Last week: Puerto Varas, Valdivia, Viña Del Mar/Valparaíso and Santiago (03/09-03/16)

Wednesday, March 9th 2016

We spent the day being Señor Turista in Puerto Varas. 

We had the joy of getting food at the Bless Yuz food truck again. We both had the maqui bless burgers again. Maqui is a berry that grows on trees that are native to the Valdivian rainforest. That is the type of forest that's in the Cochamó Valley. We looked, but never did see any maqui trees during our hike. Anyway it's become a popular superfood, because it's supposed to have the most antioxidants of any berry, way more than blueberries and even more than acái. There are companies in the US that sell maqui in powder form for adding a "superfood boost" to smoothies. To accompany our burgers we each got a juice. They have nice masticating juicer machines!

We bought bus tickets to go to Valdivia. I wanted to go back to Pucon, but we don't have very much time left for any extensive hiking, so we decided to pass our remaining time in cities. Pucon will be added to the long list for our next trip! We have decided we will split our remaining days between Valdivia, Viña Del Mar and Valparaíso and lastly back to Santiago.

We spent some time in the hostel updating the blog. We reread everything I had typed out each night and fixed typos and made some of the sentences make more sense. We spent over an hour on this, in addition to captioning all of the photos, then lost all of our work! It was very frustrating. I hate staring at a computer for so long, it makes my eyes burn and gives me a headache. I don't know how people do it all day for work. Since I had done most of the editing work Jeff offered to go back through and do a quick editing, so I could be done with it.

In the evening we went out to one of the most popular restaurants in town, La Marca, a steakhouse. Jeff had a steak and we got 3 different potato sides to share. I got a corn casserole. This is a popular traditional dish of Chile. I have been wanting to try it for awhile. I was unfortunately highly disappointed by it. It wasn't a casserole at all, it was more of a boiling hot thick stew, and it was so heavy on cream and sugar that is tasted like it should be eaten only in small quantities for dessert. I don't know if that is how it is supposed to taste or if it was just that restaurants spin on the traditional recipe. I am now afraid to try it again! I shouldn't have eaten it all, but I did and I actually began to feel ill during the meal! On the bright side, the potato sides were good, potatoes never fail me! And we had a really good beer from Peru called La Cusqueña.

Whenever I am disappointed after a meal out, I have a habit of craving sugar to take my mind off the disappointing meal! I know sugar was the last thing I needed after an overly sugary meal, but we went to the grocery store after dinner and bought Oreos and Tritons! The Oreos we bought are special white chocolate dipped Oreos. It used to be that you could only find the white chocolate Oreos around Christmas time in the US. Every year as a Christmas gift, my mom gave each of my sisters and I our very own box of them. For this reason, I have fond memories of them! They have become harder and harder to find in the US. I haven't had them in years, and after having spotted them in the grocery store earlier in the day, I couldn't get them out of my head. I had to have them. They were as good as I remember, and when compared side by side with the Triton cookies that we have come to enjoy so much, the Triton cookies tasted terrible!!

Celery never seems to be normal sized down here. It is always huge.

We learned from Lina that these breads are called Pan Amasado. That basically means kneaded bread. Generally bread is kneaded, so that seems like a silly nondescript name, but it is the name indeed! They are the traditional breads that we eat every day for breakfast, and love.

You always have to have your bread weighed and tagged before going to the checkout counter. Usually someone else does the tagging, but sometimes it is self service, like here.

Mmm more Maqui Bless burgers and real juice!

Inside La Marca Steakhouse.

The dreaded corn casserole from La Marca steakhouse. Definitely doesn't look like a casserole.  I have been having intestinal pain ever since this meal, don't know if it is somehow the cause. Also in the photo is Jeff's steak and papas diablas (or devil's potatoes), mashed pumpkin and potatoes, french fries and our nice beers.

Fruit must also be weighed and bagged before checking out.

Mmm oreos. Most packaged foods are packaged much differently than we are used to seeing in the US.

Strange small package of white chocolate Oreos.

Thursday, March 10th 2016

We caught an 8:30 AM bus from Puerto Varas to Valdivia. It was a 3 hour ride. It was foggy when we left Puerto Varas and remained so all the way to Valdivia, so we couldn't see much out the windows. 

We are staying at Aires Buenos & Permacultura Hostel. It's run by a lady from Northern California. It's supposed to be a fully sustainable hostel, with recycling of rainwater, solar heating, recycling, composting, etc. We were warmly welcomed and given a map. They lady made it seem as if Valdivia was a very exciting place with many things to do, so we rushed out to get busy. 

We ended up feeling tired and lazy and didn't accomplish much. We checked out the riverfront fish and produce market. It had a single lane of vendors, one side, the river side was all fish and the other side was produce. There were lots of interesting items of produce that we didn't recognize. The fish side was horribly smelly and there were fish blood and guts everywhere. All of the waste gets washed into the river, and there are enormous mutant sea lions waiting for the scraps. In addition to all of the fish, there are also clams, mussels, abalone, sea urchin, oysters and everything else you can imagine. The fish sits out all day, I wonder what happens to all of the stuff that doesn't sell at the end of the day. It's kind of sickening. I can't really see why fish markets are so popular. They seem unsanitary to me!

