Probably at this point I have far exceeded the word limit
for a travel blog and no one really cares anymore but I have experienced a few
things in Santiago the second time around that might be of interest to some
people.
We decided to take the deluxe red eye bus from Panguipulli
to Santiago. Why the red eye bus? Well we had a traveller tell us that this was
the way to go so you could just sleep through the long boring drive down the
Pan-American Highway in the central valley. Normally that would not be such a
great idea for us as we do not sleep real well sitting up. The tour busses here
do come with different types of seats. They have some called semi cama that go
back almost as far as a recliner for reasonable prices which we had taken from
southern Patagonia for a stretch. Those are reasonably priced and sleep can be
had. But if you are willing to pony up they have busses with full cama seats
that basically layout flat like a bed. For the two of us with bikes on this 12
hour trip it cost us roughly $150 US. That was a pretty painless bus trip on a
deluxe Mercedes bus. If you think all the buses in Latin America are school
buses loaded with people carrying chickens well you are mistaken.
We booked a room at the Casa Condell recommended by one of
the tour books as one for elder trekkers because it was quiet and it was. The
other ones were all full because there were a number of things going on like
the huge Santiago marathon, the Lollapalooza
and Arctic Monkeys concert, a juggling festival and a few other things.
If you want the non quiet hostels you have to act fast. The location of the hostel was better than the posh digs of the
Intercontinental Hotel where we stayed for cheap on the way in on frequent sleeper
points. The Intercontinental it turns
out was in the Sanhattan district (like Manhattan, get it?) No wonder there
were all those guys in suits. It is actually listed on the map as Sanhattan.
Well the marathon was a trip. It came right by our hostel
where there was an AC DC cover band and they were good. There were all types in
the marathon from the super fit (including Kenyans) to well …..one girl who was
more than a tad overweight with nothing more than about a four inch pleated
skirt and nothing underneath keeping cool.
Laurie said she would never again be self-conscious about how her body
looked in a swimsuit. Suffice it to say that Santiago is not exactly
representative of Chile as a whole.
Also across the street on the boulevard park this weekend
there was an environmental fair with about a hundred vendors in tents. They were pushing the same impractical
Utopian left wing fascist agenda with products like energy saving appliances,
solar panels, art from recycled materials, organic produce and eco
diapers. When will those people learn to
get with the real world?
Today I went down to see an area we were told had a lot of bike shops that somehow no one told us about before. I just winged it on my bike and ended up going down some interesting streets. One street had nothing but hardware stores for about three or four long blocks. Nothing but hardware except for some establishments that it didn’t take long to figure out were servicing a different kind of men’s hardware. What synergy, eh? Imagine the male focus group that came up with the idea for that. I am guessing they offered refreshments. In a different part of town very near the big Catholic cathedral in the plaza there were rows of baby clothes stores flanked on both ends by guess what kind of establishments? The same focus group must have thought that one up too but hopefully well after the refreshments were passed out. I think they forgot to include young mothers in the focus group. Oh and one of the establishments with the dark tinted windows also had confessions listed on the window. Those marketing guys were on a roll. Back to the bike shop quest….The hardware stores then started morphing into new and used auto parts stores of every imaginable type. There were stores specializing in used bumpers for certain makes for example. That went on for about a mile. This was followed by a couple of blocks of tire places where they changed the tires right out in the street and there were guys standing out in the street to direct you in and do your tires. It looked like a third world speedway pit stop.
The blocks of auto parts stores finally intersected San
Diego street where the bike shops were supposed to be. There were a few bike shops all right, like
about thirty or forty within a few blocks. They were all sorts of combinations
of inventory from mostly bikes to mostly parts and some were just wholesale
with big boxes of cables, spokes and so on.
Whatever type they were they were wall to wall jam packed with
inventory. They had some high end bikes in some of the shops but were not quite
like the immaculate ones out at the east end Mall Sport that had the ten
thousand dollar carbon fiber road bikes on display. Those shops would be more
familiar to people in Bend. The bike shops started morphing into computer and
electronics shops. Big city bike geeks from cities like Seattle could instantly
relate to that. The only thing missing for them maybe would be coffee shops.
On the way back I managed to end up on some street that had
a bike lane that was separated from the cars with not just a paint stripe but
concrete parking lot dividers in rows.
That seemed to be totally effective at keeping the agro big city drivers
out of the bike lane. Although I would not call Santiago a bike town, there are
quite a lot of cyclists of all types. Some are insanely brave going at top speed
against the traffic on busy arterial streets filled with horn honking drivers. Besides honking drivers even Santiago is quiet
compared to Argentina. We saw what looked like a long line for vehicle
inspections one day. They must inspect
for mufflers too. They need that in
Oregon as it is getting to be a problem there where nearly every motorcycle feels the need to have its muffler removed.
For the first time in months we are hearing sirens. That
said generally we are feeling very safe everywhere we have been here in Santiago
even at night but I am sure out in the slums to the west that might not be the
case. Although we are warming up to it a bit it is still a huge city with bad
smog. Speaking of smog and big cities what
is the draw about going out and breathing as hard as you can for two or three
hours in a big city marathon? We never really gave it much thought before. All
the thousands of runners are a trip but still……the other day at some jam packed
restaurant I said I wanted sit where I could people watch. Laurie said that is
not hard as you can people watch any way you look just about everywhere you go
here. You can’t help watching all the women
in tight pants and showing lots of cleavage. They want you to ……..it feels like
a high school experiment were you put the fruit flies in a warm jar with a
banana and watch them multiply exponentially…..untilHere are few pictures with the new Panasonic camera we are still trying to learn. Some may not have GPS in the correct location.
