin to reach some signs that give a vague indication of where we’re going. It seems that the track we’ve started following will be a 700 metre 40 minute walk through some native bush. It doesn’t indicate whether it will really be 40 minutes, or if it means 40 minutes at grandma pace. Given that 700 metres would typically take about 6 or 7 minutes to walk, we’re presently assuming the latter.

The loop actually takes us 30 minutes, after we added a couple of additional detours down signposted tracks that seemed to go nowhere in particular. This is longer than we had guessed it would take. It is also quite a bit rougher than either of us had anticipated, mostly because the entire middle section of the loop is missing. It looks as if the track used to be there, but it has since been dismantled and is in the middle of being rebuilt. What’s left is a mixture of roots, mud, and slippery broken logs to climb over, which used to be a well constructed path. Stacey slips and it leaves a distinct graze on her leg. The bush itself, in this region, is very similar to New Zealand bush, especially for things like how the tree roots sprawl around. There were more than a few times that we thought we could just as easily be walking through some of New Zealand’s back-country.

We’ve now reached the end of the loop. Given the lack of additional tracks from this entry point, except for a maze of paths between neighbouring campsites, we decide to cross the street and walk to the beach. The path to the beach passes through some loose bush for a few minutes, and then reaches a look-out point, from where we can now see the coast and the sea. In the foregound below us is a wide plain of partial swamp-land, with a big white sign that contains bold, black lettering. My first impression is that the sign is probably some kind of instruction board or safety notice for people walking to the beach, but Stacey then points out that it’s actually a For Sale sign for the land.

We continue towards the beach, eventually reaching it over the top of some sand dunes on the far side of an ankle-deep swamp. Stacey gets her socks wet, but my boots manage to hold out. In the far distance to the left when we reach the beach, we think we can vaguely see four figures of people walking along the beach, but we decide to walk the other way instead. Being slightly concerned about finding the correct position to get back to where we came from, I try to count the number of big pointy stick things we see pointing out of the sand, in an effort to identify how far we need to walk back. This walk lasts for about an hour, finally reaching the mouth of a river, before we decide we should probably turn around and go back.

There’s still a lot of time left, however, and we decide to walk in the other direction. There aren’t as many pointy sticks in this direction, I we instead make a note of the cow grazing on the sand dune above us as the point to climb up and walk over.

Not far along the beach, we run into the French group again, and have a chat with them for a few minutes. It seems they’ve decided that they’re not very impressed with the local hostel. Once they’ve finished their walk, they’ll be catching the bus back to where they came from. We wave goodbye, wondering if we might see them again on the bus later in the afternoon. Unfortunately the cow seems to have spontaneously combusted by the time we return, but luckily Stacey has also been keeping track of where we came from, and somehow picks the correct dune to climb up. A further walk of about 10 minutes, beginning with the swamp, brings us back to the roadside.

Our bus doesn’t arrive until 4.45, and it’s only 3.30, so we could be waiting for quite some time. We wander down the road slightly past a cafe, which is closed, but a sign in the window suggests that another company also runs buses out here, and there might be one at 4pm. Being a public holiday, however, we have no idea whether the bus will actually be running. We walk down the road a little further, however, and meet a group of four or five people waiting. A quick question suggests that there will be a bus at 4pm, which is a relief.

We continue to walk down the road to the centre of the nearby village. A bus approaches from the other direction, heading towards the beach, and we see that it’s the same bus we caught that morning. The driver recognises us from the stuck-in-the-mud incident, and we wave to each other. We eventually decide to stop outside some houses where another person is waiting. There aren’t any distinct bus stops, but we figure that if the driver stops to pick up that guy, he’ll have to let us on too. Before the second to last bus of the day arrives, the group of potential passengers at our stop has grown to about 5 or 6, and it looks as if most are returning from visiting family on the long weekend. By 4.20pm, however, the bus still hasn’t arrived. Stacey overhears people in the group commenting that perhaps that company isn’t running any buses today. This wait could end up being quite long.