After the fish market we went to lunch at a place called La Última Frontera. It's one of the most popular places to eat in town and has a lot of vegetarian options. Our waiter was really unfriendly and unhelpful though and kind of ruined our experience. It's always a little difficult going to restaurants, because I have to translate the menu for Jeff and ask any of the questions we might have and do the ordering. We each got veggies sandwiches, a salad to share, papas bravas (angry potatoes) and a natural juice each. We had papas bravas once in Argentina (San Martín de Los Andes) and they were like French fry cubes covered in a spicy dry rub of seasonings. We have wonderful memories of that meal! We were really excited to try them again, but these ones came out not spicy and completely covered in Alfredo sauce! The salad was a challenge to order because they had options in the price range of 3,500-5,500 pesos listed on the menu, but no further description. The waiter told us they were all the same size, but that the price scale represented the quality and quantity of topping. I told him I wanted a vegan one, so he told us we could have the 4,500 peso ($6.50) one. We had no idea of the size or what would be on it. You'd think after I asked for a vegan salad he would have thought to tell us that the potatoes weren't remotely vegan, but no. Jeffs sandwich also came out coated in a cheese sauce that was not mentioned on the menu. Both sandwiches were more like stir fries with a bread slice on top and bottom. It would not have been possible to eat with our hands. We did not eat the potatoes or Jeffs sandwich. We just shared the salad, and my sandwich, which was like a Asian style veggie stir fry. I am always tempted to eat all of my food since I don't like waste, but since I was left feeling so lousy from the meal at the steakhouse Puerto Varas, I decided I had better not!  We found out at the end our waiter spoke English!

I mentioned above that we both had a natural juices. These are very popular here and are offered at most restaurants, lots of street side kiosks, and we even saw one by the university that consisted of a table, two blenders and a generator to run them! In Spanish it's jugo natural. I don't really know why they call it that, because they aren't juice at all, and they're not really all natural either! They are fruit blended with water and lots of sugar. You generally choose just one fruit, it's not very common to have a mix. They are definitely delicious with all of the sugar! There is also the word licuado in Spanish which means smoothie, sometimes that word is used as well. It's hard to know when you are ordering something whether you with get a true juice or a blended concoction. They are generally quite affordable, around $2 per 16oz, so we order them often.

After lunch we went to the botanical gardens at the university. They were supposed to be really nice and were high on TripAdvisors list of things to do in town, but it was nothing special. Lots of trees and grassy fields for the young people to canoodle in!

The rest of the evening we were in our hostel and went out just briefly to get a few things from the grocery store. That was the 3rd grocery store we had been in throughout the day, and on the third try we found the chocolate dipped Oreos!! They had both white and dark chocolate dipped cookies in the store in Puerto Varas, so naturally I wanted to try the dark chocolate dipped ones! Jeff and I shared the box of Oreos. Those were my (delicious) dinner, and Jeff ate avocado toasts to go with it. I am still feeling somewhat ill from the corn casserole and extremely full from lunch. Perhaps I must have a readjustment period to fibrous foods! We got so used to eating only processed white things when we were camping.

Pedestrian street in Valdivia.

Nice produce for sale in the Fluvial Market by the river in Valdivia.

View of the riverside market in Valdivia.

These are the nuts of the monkey puzzle tree. I wanted to buy some, but according to one guy selling them, they are not eaten raw, they must first be boiled, so I didn't buy any.

Here is a typical fruit of the area, used in desserts and jams.

We wanted to know what chicha was, so we bought one of these bottles. It turned out to be lightly fermented apple cider.

Here is another view of the nuts from the monkey puzzle trees, but here they have displayed the seed cones on top.

A sea lion somehow got around the fence and is inside the fish market, right next to the people that process the fish. He is huge, as he gets the first of the scraps. Notice the area immediately surrounding him is completely clear of fish debris.

Huge plate of papas bravas, soaked in cream, at La Ultima Frontera.

"Sandwiches" at La Ultima Frontera. 

Salad at Ultima Frontera. It was good, but I hate these impractical presentations! Who eats a salad with all of the parts separate like that??

Calle Calle River, Valdivia.

Delighted to have found the Oreos again.

I have fallen off the healthy eating wagon in a big way!

Friday, March 11th 2016

For breakfast at our hostel we got a small ramekin full of what was supposed to be fruit, yogurt and granola. The lady offered to make us a vegan version without the yogurt, so we got a small container of chocolate soy milk from the grocery store last night to go with it. We found that it wasn't really granola at all but just some raw oats, but it was a nice change from the typical Chilean breakfast. To go with the cereal, there was whole grain bread and jam. 

The hostel charges a fee to anyone lingering after check out time, so we stored our bags and left after breakfast. We are always at a loss for what to do in cities, and we were lacking motivation today too! We did our best to fill the day, but there is a limit to how much we can eat and walk!

We took a bus out to Niebla, which is on the coast. It was only a half hour ride. Valdivia is surrounded by rivers and sits at a river confluence just inland from the sea. At the mouth of the river, there are many ruins of previous European military forts. Some date back to the 1600s. We visited the fort of Niebla. It's located on a bluff above the sea and had great views of the surrounding coastline, as well as up the river. From here you can take boats across the river and to an island to visit additional forts, but they weren't really of interest to us. 

We got back on the bus and got off a few miles before town at one of Chile's most popular breweries, La Cervecería Kuntsmann. Chile has seen many German settlers over the year, some of which were even Nazis escaping after World War II! The German influence is seen in many cities, in the form of architecture, food, names, in the way current citizens look European and especially in the beer. At this brewing company, they had 14 different beers to sample, a big gift shop and brewery tour and a German style restaurant. We decided not to take the tour and instead spent our pesos in the restaurant. We got a sampler of 12 of the 14 beers on offer, then got an additional glass of one of the dark beers that wasn't in the sampler, a bock. Jeff got a monster hot dog and fries. Hot dogs loaded with topping are very popular down here, they are called completos. One of the post popular is called an Italiano, not because it it has anything to do with Italian culinary style, but because it has avocado, mayo and tomatoes on top, the colors of the Italian flag. Jeff has been wanting to try these, and I think this was a good place to do it, because the hot dog came in a stand so it wasn't as messy and it also was probably slightly better quality than your average street vendor. I got vegetarian garbanzo meatballs and brown rice. I was surprised and pleased that they had a vegetarian offering.

