The blog has been rather quiet the past couple of weeks for (what I consider to be) an excellent reason, namely we’ve been on a family holiday in Chile. Before coming to the Falklands, South America wasn’t on our list of places to visit in the near future. With a strong yen for ancient history, we were thinking more of Egypt, Israel, various parts of the middle East if the assorted wars ended, Libya and Tunisia (ditto on the conflict front) and Eastern Europe. However it seemed silly not to take advantage of our proximity to mainland South America, so with due regard for political situations and relations, we set off for Chile on 5th January.
The first, and perhaps obvious, thought I have about Chile is gosh, it’s a big place! According to the guide book, it is never more than 100km wide, but it is over 4,300km long. With only a two week holiday, we couldn’t hope to see more than a fraction of it. Also, traveling with young children made things more difficult as some of the more stunning national parks were struck off our plans for their impracticability either of accommodation or activities or both. We were also mindful of the travelling time with young children and trying not to spend all our time on planes or in cars trying to reach places. Balancing all of these led to a decision to do just three spots in Chile – Santiago, Puerto Varas and Punta Arenas. I would have loved to have squeezed in the Atacama as well, but, by the time we were booking, suitable family accommodation was either all already booked or in the extortionately expensive category. Still, it gives us a reason to come back to Chile in the future.
Having returned from holiday, my second thought is that we’re very fortunate in how well our children travel and that I need to contact Trunki regarding any upsurge of sales they may be experiencing from South America. With 5 flights, one of which landed at 9:30 at night and one of which meant getting to the airport for 6:30am, we were not sanguine about the forthcoming travelling experience. The boys were however brilliantly behaved both in the airport and on the flights and from the admiring looks and comments we caught for Ptolemy riding on his Gruffalo Trunki, they were also apparently a good advertisement for Trunki.
After several months in the Falkland Islands, starting our holiday in Santiago was not a breath of fresh air, but more like a hurricane. Stanley has no motorways, no multi-lane roads, no roundabouts, no traffic lights, no traffic jams and no high rise buildings. We’d been travelling for close to 12 hours including airport waiting time and transfer times and we’d landed in a large, vibrant and busy capital city. Although we had on our list of things to do the various tourist sights, we also had some things that might not be on every tourist’s itinerary. Going to a supermarket for example ranked quite highly on our list, especially when, walking into the Jumbo in the Costanera Centre on our first day, we found punnets of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries – all things that are in short supply and very expensive here in the Falklands. Daytime snacks sorted, we couldn’t really deny the boys their chance to visit the Lego shop, though the trip did instantly expand the Christmas and birthday lists by several items.
We did of course do the standard tourist things in Santiago, visiting San Cristobel, going to the national zoo, taking the funicular up the hill and the cable car along the top of the park. We also went to the Plaza del Armas and visited the cathedral, went to the national museum and walked around the nearby streets, finding the fish market in the process. To save the boys’ legs, for the first time ever, we also invested in the city bus tour, which did help in getting a sense of the different districts of Santiago.
One of the more definite experiences though arose from our decision to take an overnight trip to the Colchuagua valley to stay in Santa Cruz and visit a nearby vineyard. To do this we opted to hire a car. That all seemed quite sensible until it dawned on us that hiring a car in central Santiago meant driving in central Santiago. It also meant driving a car with all the controls on the wrong side in a capital city with a large number of one way, three plus lane, roads. I took on the driving and was relatively pleased that with the aid of google maps, it only took me about 4 circuits of the same streets to finally get in the right lane and about 45 mins of driving these streets to finally hit the right road to get out of Santiago. Fortunately, once on the motorway, the driving was straightforward, at least until Ptolemy opted for only about the second time in his life to be car sick. The vineyard tour that afternoon was a welcome arrival! The hotel in Santa Cruz was even better.
Santa Cruz is known for being a jumping off point for wine tours and for having had a huge earthquake in 2010 – 8.8 on the Richter scale. The town itself is not hugely attractive – there are some pretty colonial buildings in the main square, but it’s mainly a convenient place to stay. It also had some interesting playground signage, which did raise some questions…
Most importantly though, it was particularly convenient for one vineyard in the area that accepted children on tours (fairly rare), hence going on this trip in the first place.
Our hotel was a lovely oasis, being an old building, built around a courtyard, with a pool, and feeling a million miles from the street outside. It was also blessed with an owner who spoke some English. Up to this point we had encountered hardly anyone, even at the tourist sights in Santiago, who spoke much English unless it was a scheduled English language tour. Our Spanish is virtually non-existent, so the phrase book was getting heavy usage. After only one night in Santa Cruz though, it was time to drive back to Santiago to return the car and get ready to go to Puerto Varas for the next stage of our holiday.
Five penguins and us 