At 4.25pm, I finally see the bus cross the bridge in the distance, before disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Even better, this looks like a larger bus than the miniature bus we caught this morning. It should be here within a minute, but it isn’t. After two or three minutes, Stacey and I begin to wonder if it was actually our bus. After about five minutes, it finally appears in the distance at the end of the straight road. It seems to be on a slight tilt.

The bus stops once for a couple of other people waiting next to the road in the distance, and finally arrives. The bad news is that it looks quite full, and there are already people standing. This could be a slightly uncomfortable ride if we’re to be standing for two hours, but hopefully some people will get off along the way.

After jumping on the bus, however, it soon becomes clear that there isn’t a lot of space. The bus is really full, and there isn’t exactly a lot of space to move. By the time the bus has stopped a couple of extra times, we’re crammed half way down the bus with only a single door at the front, there isn’t a lot of room to move at all, and it’s difficult to see anything either out the front of the bus, or out the windows at the side.

The driver continues to swerve and skid along the thin, muddy and unstable road, and the events are starting to become a little concerning. By this time, I’m consciously trying to move my weight towards the left side of the bus. Logically I realise that it won’t make any difference, but it seems about all I can do to counter-act the apparent lean of the bus to the other side. Straining my neck to look towards the back, I notice one of the girls from the french group waving at me from a couple of metres further down the bus. She then signals to me, asking if I can push her backpack more properly into the luggage rack, which is above my head somewhere.

In the underground metro of Santiago, the word “Permisso” means “Get out of the way before I knock you to the floor”. On this rural mini-bus, however, the meaning of “Permisso” has become “Please hold your breath for 60 seconds and press yourself as far to either side as possible while I attempt to scrape past you, even if that’s impossible.” Stacey is beaten up by a little girl in this fashion, who was desperately trying to get to the front of the bus so she could get off before it raced past her stop. Her attempts to get through a space that wasn’t there forced Stacey’s hip up against one of the seats.

The swerving continues, and one of the locals near us nervously comments that she’s very uncomfortable, and wants to get off. By this time, I think it really would make a lot of sense to let people off, but it’s not really possible to ask the driver to stop. If there was, there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of actually getting to the door, and the driver’s still letting people on.

To make things even more difficult, the other guy who sells the tickets decides that it’s about time to start collecting money from people. Somehow, he very slowly manages to inch is way past people, gradually making his way down the bus, collecting money, and giving people tickets. Stacey and I pay him 3000 pesos (about NZ$8) for both our tickets. The driver finally stops collecting people, and leaves them on the side of the road. It seems he’s finally decided that the 80-odd people on the bus, by Stacey’s and my count, is about as much as the bus can handle. People still waiting will have to catch the last bus of the day.

Shortly after we’ve bought our tickets, something very unnerving happens. The bus is in a low gear grinding up a hill, but stops. Then it starts rolling backwards. It stops a few seconds later. The driver starts grinding the bus forwards again, but with the same effect. After gaining a few metres up the hill, it stops and drifts backwards. The most unnerving part of this for me is that stuck as a sardine in the middle of the bus with no view outside and no obvious escape, I really have no idea if the drifting backwards is controlled at all. If the bus happened to slide off the side of the road down a bank, it could be really bad.

After the driver’s third unsuccessful attempt to grind up the hill, suggestions finally start circulating that it might help if some people get off. It’s muddy outside and many of the people up the front of the bus aren’t too interested in moving, but the woman next to us, who earlier expressed concern, leaps at the opportunity to finally get off and get some space to move around in. Soon after, a large group of people have jumped off the bus and are very happily sloshing their way up the muddy road outside. Stacey and I are among the few who are actually prepared for sloshing through mud and rain. The woman in the blue track-suit, whom we’d met on the bus this morning, notices us, smiles and waves. She’s taking the opportunity for another smoke. Fortunately for her, she only has to cope with this trip for a few more minutes before she arrives home. For the two of us, however, we have at least another hour back to Castro.