After our time at the brewery, we went the rest of the way into town on the bus and just walked around until it was time to eat again! We walked along the river for awhile, then along a road that was supposed to have some old mansions from early German settlers.  

We eventually began to get tired of walking and didn't know what to do with ourselves anymore, so we decided we'd go lounge on the grass in a park near where we wanted to eat dinner. On the way we stopped at the restaurant to check the menu. The place is called El Growler and is a trendy brewpub that opened up about a year ago. It's very close to the university and is very popular with the young people. The owner is from Oregon and was very nice. He talked so much while we were there, that we barely got the chance to look at the menu, but we decided we would come back. He recommended us a better park than the one we were going to, an arboretum that's part of the university. 

On the way to the arboretum, we passed by Parque Saval, which is where we'd been planning to go. We were very glad we weren't though, because they charged an entrance fee, and it being Friday night, the place was filling up with families having barbecues and family reunions! The arboretum was basically just a forest with in the city. It was pretty nice and adding to the niceness was the fact that we found and ate lots of delicious super ripe blackberries! We had a fine dinner afterward and just enough time to get our bags from storage at the hostel and get to bus terminal for our overnight bus to Viña Del Mar.

Pacific Coast, looking Northward at the town of Niebla near Valdivia

Ruins of the fort at Niebla

Pacific Ocean seen from the fort at Niebla.

This is the wide mouth of the river at the fort of Niebla. On the other side there was another fort and to the left, a big island in the river with another fort.

Old cannons at the fort of Niebla. There were several boats trolling the waters, each with a diver in the water. I am guessing the divers were going after some sort of seafood, like clams or oysters.

Out front of Cerveceria Kuntsmann.

There were many opportunities for Señor Turista photos at the brewery.

Main building of the brewery.

Lots of German decor, no Germans in sight!

All of the available draft beers.

Sampler of 12 of the 14 available beers. The cardboard tray thing was supposed to be a take home souvenir. I can't imagine why anyone would want it!

Jeffs complete hot dog and my garbanzo meatballs and rice.

You can see in this photo one of the columns of beer that were available for purchase. They were big enough to hold 12 servings of beer, and were 3 or 4 feet tall with a tap at the bottom.

Killing time along the river. All Chilean cities have this metal workout stations.

An especially large sea lion basking in the sun.

Give you an idea of Valdivia's location.

Seafood for sale at the market.

The monster sized sea lion in the bottom right of the photo, must be the kings, because none of the other sea lion dare to come near! He is seated next to the fence for the fish market, waiting for scraps.

An old German mansion

Another old mansion, this one has been well taken care of and turned into a boutique hotel.

Nice forest trail in the arboretum.

Saturday, March 12th 2016

I slept through the night on the bus and awoke just 15 minutes from our destination. Walking down the aisles to the bathroom at the back I learned that the bottom leg rest portion of the seat lifts up, making it a fully flat bed!! I did not know this and slept the whole night curled up in the chair! I had the leg rest down like a lounge chair and it was uncomfortable to leave my legs dangling. Jeff stayed up later than me and watched a movie and knew all along about how the chair worked at didn't tell me!! I feel disappointed I did get my money's worth out of the premium bed bus, and now I won't get another one to try out this trip!

From the bus station we walked about 15 minutes to our hostel, The Street Garden Hostel. We rang and rang the bell to be let in the gate and no one ever answered. Finally a shop next door somehow got the gate open for us. Once inside we were "helped" by a really unfriendly and unwelcoming young man. Check in wasn't until 2 and we got the feeling he wanted nothing to do with us until that time, so we stored our bags and left immediately.

A block away, we found a nice produce store and bought a variety of fruits to eat for breakfast. We took them down to the beach to enjoy them. We came to this town because Jeff wanted to relax and enjoy the beach for our last few days here, but sadly today it's cold, cloudy and a little bit drizzly! We don't like this city much. The waterfront is lined with multi story condo and hotel buildings, and although this is supposed to be a fancy town for the rich, it still seems just as dirty as every other town we have been to, with lots of graffiti around. 

After we ate we decided to walk to the mall and go to a movie, since we didn't feel like doing anything else in the crappy weather. We bought tickets to see Deadpool, but had two hours to kill before it started. We got lunch at a salad bar in the food court and also had McFlurries from McDonalds! I know I've really fallen off the health food wagon when I start ordering from McDonald's!! It was actually rather depressing, probably 90% of the consumption taking place in the food court was of McDonalds!

The movie was funny enough and provided us the escape we had been hoping for! By the time we left the mall, the sun had come out, but the air is rather smoggy here. We went back to our hostel to check in and were rather disappointed when we were showed to our room, and it was the only one out of 20 or so rooms that is right next to the bar! We reserved a 4 bed dorm room, instead of a 9 bed dorm room, hoping that would shelter us from the young partying hooligans, but it backfired on us! This is a big party town and especially on the weekends. Many people from Santiago spend their weekends here, since it's only a 1 1/2 hour bus ride. Our hostel is within a few blocks of several popular bars.

