Urban spaces

A cruise isn’t a great way to see a country’s urban spaces, but that’s okay because I’m not usually all that interested in them, especially not on this trip. And to frank, none of the towns (with one exception) were particularly nice or fascinating (or clean). It didn’t help that I injured myself twice, once in Santiago and once in Buenos Aires (BsAs as the locals refer to it) so saw very little of either, but Doug saw more of them and had the same opinion. Let’s just say that civic pride – as opposed to national pride – doesn’t appear to be a major virtue in Chile or Argentina.

Santiago de Chile

We had two nights in Santiago, staying at the Sheraton, before our transfer to Valparaiso and the cruise ship. The drive from the airport goes past an enormous shanty town and the polluted Mapocho river which was full of rubbish, so not a great first impression.

The hotel was very nice, gave me free wifi, and the food in the bar and at the breakfast buffet was outstanding. But I was disappointed that our only view of the Andes was doomed to be the little we saw through the window on the other side of the plane as we flew into the city, because pollution obscures the view almost all the time. We saw a few peaks early Saturday and that was it, and that’s considered an excellent view by normal standards.

Jet lag was slamming us, and I didn’t really want to go on the city/winery tour that was included in the pre-cruise hotel stay. However, I didn’t want to get out of it the way I did, which was to trip over the world’s stupidest bollards in the city square, badly bruising my wrist and knee, and skinning the hell out of my elbow! So I saw exactly twenty minutes of the tour, was carted back to the hotel and given some first aid by the cruise/hotel coordinator, while Doug gayly went off and ate, drank and was merry without me. (To be fair, I told him to 🙂 )

Therefore, the only part of Santiago I saw, beside the road from the airport and the road out to Valparaiso, was the city square and its vast, ugly, obscenely overdecorated and tasteless cathedral.

Saint Iago (James) of course

All the overwrought iconography of my Catholic upbringing on display, as well as obscene wealth (guess where the money came from – hint, not the Church)

Since we were there before Xmas, of course the church was playing turgid versions of carols, and had this nativity scene – I thought the crucifix behind the manger was a bit tactless, in the circumstances

The cathedral takes up one whole side of the civic square. The other sides are made up of current government buildings, like this, the town hall:

Delightfully, there was a whole row of xmas ‘trees’ on display, made up of different objects or crafts – this one is crocheted!

Also on display was one of the many, many stray but good natured dogs we saw in urban South America. This one was hanging out underneath a police van – ironically the carabineros use similar dogs in their work

About as clear as the view got (you can just see one of the lower Andes peaks over the nearby hills. Yes, the world’s longest and nearly the tallest mountain range is really hiding behind the smog.)

So while I lay on the bed in the hotel room, suffering, Doug went to a winery

And the presidential palace

Did I mention the winery?

All I can say about Valparaiso is that the coach we were taken there in was horrible and old, and made me sick, and Valparaiso itself looks like a colourful dump. Okay, they’ve had an earthquake or two. But Christchurch was laid flat in one and managed not to look like everyone had given up on the place.

Puerto Montt

This is a small city, based on fishing but now a major hub for the area, of no great distinction. We passed through it only briefly there and back on our tour around Lake Llanquihue, past Osorno Volcano and Calbuco Volcano. We went through Puerto Varas,  which sits right on the massive lake Llanquihue, and is nicknamed ‘the city of roses’ for the truly lovely displays in the town, in the morning and returned there for a wonderful lunch.

But before we could eat lunch, we visited the Petrohué River and falls. Pretty but crowded, with the usual inconsiderate bunch clogging up view points with taking selfies and being dopes. Then we had to endure the road up into the Andes onto Osorno Volcano. The weather had been okay until then, but when we arrived at the visitor centre at the top of the mountain, we were hit by sleet, wind and snow.

Poor Doug, who had been battling a massive nosebleed all day, sat down to enjoy a chocolate con cognac (which we’d been recommended as a way to beat the cold) and his nose erupted again, continuing on and off the rest of the day. We didn’t see much scenery after that because of the worsening weather and him needing to sit quietly, so we didn’t explore the town of Varas at all. Others of our party did – and one of them had her wallet stolen from her backpack, which really upset her. She didn’t lose much but she had been misled by the information about regional Chile being so lovely and crimefree. Well, not so much.

We had a reasonable day despite things, but I can’t say it was particularly memorable except for the bad stuff and the delicious lunch.

The road up the volcano

Petrohué river and falls.

Osorno Volcano (I think – there were a lot of them!)

Castro, Isla Chiloe

This was the quirkiest town we visited, and charming enough for a very small fishing village with a pretty small economic base.. The weather was showery so we rode the tender over, and stuck to the waterfront. We  walked around the fish and food market, and resisted most of the stuff in the ‘ethnic’ market next door (I had to tell the sellers of so much lovely woollen stuff that ‘Mi casa es muy caliente’ which did the trick) although we did pick up a few little things for friends and ourselves. The main features of note on the seafront were the large numbers of old trains and traction engines, and the bright colours of many of the houses. It’s all very hilly and steep once you leave the waterfront, so it’s not somewhere I’d like to live.

A rainbow over Castro as we approached the mooring point:

A cheese stall

Coloured potatoes were clearly in season 🙂

Those are dried (smoked?) shell fish on the strings, and the bundles on the left are ropse of pig hide (which are cut up and boiled for eating)

Check out the fish

There was some very nice scenery as we passed along Isla Chiloe on our way out to sea again:

Puerto Chacabuco

It was pissing down, windy (gale force winds) and cold when we arrived at this port so I stayed on the boat and read. Doug went on an excursion to the Simpson River Reserve and then to Coyhaique City for lunch. He took a lot of pictures but none of them convinced me that I wished I’d gone with him. And that’s pretty much all I have to say about Chacabuco.