The bus still can’t make it up the hill, even after the minority of people who decided they preferred to be able to breathe had elected to temporarily hop off. Fortunally help isn’t far away, though, as a massive road-flattening machine of some sort drives up to tow the bus up the hill. We wait for it at the top, and I take the opportunity to snap a photograph.

Now back on the bus, Stacey and I make sure that we get on almost last, placing us towards the front. Finally, from our new position, we can actually see almost vertically out the front window towards the road ahead of us. Even though there’s not much space to move and the bus still feels like a death trap as it speeds around corners and leaps over small hills in the road, it’s a little more reassuring than being crammed half way back down the bus. Furthermore, I reassure myself with the knowledge that if the bus were to tip over on its left side, we’d at least be reasonably near the door on the front right, and might have a hope of getting out.

Ten minutes later, we can finally see some good old concrete slab road out the front of the bus, and the ride no longer feels quite as perilous… despite the crush of people still pushing through the bus every time someone needs to get off. At Chonchi, about a third of the people finally get off. Stacey and I find ourselves in the seat at the front left of the bus, and a small sign next to the front window finally becomes visible, which says “Capacidad 41″. Scanning around the bus, there are still at least 60 people on-board, including a collection of children sitting on parents’ laps.

Several notices are pinned to the dividing wall between us in the driver. One notice advertises that an eye specialist will be visiting the region from Santiago in the near future, and states several dates on which people will be able to have their eyes checked. Another notice advertises the address and phone number of the Chilean transport authority that is responsible for inspecting the safety of buses.

Despite having the seat for a few minutes, we notice that a chap is still sitting in an uncomfortable position next to the driver with a very tired kid on his lap. I end up standing for him, and he moves back to sit next to Stacey. Stacey eventually finds out that his kid is feeling quite sick, and it’s an effort to keep him awake. After a few minutes, the man leans forwards and glances at the notice from the transport authrity. A moment later, he pulls out his phone and records the number.

Finally, we arrive back at the bus terminal at Castro. As we’re jumping off the bus, Stacey notices that the last bus, which was scheduled for 45 minutes after the one we were on, is also pulling up. It looks about as packed as ours was.

I also picked up a couple of phrases very quickly. The first phrase was “El Hombre Araña Tres”, which translates directly to “The Man Spider Three”, or indirectly to “Spiderman 3″. It was all over every billboard and bus stop during the weekend that I arrived, but has since been replaced by advertisements for the new Pirates of the Carribean movie. (J’s are pronounced as H’s in Español, so I guess Johnny Depp’s name sounds more like Honny Depp.) The other phrase I very quickly learned was “No Tengo Frio”. This translates directly to “I don’t have cold”, or (in other words) “I’m not cold”, and I’ve now developed a reflex response towards anyone who approaches me with the words “¿Tianes frio?”

People in Santiago continually asked me if I was cold, and even on very sunny days it seemed to be that everyone would be walking down the street wearing big, thick coats. During my classes of Español, we never actually had a day when everyone else didn’t want to close the window immediately to prevent a cold breeze from coming in, even though people in Wellington would have been skipping work to run to the beach on such a day. Furthermore, it never actually rained during the time I was there. The closest it came was some light spitting, but it really wasn’t enough to bother with a raincoat because it would have gotten just too damp to conveniently roll up again afterwards without having to dry it out.

Pollution in Santiago is another issue of course. On what seemed to be a bright sunny morning, we turned on the TV to see the morning pollution report claiming that it was the most polluted day on record in Santiago this year. 25 minutes later, walking to the Escula de Español, we passed the television crew packing up their pollution measuring device in central Santiago. More than a few times, I’ve noticed parents walking their children to school with a mask over their child’s face, and it was only more recently that I appreciated why.

So anyway, we’re now finally out of dusty, polluted Santiago. Hooray.