Rather than cook dinner in the hostel that we don't really like, we decided to go out to eat. I checked Happy Cow and found a burger and  beer place that does vegan veggie burgers and it was only 2 blocks away. We were very glad we went there! We had a really good grilled veggie platter with roasted red pepper hummus for dipping, nice fried potato chunks with garlic aioli dipping sauce, two really good veggie burgers and two very nice draft beers. The veggie patties to choose from were lentils, garbanzo beans and black beans. The patties seemed to be made only of beans. I don't know how they got them to hold together long enough to be grilled. Jeff had one with black beans and Mexican style guacamole, corn and tomato toppings and I had the garbanzo bean one with roasted red peppers, lettuce and caramelized onions. The potatoes were called papas bravas, but were completely different from the ones we ordered in Valdivia!

After dinner we went back down by the beach for awhile to enjoy the novelty of watching the waves crash. Although we have seen the ocean a few times on this trip, this is the only time we've seen an actual beach with waves! All of the rest of the times we were in shelters fjords. It was a nice feeling being there by the ocean, and with the sun out, it almost felt like I was back in San Diego. With the hills in the distance, this coastline kind of resembles the La Jolla coast in San Diego.

We were able to go to bed early and were thankfully not bothered by any young party animals.

Multiple floors and elevators in the mall in Vina Del Mar.

Papas Bravas at A Mano Gin & Burgers. Much different from the ones at La Ultima Frontera in Valdivia!!

Delicious veggie burgers and grilled veggies at A Mano Gin & Burgers. Draft beers were real nice too.

Sunday, March 13th 2016

After squandering the day yesterday, we decided we had better accomplish something today! After breakfast in the hostel we got on the metro/trolley and rode down the coast to Valparaíso. It was cloudy and overcast again, but we figured it was just marine layer that would eventually burn off.

Breakfast was supposed to start at 8:30, but the unhelpful front desk guy didn't get around to leaving to buy bread until 8:50. I guess it doesn't normally matter since everyone stays up all night and sleeps all day! He did buy some whole grain breads for breakfast which were very nice. The only other offering was green apples. Neither of us really like green apples, unless they have peanut butter on them or when they are in a peanut butter and apple sandwich. I came up with the idea to use the caramel spread to make us caramel apple slices. Such a nutritious breakfast!! Haha...

When we got off the trolley in Valparaíso, we realized it was Sunday!! And everything was closed. Both Viña Del Mar and Valparaíso are party towns and people stay up literally all night drinking on Saturday night. It's supposed to be church day, but it's probably more like hangover day here. We didn't have a very good map and it's hard to navigate this town because it's all hilly and the streets do not follow the typical grid pattern of other South American cities. In all, there are 43 distinct hills in town! We initially wandered the streets taking in the smell of pee and garbage, the sight of graffiti on everything and dodging dog poo bombs all over the side walks. We were pretty disgusted with the place!  We eventually found the main touristy area and the city began to look a little more appealing. 

We had a nice lunch in a fancy sandwich shop called La Cocó. They had several vegetarian choices, including seitan, and all of the sandwiches came on homebaked whole grain bread rolls. We also had side salads, oven roasted potatoes and natural juices.

During our lunch the marine layer broke, and people had started to wake up and more stores and restaurants began to open, and the city began to look a little less nasty! We spent a few hours walking around to various view points. It really is a unique city and fascinating to look at. Many of the houses and buildings are brightly painted and street art and murals are very popular. It seems particularly every available surface is brightly painted. The town has been compared to San Francisco because of all of the steep streets and hills. They also have numerous staircases and pedestrian only walkways, in addition to several funiculars. The funiculars are like mini trains up extremely steep slopes and cost less than 50¢ per ride. 

As the day wore on, the streets got very busy. There was a Celebrity cruise ship in the port. This port is an ending and starting point for many passengers, some stay on the ship and continue through though. We saw lots of walking tour groups of the the eccentric old people that can only come from cruise ships! This is actually where we got off our cruise the first time we came to South America in December 2012. The city is know to be dangerous outside of the main tourist areas. At one point we wandered off the beaten track while trying unsuccessfully to navigate from one hill to the next. We were informed by a man with no teeth wearing a safety vest with a hand written sign (for directing cars around a blind curve) that we were entering a dangerous area. He said if we kept going, "they" would put a knife to our throats and take our things. We immediately turned around, haha! We are always recognized as gringos somehow, I blame Jeff for having such light blond hair and bright blue eyes! I have a hard time being able to tell who is a tourist and who is not down here. Most Chileans and Argentineans are of European descent. There are plenty of people who look like me, with light brown hair and not brown eyes, but clear blue eyes and blond hair are rare. The only other way you can spot a tourist is by what they are wearing.  I can sometimes pick a local girl out of a crowd from the scandalous clothing that no tourist would wear! Maybe I could blend in better if I wore tight crop tops and butt cheek revealing shorts! 

By about 4 PM, we'd been on several funicular rides, ascended a few different staircases and hills and felt we'd seen enough in the way of viewpoints, so we boarded the train back to Viña Del Mar. We went for a quick walk at the Quinta Vergara Park. The park is basically the yard or grounds of the extremely rich Vergara family that used to live here. On the grounds, the mansion still stands, but it was badly damaged in the 2010 earthquake and not available for seeing inside. 

The urge to go back to eat at the restaurant with the delicious veggie burgers was strong, but we controlled ourselves, and went for groceries instead. We had rice cakes topped with black beans, onions, tomatoes and avocado, along with a mango and nectarine fruit salad.

Walkway along the estuary in Vina Del Mar. Many ugly multi-story buildings and morning marine layer cloudiness.

Plaza Sotomayer in Valparaiso.

Dirty smelly street near the Port in Valparaiso.

One of many long staircases. Valparaiso.

Another dirty and smelly street, winding and with lots of dogs. Valparaiso.

View of a colorful steep hillside and a cat on the roof in Valparaiso.

Another colorful view and Lutheran Church from the site of the old jail on Cerro Carcel, Valparaiso.

A pedestrian street on Cerro Constitution, Valparaiso.

Delicious lunch at La Coco.

Another pedestrian street on Cerro Constitucion. Cerro means hill. Valparaiso.

Cerro Constitucion, Valparaiso.

On a pedestrian balcony at the top of Acensor (elevator) Concepcion on top of Cerro Constitucion, Valparaiso.

On a pedestrian balcony at the top of Acensor (elevator) Concepcion on top of Cerro Constitucion, Valparaiso.

Riding down the Acensor Concepcion. The direct translation of acensor is elevator, but they are really more like funiculars, but that is not a common english word!

Walking the many stairs to the top of Cerro Cordillera

View from Lord Cochrane Museum, Cerro Cordillera, Valparaiso.

View from Lord Cochrane Museum, Cerro Cordillera, Valparaiso.

A nice mural of a dog guarding his house, with the real live dog to go with it!

View from the top of Acensor Artilleria, Cerro Artilleria, Valparaiso.

View of the pedestrian balcony at the top of Acensor Artilleria, Cerro Artilleria, Valparaiso.

Crazy house we saw perched on a man-made cliff on the ride down Acensor Artilleria, Cerro Artilleria, Valparaiso.

Fruit salads like this can be had for about $1.25 each from abundant street vendors and even sometimes on buses when sellers walk through with a tray of them!

Not the best photo, but this was taken in the Quinta Vergara Park, behind the green wall is the mansion. The mansion is supposed to be a really neat to tour, but has been closed since a big earthquake in 2010 damaged it.

Our delicious Mexican inspired dinner.

Sunset in Vina del Mar

Monday, March 14th 2016

We had been informed by the lady sharing the room with us that she was sorry in advance if she snores, "she's congested." We figured her real problem was really that she's fat and drinks and smokes excessively and eats fast food, but hoped for the best. Around 3:30 AM, I could ignore her noises no longer (even with earplugs!) and got up to go to the bathroom. I had the misfortune of being the person to sleep on the top bunk above her, and she made the whole bed rattle. My ear plugs didn't seem to help much, so I thought that if I got up and out of the bed, she might wake up and shift and stop making noise. On my way back from the bathroom my legs felt itchy, and upon further examination I discovered I had two big nasty bed bug bites on the back of one of my legs! They usually take awhile to show up, so those would have been from the previous night. Great! Now I had to try to sleep through the snoring and the thoughts of bugs crawling all over me! I couldn't do it and layed furious in my bed for about an hour before I decided to put on a bed bug protective uniform. I put on my hiking pants over the shorts I was already wearing and stuffed the pant legs into the heaviest socks I had. I then put on a sweater and stuffed my hands into gloves. They have gotten me on my hands before, but for some reason not my face, so I hoped again that they would leave my face alone. While I was rummaging in my bag I woke Jeff up, but not the snoring lady! I don't know how Jeff had managed to sleep as long as he did! Luckily he poked the lady and made her wake up so that we could go back to sleep!! Haha! I would never do that, but I am sure glad he did! (: I slept until morning with the covers pulled back, using only my copious clothing for warmth. 

At 10 we took a bus to Santiago. We are staying in the same hostel we stayed in last time, Hostel Providencia. We don't love the place, but we like it enough and already know our way around it. It always amazes me that no matter the size of the city we visit we can navigate it without the use of a car or taxi. That just wouldn't be possible in most US cities.

After we dropped our bags off at the hostel, we went for lunch at a famous empanada place. It's called Empanadas Zunino and it first opened in 1930. It's recently been rated one of the best empanadas in the city. It made for a cheap and delicious lunch. We paid $5.50 for 4 big empanadas.

We had also been hoping to find sopaipillas on our walk to add to our lunch, but were unsuccessful. We went back to the big produce market, La Vega Central, that we visited when we were here before. To get to the market, the river must be crossed. The other side of the river, is kind of an impoverished area, at least near the market. People sell anything and everything they can in and around the market. We saw a lady sitting on the sidewalk trying to sell 3 heads of cauliflower. We have seen similar sellers outside of every grocery store we have been in on this trip. It sort of breaks your heart and makes you want to buy whatever it is they are selling to help them out! There were also tables lining the sidewalks into the market filled with anything you could think of, parts for bicycle repair, personal care products, socks and underwear, padlocks, etc. Its amazing that these people are able to make enough to survive. Also along our walk to and from the river, we saw homeless young people who had made a makeshift camp below the bridge over the river, and we saw a large group of homeless men in the park doing laundry in on the the fountains. Santiago is supposed to be a cosmopolitan city in one of the more wealthy countries of South America, but there is still a saddening abundance of poverty.

At the market we got "natural juices," from one of the stalls. They turned out to be smoothies, but we got to choose 3 fruits, mango, banana and pineapple, and the lady actually asked us if we wanted the sugar in it or not! It was nice to have just the fruit and water and it was cheap, only about $1.75 for a big glass. Jeff behaved himself and didn't complain for once, while I worked my way through the market selecting fruits and vegetables for our dinner. Jeff usually gets very impatient when I grocery shop!