Last Friday evening, we made our way to the central Santiago bus terminal, where we had pre-booked tickets for a bus to Southern Chile. We even met the Canadian guy again, whom I mentioned in my previous post. He tried to convince us that we should go on the other bus company which was cheaper and just as good, but we didn’t. We’d understood that we’d be on one of the impressive long-distance double decker buses that we’d booked the tickets for, but unfortunately it appears they’d changed it on us, presumably because not enough tickets had been sold. Seats 3 and 4 were still right at the front of the bus, however, so for the first couple of hours we still had a nice view out the front of the bus.

An hour or so into the journey, the bus was directed off the road into a line of buses, all of which appeared to be bieng inspected by the local equivalent of the traffic police, or transport officials. Our bus made it through after about five minutes of talking, including a couple of police officers stepping into the start of the bus. The driver of the bus next to us seemed to be having a few additional problems, having to hand over his licence, and I’m not sure what happened to them. Most notably though, a television crew was there filming the whole thing, so I guess it’s possible that Stacey and I ended up on TV somewhere in the front two seats. If so, it might have shown me waving my camera around and taking photos of the TV crew.

The attendant on the bus (I’m unsure what the proper name is) was very attentive and polite for the entire journey, and I was impressed. We were offered mineral water, a pillow, a blanket (which he draped over people), and he even sprayed and wiped every window in the bus when they fogged up. I was half expecting to see him abseiling outside the bus and cleaning the windows on the outside, but the official go-to-sleep time arrived too soon. Curtains were closed, seats were pushed back, foot-rests were raised, and everyone on the bus began to dose off. I woke up a few times, including at exactly 2.30am, noticing that the bus had stopped and that the drivers were switching. The company we’d chosen has a policy of not letting drivers drive for longer than 5 hours, and I was quite impressed at precisely how punctually they were switching. It happened again at exactly 7.30am. The bus pulled over on the side of the road, the drivers switched, and the journey continued.

It was quite interesting to notice that having woken at about 7am, which I’d been doing for the previous two weeks, it wasn’t light outside. In fact, we had driven almost directly south non-stop at 100 km/hour for almost 10 hours by that time. This is probably the equivalent of travelling from somewhere like Auckland to about Oamaru, and the change in latitude would have meant that following an overnight bus trip, the Sun was suddenly rising much later in the day.

We arrived at the bus terminal in Puerto Montt, our initial destination, in late morning. Puerto Montt is about as far south as is possible to go on the main highway in Chile. Beyond it, the roads start diverging around a variety of lakes and interestingly shaped coastlines. After dodging several people trying to sell us accomodation, we found that there were a couple of companies offering services to Castro – the town we were aiming for that evening. Conveniently, one of them was even running 15 minutes late, and the grimace on the face of the guy who suddenly had to figure out how to cram our packs into the already-full luggage compartments was a small price to pay for an immediate departure.

Castro is the Capital of the province of Chiloe, which is an island not far off the coast of mainland Chile. It’s connected by a continuous conveyor belt of vehicle ferries, any of which will be happy to transport a Yak (or similar) for the right price. The bus services go direct from the main continent to Castro, including the ferry ride in between. The ferry on which we traveled on the way to Castro also had a special price for transporting household rodents, as Stacey noted. The ride was surrounded by several groups of frolicking seals, none of which were polite enough to stay still for me to take an impressive photograph. The ferry rocked slowly as we waited for our bus to drive off at the end of the crossing, but it was a little disconcerting that the bus on which we were sitting seemed to be rocking at a different rate from the large truck-trailer unit parked next to us, about 40 cm on the right. But we got off it safely in any case.

The best thing about driving into Castro was that there were actually signs of real rain for a change. Looking out the window onto the streets, a couple of people actually had real raincoats. By this time I’m releived that we might actually be entering a climate that I’m a bit more comfortable with, and so far I haven’t been disappointed.

Before long, we made it safely to the hostel in which we were staying, having only to repel a single invitation to get us to stay at the hostel next door instead. A few things have happened by the time I’m writing this, but I’ll save them for later entries.