Back at our hostel we enjoyed an early dinner, and what a feast it was! We had an assortment of potatoes, 3 different kinds!! Small pink and yellow Andean potatoes, purple fingerling potatoes, and an orange potato that we thought might be a sweet potato, but wasn't. We have yet to find sweet potatoes down here and can't wait to have them again in the US. We also had yellow yucca again, which we have been craving for months. We also had pico de gallo and guacamole and skillet fried sweet plantains and lentils. I seasoned the lentils way beans were always eaten in the house of my host family in Panama, with garlic, onion, cilantro and tomatoes. We had a fine fruit salad for dessert consisting of mango, strawberries and bananas. It was really good and we both wished we'd had more meals like that during our trip! It was definitely a Central American themed meal. Of all the places I have travelled, Central America definitely has my favorite food! 

From 7:30 to 8:30, the hostel offered free Terremoto drinks. We didn't have much desire to drink, but this drink it supposed to be a Chilean specialty. Terremoto means earthquake in Spanish, so we thought it would be the sort of drink that would get you real hung over, like a Long Island iced tea or a trash can, something with many types of alcohol in it. It was just white wine with grenadine and pineapple sorbet though! We had two and then went to bed! I suppose if you drink too many of them, you would get a terrible hang over, since they are so sugary!

We discovered when trying to go to sleep that we had the only room above the smokers patio, and the smoke kept coming in our room. The only room available for us to switch to was a slightly more expensive room with a private bathroom. We thought maybe they would waive the cost of the upgrade, but they didn't. They do claim they gave us a small discount, but were happy to pay more to get away from the smoke. It is common here to have shared bathrooms in hotels and hostels. We have only had our own bathroom a handful of times. It only cost $10 for both nights, and was a worthwhile switch, but our new room was above the bar, and we were forced to hear the pounding beats of reggaetón until well after 11, and the singing about screaming of the girls who'd had too many terrremotos!

Two types of empanadas at Empanadas Zunino. The direct translation of empanada is: wrapped in bread.

Very popular quick and cheap lunch spot.

You pay first to a cashier near the door, then take your ticket to the counter for an immediate fulfillment of your order.

The dirty Mapocho River that must be crossed by bridge to reach La Vega Central, produce market. It looks like an illusion, but you can actually see mountains through the smog!

You can buy just about anything you can think of in and around the market.

Enjoying a walk and buttcheeks in Parque Forestal. I just may be behind the times, but I don't think the butt cheeks shorts have made it to the US!

This is why Chilean Spanish is so hard to understand. There is so much slang. The slang is so commonly used by everyone, that they probably don't even think of it as slang, it's simply Chilean Spanish!

Preparing to enjoy a lovely meal in our hostel.

Tuesday, March 15th 2016 

Today we had the last bread and jam breakfast of our trip, and said goodbye and good riddance! They also had lots of nice fruits and oatmeal too!

We left the hostel for a few hours, on a mission to find sopaipillas. We walked around the central plaza, and after seeing what seemed like an endless supply of mote con huesillos vendors, we had found no sopaipillas. I managed to convince Jeff to let me order the liter size mote con huesillos! That had been in my plan since the first time we ate mote in Santiago over 2 months ago. I felt triumphant and reveled in each bite!

We gave up on sopaipillas and began the walk back to the produce market to get foods for breakfast and lunch on the plane. We had scheduled a taxi transfer to the airport for 5:45. Breakfast wouldn't be available in the hostel until 7:30, so we needed our own. On the way to the market we sighted a Sopaipilla man near the river! We got two of them for less than 50¢! Such a delectable and affordable food they are! He also had an array of wonderful toppings, including a creamy green salsa and pico de gallo! (: As we continued to the produce market we encountered several other vendors. There had been none yesterday, Monday seems to be a day in which many restaurants don't open. Perhaps sopaipilla vendors take that day off too! 

At the market we got an avocado, a beautiful red tomato, a lime, a red onion, a bag for micro greens, a nectarine and a mango. The produce is all very affordable and at peak ripeness, the bags of fancy microgreens, the same size as a standard bag of spinach at home was less than 75¢! We also found a grocery store in which to purchase whole grain bread rolls and a box of garbanzo beans. We would be having chickpea avocado salad sandwiches and fruit salad.

Once our shopping was completed we went out to eat at Galindo's. It is located in a trendy neighborhood called Bellavista. There are many touristy shops and restaurants here, and it's located just across the river from our hostel. Galindo's isn't one of the fancy touristy restaurants, but more of a simple place that's popular with locals. They have many typical Chilean foods on the menu. They had corn casserole, and I was tempted to give it another try, but in the end decided not to, because this version had eggs and beef in it and raisins too, which sounded a little strange. We went to this restaurant 4 years ago when we were in Santiago and remembered liking it. I ordered "porotos granados" that time and got them again this time. It is a typical dish of cranberry beans (similar to pintos) stewed with corn, pumpkin, cumin, paprika and basil. Since beans are practically my favorite food, it is an ideal meal for me! Jeff ordered "Lomo a lo Pobre," which translates to something like poormans steak. This dish is popular in both Chile and Argentina, and it is a plate of French fries topped with caramelized onion, then steak, then fried eggs. Jeff has been wanting to try it for awhile. We both enjoyed our meals, but after the liter of mote, the sopaipillas and the big lunch we were stuffed! We went back to the hostel and napped until dinner. It's great being Señor Turista for a few days, but it's tough when it's so many in a row. Our stomachs are ready for a break!!

Dinner was at Peumayen. It's a fancy, fine dining restaurant also located in Bellavista. It's rated #2 on Tripadvisor out of about 3,500 restaurants in Santiago. I did a lot of research on the restaurant and it seemed it was an experience not to be missed! The theme of the restaurant is ancestral foods. The chefs take inspiration from all of the native groups of Chile. The foods are served on wooden boards and stone slabs, making the presentation very unique. I had also learned through my research that they did tasting platters, so you could try a little of everything, and that you could choose between regular and vegetarian. When we told our waitress we would like vegetarian, she gave us the worst face, like she couldn't fathom what we would eat and immediately had to go have a chat with the kitchen!! The menu is in English but has all kinds of strange indigenous plants and typical dishes, so it's basically unintelligible and we were at the mercy of the waitress to help us order. She suggested quinoa risotto, so we got that and a vegetarian sampler. We also tried several varieties of pico sours. Pisco sour is kind of like what a margarita is to Mexico. Pisco is similar to vodka (to me anyway!) and is made from distilled white grapes. The pisco sour contains pisco with sugar and lime juice and this place took it a step further by blending in fresh mint in one of the ones we ordered and pineapple and avocado in the other. I guess our expectations were high because of all of the positive reviews for the restaurant, but we weren't that impressed. It was all fancy platings and small portions. Our favorite part was probably the "free" bread sampler which was 8 different kinds of "breads" from each region of Chile. Some of them were not bread at all, one was a ball of pea paste, another bean paste, another a ball of fried mashed potatoes. They were strange but delicious and neat to look at. There were lots of palate cleansers included in the meal as well. The quinoa came in a tiny stone crock and seemed undercooked and was in a sauce that tasted exactly like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese! It cost more than $17 (for the quinoa) and we did not find value in it! The vegetarian sampler board was interesting, but nothing terribly delicious. We also got a dessert sampler, and that was pretty good. We left feeling glad we had tried it, but definitely not as wowed as everyone else seemed to be!

Me with a liter of Mote con Huesillos. It doesn't look nearly as gigantic in the photo as it really was!

A mini street sweeper for the pedestrian street! Neat!

Nasty dirty street outside La Vega Central market.

Traditional Chilean dish: porotos granados. Cranberry beans stewed with pumpkin. There is usually corn too, but not in this version. I love beans, especially fresh ones. These one are always available fresh in the produce markets.

Near our hostel is an area known as Plaza Italia, and in this area, there are always tons of people and a really busy multi lane road on the other side of the river. Hard to tell from the sort of back lit photo, but hundreds of people are crossing the bridge.

Peumayen Ancestral Foods.

The "bread basket" at Peumayen and our brightly colored pisco sours.

Quinoa risotto and vegetarian sampler at Peumayen. On the sampler board there is a ball on the far right made of eggplant, then a smashed red potato, 1/4 of a red onion, a cauliflower floret, a dab of hummus a small pile of risotto and a few shards of yucca. The sampler cost about $15!

Wednesday, March 16th 2016

Today we had a very long day of travel on our way back to the US. It started at 4:45 when we woke up in our hostel. I prepared us fruit salad and prepped a bunch of veggies for putting on sandwiches once we got on the airplane. We had booked a taxi ride through the front desk for 15,000 CHP ($21USD), which is much cheaper than we could have gotten from just flagging down a random taxi. We probably couldn't have flagged down a taxi at that hour anyway! We really wanted to take the bus, but there were no options that we knew of for going early enough for us to check in for our flight.

We had a big ordeal during our check and were really glad we had gotten there more than two hours before the flight. Our itinerary was tricky because it was a United booking, and United had partnered with TAM airlines for our first flight, but TAM had partnered with LAN, so we had to check in at the LAN counter. At the counter, we were asked (in Spanish) where we were going, and I said Brazil to Newark. I didn't occur to me that an employee who spends their days working in the airport printing tickets and luggage tags for people going to other airports wouldn't know what Newark was. She printed our bag tags, tagged mine and sent it away. Then she made us sign the back of Jeff's luggage tag, agreeing that we weren't going to sue them if our trekking poles were damaged. At this point Jeff insisted that we take a good look at the bag tag, and I saw that it was only tagged to Sao Paolo. I asked the agent why it didn't have a tag to our final destination. She then got angry and said i didn't tell her we had a second flight and told me that our reservation was nothing more than a flight to Sao Paolo. We stood at the counter forever while she and others tried to find the rest of our reservation. I showed them the itinerary in my email on my phone for United flight 149 at 10:30 PM from Sao Paolo to Newark, and they kept telling me that flight didn't exist! They said they couldn't print our tickets or bag tags for Newark since there was no record of us being on that flight or any record of the flight even existing. They recommended we go out of the terminal once we arrived to Sao Paolo to get our bags and then re-checkin with United. I explained that we couldn't do that since we didn't have a visa for Brazil. At this point they were having an oh shit moment and trying to get my bag back. It had already been about a half hour since it went down the conveyor. We don't understand why they didn't try to get it back immediately. We were eventually referred to the ticket sales counter directly opposite the check in counter to see if they could figure out our itinerary. There was no wait for that counter, and we were able to go right up to an agent who upon looking up our reservation, could immediately see our flight to Newark. She didn't understand what was the problem of the other people helping us. She did however figure out that United had changed their flight number from 149 to 148 and our reservation had never changed to the new number. So they still had the issue of not being able to print us boarding passes for the flight, but somehow they were able to print us bag tags. We really don't fully understand what happened because it was all spoken in rapid Spanish. They ultimately got my bag back as well and were able to put the correct tag for Newark on it. All of this took well over an hour. We had been worried that we would miss our flight, but we made it.