The reason we went to Curico is that it’s where Stacey’s former host family lives, from when Stacey lived here in a student exchange programme back in 6th form. The Friday night bus dropped us off in the middle of town, which has apparently changed a lot since Stacey was here last. It used to be a fairly empty town without much to do, but there was a now lot of activity, and personally I found it much easier to relate to than Santiago. (It’s actually possible to walk around the centre of Curico.) Stacey managed to find where we were going pretty quickly however, despite the changes, and before long Stacey was having a great conversation with her former host mother while I was demonstrating my ability to repeat the words “No” and “Si” over and over again to one of her former host sisters, and a friend.

On Saturday, we caught a local bus out to a small village at the base of part of the Andes, called Los Queñes. The trip took a couple of hours, including several stops at which the driver delivered all sorts of things to people who happened to be waiting on the side of the road, presumably expecting it. The village itself was mostly closed. Even though it’s a common tourist destination for people living in Santiago, we were a bit late for the tourist season. The streets were mostly dormant, and even the information boards about where to find things like local tracks had been boarded over.

It didn’t take at all long for us to be adopted by one of the many stray dogs, however. He followed us around for the entire rest of the day, which was probably at least 10 km of walking. We didn’t actually manage to find any of the tracks up into the hills, unfortunately, but we did follow a road on a big circuit out of town and back again. At the end of the road was a big, impressive monument to concrete workers, which stands out to me because it’s the first monument I’ve ever noticed here that isn’t glorifying a war hero in one way or another. In fact, the National History Museum back in Santiago is a non-stop history of war in Chile from the very beginning until an abrupt stop in the early 1970′s, the facts of which it doesn’t attempt to interpret. (They’re still very controversial.) It goes to show just how significant and important the military is to Chilean people, although it was refreshing to see something that glorified the manufacturing of concrete.

So the visit to Los Queñes wasn’t quite the day-hiking in the Andes we’d initially hoped for, but it was interesting all the same. After another evening in Curico, and a Sunday morning walking around town again, we made our way to the bus terminal for the trip back to Santiago.

Frequently in Chile, people have been telling us that it’s not necessary to book in advance for most transport. Buses all over Chile are at least as frequent as domestic flights in New Zealand, and they’re much cheaper. Between Santiago and Curico, for instance, the buses leave every 30 minutes or so, and that’s only for a single company. Even the Canadian-accented guy who stalks obviously foreign tourists at the Santiago Bus Terminal, befriends them and tries to direct them to places who pay him money, assured us that it wasn’t necessary to book tickets for somewhere like Curico. We’d booked them anyway, however. It was a good thing we did.

In New Zealand, Mothers’ Day is a sentimental day that makes a nice excuse for retailers and greeting card companies to impress on people that they need to spend and Spend and SPEND. In Chile, Mothers’ Day is important for family reasons, and what we hadn’t predicted was the sheer number of people living in Santiago who had grown up in Curico, then moved to the big city. These people had all made their way to Curico during the weekend, where they had left their families, and they were all intending to get back to Santiago on Sunday night.

So the bus terminal at Curico was buzzing with people when we got there. We were told we were very lucky to have had a ticket, because there was absolutely no space left on any of the buses going that night. Instead, they were putting in an extra bus, only for people who’d paid for tickets in advance, and we’d have to wait another 2.5 hours for it. The 2.5 hours sitting on a seat at the bus terminal, during which time only two people approached us asking for money, gave Stacey an opportunity to catch up with another of her friends whom she hadn’t seen for 9 years, who dropped by to say hello and have a chat.

Overall it was an interesting weekend.