The flight to Sao Paolo was only 3 1/2 hours and was on the nicest airplane we have ever been on, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. We have been wanting to ride on one of these planes ever since we toured the Boeing factory near Seattle 4 years ago. It was a huge plane, 9 seats across. It had fancy tinted windows in which the level of tint could be adjusted, instead of the normal pull down shades. We also  had a very nice individual entertainment systems in front of us, there were many movies to choose from. We were also served a nice, but tiny vegan meal consisting of a 1/2 of mushroom sandwich, 1/2 of a small pita bread with jam and few pieces of fruit salad. We ate this in addition to the sandwiches I brought: chickpea avocado salad on whole grain rolls with tomato slices and micro greens.

When we got to Brazil we had to go through their stupid security screening to transfer over to the international terminal for the next flight. I had learned my lesson the last time, and did not bring anything they could take away from me, such as my contact solution! Luckily we didn't need to present a ticket to get through this screening, because we didn't have one!

In order to get a cheap flight ($700 vs $1000), we agreed to a 10 hour layover in Sao Paolo, Brazil. That would have been long enough to leave the airport and explore the city a little, but Brazil requires US citizens to have visa. The visa must be acquired in advance and the fee is $160. We figured paying $160 for 10 hours of entertainment contradicted our desired outcome of having a cheap flight, so we didn't apply for one.

The time in the airport ended up going by pretty quickly. It was nowhere near as awful as I had expected it to be. We started off by taking out our camping mattresses and spreading them across rows of seats and napping for awhile. Once we woke up we ate the fruit salad I had packed, then I did blog typing and Jeff used the internet. There is free wi-fi in the airport here, but you only get allotted one hour per device. We then walked the small terminal and reviewed the menus of each eating establishment to see what we could eat. We settled for On The Rocks Grill, because they had veggie burgers and nice beers. We got nice strong coffee stout beer and were surprised when the burgers came out that the patties were homemade (instead of processed soy product). After dinner we got gelato (sorbet), then it wasn't long to wait to board the flight. We had been pretty hungry and could have eaten more, but knew that we would be getting meal service on our flight, so decided to save room for that. 

As soon as there was a gate agent we got boarding passes and I confirmed that we still had a vegan meal listed in our itinerary. The agent told us that the flight number had probably changed 5 months ago. That would have been before we even booked the flight. The flight was booked through Orbitz, so I don't know whose fault it is that our booking reflected the old flight number.

When the meal service began on our flight to Newark we knew something was wrong. If you request a special meal, your meal comes out before the rest of the service begins. The lady in front of us was given a special meal, in addition to a couple two rows in front of us, but we were given nothing and not even spoken to. So when the cart came through and the flight attendant asked us if we wanted chicken or beef and I said we ordered a vegan meal, she had an oh shit moment. For the time being we were skipped while they figured out what happened. She came back maybe a half hour later and confirmed that they had our names, but that there were no remaining special meals, and that they had expected us to be sitting in other seats. She never came right out and said it, but basically they blindly gave our meal to whoever was sitting in the seats that they had expected us to be sitting in! She was able to some how come up with a small tray of food that included crackers and butter, a roll and a tiny container of bulgar wheat grain salad. She didn't seem to understand what vegan means, and kept saying vegetarian. She also tried to offer us a cheese plate for the "protein" part of the meal. We told her we don't eat dairy, eggs and meat. Her response was "well that settles that then!" and never tried to offer us anything else, even though there are lots of other foods for purchase, like dried fruits and nuts and crackers and hummus. Even though we were starving, we both stayed up and watched two movies each.

We had about a two hour window to sleep between movies and breakfast. As the breakfast service was coming through, the flight attendant who had helped us last night told us that this time she had something for us. She passed it off to another flight attendant and told her to give it to "the vegetarian couple." We watched as she handed the trays to the couple two rows in front of us, and not knowing if they had been intended for us, we didn't say anything. Then the 2nd flight attendant asked the 1st one, "Those people already have something, are you sure it was for them??" It was then determined that it was meant for us, and they again tried to give it to the wrong people! The trays were then taken from them and brought to us. I don't know if they took anything from it, but by the time it reached us, it contained only a single hard white bread roll and jam. The lady in front of us got an elaborate tray of many foil containers of hot food!! Needless to say we arrived very tired and hungry.

We had a great trip. This was our third trip to Patagonia and we think this one was the best yet. Often towards the end of our trips we start to just want to go home, but that didn't happen on this trip! We actually wished we had allotted ourselves more time!! We have a very long list of things we would like to do next time. In all, we were gone for 64 day, 27 of those days were spent in our tent, making this a very affordable trip! All of the hiking as entertainment and eating so many cheap meals while camping also made the trip cheap! I estimate we hiked about 215 miles. This gives me hope that we could do a longer through hike, like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail. In total our trip cost us about $8,000. That includes our airfare, and several splurges, such as the Navimag Ferry, the guided hike up Villarrica, the guided trek across the glacier on Tronador and a few fancy meals. We are coming back with zero souvenirs, only photos and memories. The cost of our trip averages out to about $60 per person per day, and is pretty close to our cost of living in Alaska! It is nice that we are able to travel like this and have no other expenses. Since we don't have a permanent place to live, we only pay rent in the summer while we are working in Alaska, and we both have our cars paid off, and our cells phone get turned off while we are gone too, further lowering our expenses. With the makings of our next trip already in our minds, we are thinking of ways to further lower our expenses between now and the end of the summer. Assuming we are successful, we may travel for 6 months, through next fall, winter and spring.

We had a nice view during our dinner at on the rocks grill in Sao Paolo. 

Nice Brazilian Volcano coffee stout.