I still find the metropolitan bus system confusing, and I’ve yet to actually try and catch a bus. Apparently a lot of locals in Santiago also find it very confusing. Supposedly it used to be that there were no bus stops, and that anyone who wanted a bus could flag it down on the street. Every bus going past would screech to a halt, and the person who flagged the bus would hop onto the one they wanted. Recently, meaning within the last year or two, several billion dollars has been spent upgrading the underground metropolitan train system, and removing a lot of the buses (perhaps half of them, at a guess, leaving the larger buses). It’s not really a wonder that people find the buses confusing. Bus stops along the main drag have assigned route numbers, and only those specific buses will stop at a particular stop. A couple of nights ago when we were thinking about getting a bus home, we figured out we’d be able to jump on any bus with a number between about 400 and 410. Unfortunately, every stop we passed only catered for one of these numbers, and several times a bus cruised past without stopping before we gave up and jumped into a taxi. To make things more confusing, the buses also don’t have any schedules — they start at one end, stop at the other, and turn up whenever they feel like it. It’s really no wonder that there’s been rioting over the Santiago public transport restructuring.

Another major difference I’ve noticed compared with Wellington has been that there seem to be a lot of service-area jobs that would probably never exist back home, at least in today’s society. For instance, there are security workers of one sort or another everywhere, in nearly every shop of significance. At the foot of Santa Lucia, where it’s necessary to sign a book on entry to indicate that you’ve entered (for security reasons), there’s a guard whose sole duty seems to be to ensure that people sign the book. People stand around on the road and accept tips for guiding drivers into parking spaces, I’ve seen people stationed outside parking buildings whose job it is to wave the drivers through when there are spaces on the road and between pedestrians. Retailers create additional jobs by separating the people who write receipts from the people who take money. To buy an exercise book at the Chilean equivalent of Whitcoulls, it was necessary to take the book to one counter, get a written receipt for the book (and leave the book there), take the receipt to another counter, pay for it and get it signed, then return to the first counter and collect the book. Stacey tells me that this is common throughout retailers in Santiago. This morning, I noted the large number of people who seemed to be employed for sweeping the fallen leaves off the footpaths in the main streets down-town. They were still doing it several hours later when I walked home at lunch time. I followed a chap as he swept the leaves to the edge of the path, only for them to blow straight back into the middle after he’d continued on for a few more metres.

I’m guessing at this point, but I wonder if a lot of this might be because there’s basically no welfare system in Chile. People who don’t have work really don’t have anything, which probably means there’s probably more of an effort to create work for people in as many places as possible. People here generally seem to be pretty generous to those who are having a hard time.

Before I left New Zealand, Stacey put through a special request for me to bring lots of New Zealand chocolate. Even though I only bothered to bring some standard supermarket chocolate (500 grams of standard dairy milk, 250 grams of mint chips and 250 grams of Black Forest), I can now appreciate why.

In Chile, it’s possible to buy chocolate that’s made by Cadbury, packaged in a very similar way, and that claims to be “milk chocolate”. There’s probably a problem with the cows in Argentina where it’s manufactured, though, because as Stacey pointed out, the stuff is diabetic chocolate. It’s flavourless.

This isn’t to say that Chile can’t make good chocolate in other places. We just had some great chocolate ice cream for dinner tonight from the supermarket downstairs that was very tasty, and I got more than my share because Stacey doesn’t like chocolate ice cream anyway. They can also do chocolate milk in several different varieties, despite the fact that most of the regular milk is done as milk powder. For some reason though, they just don’t do (real) milk chocolate.

We had an interesting trip to Curico on the weekend, which is a small Levin-like town south of Santiago, where Panchi’s family lives. (Panchi is the friend of Stacey who’s letting us stay in her apartment in Santiago.) I’ll write about it later when I get time, but it’s 11.40pm so I should probably go and learn a heap of irregular verb endings for an Espanol test that I have tomorrow morning.

I{ve been in Santiago for}} a week now, and it{s been an interesting experience… not the least of which has been to disa}cover that the keyboards are very differentn in their layout over here.

For the rest of this entry, I’m going to try and use Stacey’s laptop, which I’m a little more used to.

Stacey met me at the airport on Saturday a week ago, which was helpful because I would probably have had quite a difficult time figuring out how to tell one of the many taxi drivers, who were nagging us for attention, where I wanted to go. On Saturday afternoon, we went for a wander around Centro — one of the 34 or so provinces within Santiago, ending up at Santa Lucia, which is the smaller of two hills in the middle of the city. The entire side of the hill is littered with narrow steps and footpaths, and there’s a fort at the top. Historically it’s the hill at which the Spanish founded Santiago before they were temporarily beaten out by the locals.

On Sunday, we went for a look around some of the museums, which are free to enter on Sundays. The National History Museum is basically a chronology of war and war heroes in Chilean history, with the occasional corner display about the local university. This is probably to be expected given that the history of Chile does actually involve a lot of wars, and it’s important to Chileans. What I found most interesting was that the chronology stopped at the point when Pinochet led the coup that pushed out the former communist government. The presentation shows several newspaper front pages that describe the coup on the day it happened, and no more information is offered. Western media tends to imply that the vast majority of Chileans are anti-Pinochet, but it’s really more like 50-50. (Despite his methods, he did still solve a lot of problems, and the communist government before was arguably at least as bad.) There’s still a lot of unrest about the issue, and I get the impression that if the museum actually attempted to take one side or the other, it probably wouldn’t be around for long.

I started my two weeks of classes in Espanol on Monday morning. It’s about a 30 minute walk from the apartment of Stacey’s friend (in Centro) to the school (in Providencia). Nobody who I’ve yet met seems to really understand the concept of walking that kind of distance. There’s a great underground metro system in which people only get crushed to death every few months or so on average, and a bus network that typically seems to be crammed full of people. The school runs activities in the afternoons, and Monday’s activity was to catch the Funucular Tram thingee (very similar to Wellington’s Cable Car, probably a bit steeper, and probably a more correct name) up to the top of San Cristobol — the highest of the two hills, and about 400 metres above the main centre of Santiago. It’s also possible to walk to the top (although Stacey and I only saw people coming down when we walked up), and this is what we did a couple of days later, before coming down on the gondola on the other side.

San Cristobol is most well known for the very large statue of the Virgin Mary which can be found at the top, which makes sense in a country where about 70% of people identify as Roman Catholic. To me it seemed that the statue was out-shone by a splattering of tall antennas, presumably for cellphones and broadcasting. Apparently there are also some really nice views of Santiago under the Andes from the top, but unfortunately I arrived a bit late, and everything besides a faint outline of the Andes is obscured by smog.

Smog is a real problem for Santiago. Its location with mountains on both sides makes it very sheltered from any wind, and the cold air rushing over the coastal range, and over the city to the Andes, prevents the warmer air (and smog) from lifting above the tops. (Stacey’s explained all of this to me, so she can take the blame if any of it’s wrong.) Some of the richer regions in Santiago are situated on the hill-side, and the indirect result of this has been that their homes are now being bathed in a layer of ozone, and that’s probably not very healthy.

Anyway, that’s about as much as I have time to write at the moment. I’ll fill in a bit more later on.

My biggest thing today has been figuring out which documents I need to get photocopied, and then what to do with the copies, which bits I’ll need to keep available around the airports, versus the bits I can stash away, and so on. I’ve also been busy taking photos of them all, so I have some electronic copies I can send around to people as a backup. Even as I write this, I’ve just realised that when I was at work today, I should have printed out a copy of the instructions for the language school. I have to buy another padlock too, and also a heap of extra chocolate because Stacey’s said that Chile doesn’t really do chocolate very well. If I’m not careful, I might turn up in Santiago with 10 kilograms of all the basic varieties of chocolate.

I tried to clean some of the dried mud off the bottom of my pack last night. I thought I’d gotten it off, but then it dried a little and it became obvious there was still quite a lot of dirt there. My concern isn’t so much getting it into Chile as it is getting it back into New Zealand on the way back. NZ customs is very strict about dirt from other countries (especially farm dirt) because of the biological threat, and I wonder if convincing them that it’s really good old New Zealand mud that’s just followed me around the world for a bit could be a slight problem.

Anyway, I’ll see how things go.