The view from the bow of the boat:

The town, from the boat

These are a few of the photos Doug took that day:

The main thing he talked about was the food 🙂

Punta Arenas

The worst stop on the trip, at least for me – Doug went to Magdelena Island to see penguins, and you can see his pictures on this post. Those not on excursions could take a shuttle from the dock out of the dock and to a large, ugly shopping mall on the edge of the light industrial area outside the dock. Which was closed, being Sunday, when we arrived, at nine am. The weather was bitterly cold, windy and starting to snow, the mall was horrible, and all I wanted to was spend the rest of my Chilean money. We were warned that most of the town would be closed, there were no buses into the centre which was a fair distance from the dock, and no information about getting there or back. So I said fuck it, went back to the dock, spent the rest of my money at a small stall near the ship, and went back to our room. I took no photos because, you know, dock. Ugly and boring.

Doug had a great day, although it was five hours long, four of which were spent on a slow crowded ferry, and not even penguins are worth that for me. I liked his pictures though 🙂

Ushuaia, Argentina

I had high hopes for Ushuaia. Lonely Planet made it sound exciting, a hub of wildlife, food and good beer, and I was sad to find we would be there only half a day – on Doug’s birthday of all days. However, we found it actually hard to fill up the few hours we were there, because frankly, Ushuaia is a bloody dump. A dump right in front of the Andes, it’s true, but a dump nonetheless, with broken pavements, rundown infrastructure, a lot of litter, and a sad mix of high end shops and truly crappy tourist knick-knack outlets. Nearly all of which were closed because of siesta (never mind the importance of cruise boats to the faltering economy, señorita, the siesta comes first!). And the prices of stuff in the shops that were open made my eyes bleed.

So we walked around, managed not to break our ankles on the shitty walkways, and went in search of the reportedly ubiquitous craft beers in the region.  We found one bar open, and Doug had his beers – which were nice enough, but nothing we haven’t had better in the UK or Australia. Then after four beers, he wobbled back to the boat, and I made sure he didn’t fall off the dock 🙂 Oh well, we’d seen Glacier Alley in the morning, and he had a wonderful day all in all.

Yup, those are the Andes

A tour bus made up like a train

No idea what this was about – “Your worst danger is ignorance”

Inside the bar where we had the beer

Just a pretty legume growing in someone’s garden

This is the National Geographic boat which tracked us through Antartica, and landed people on the penguin colony there (and at Cape Horn). Can’t say I’d fancy it considering how rough it got in our much bigger vessel:

A couple more shots of the Andes from the boat as we left Ushuaia:

Stanley, Falkland Islands

After the amazing time we had in Antarctica, I wouldn’t have cared if we hadn’t left the ship until Buenos Aires, but we booked an excursion to see penguins at Bluff Cove, and hoped for the best. To our amazement – and that of the captain – the weather was idyllic. Warm, breezy, dry and with perfect sunshine – he said he’d never seen Stanley like that, and the locals told us that they’d be lucky to see five days a year like that (and since it has the same latitude as London, that’s not surprising 🙂 ). Stanley was everything that Ushuaia was not – charming, welcoming, clean, neat, and full of wonderful stuff to buy for friends and ourselves.

Plus the penguins which you can see on the other post 🙂

It’s strongly reminiscent of Scottish coastal village, particularly those on Mull, and indeed there is a strong Scottish representation in the population of two thousand people. It has the same problems and limitations as any remote island off the beaten track, and if it hadn’t been for the Falklands War, perhaps it would have remained isolated and little known. But the war made it and the Falklands famous, and has been a firm favourite with cruise ships (when they can dock there) ever since.

We had a ball, even if we didn’t get to drink any locally made beer, and my biggest regret was that we didn’t have an overnight there. Everyone who went on an excursion saw penguins, and more, and as far as I could tell, everyone loved the place. I want to go back.

This was a little native plants conservancy, right on the waterfront

British pride on display

The police station. There are four cops for the whole of Stanley.

The naval history museum

The mizzen mast from the SS Great Britain

Waitrose 🙂

The Anglican church. Those are whalebones making that arched structure – you see that in Scotland too.

A caracara – we saw them closer but never got a good shot of them, damn it. The Falklands is an important habitat for the striated caracara.

Orange dandelion like flowers in the churchyard

The names of ships, going back to the Beagle, picked out in stones on the estuary bank.

We saw lupins all over the place in South America, but this garden has the prettiest show

Puerto Madryn, Argentina

Our main interest in this port was the supposed presence of southern right whales in the bay, and elephant seals. We certainly saw plenty of whales the day before, while sailing towards Madryn, but when we got there, the wind had driven them all out of the bay or at least hidden them. The male seals had long since gone. So the main feature of the day was wind, and since that was up to Beaufort scale 9 (possibly 10), to the point where the ship had to run her engines all day just to stay at the dock, even with dozens of mooring ropes, I decided not to go outside. The other factor was stone dust which blanketed the town to the point where you could barely see it at times. I didn’t want to breathe that.

Doug went ashore and confirmed I hadn’t missed much. It is a seaside city, not that pretty or interesting. Even though it was high holiday season for Argentina, there were very few people on the beach or the water. The Riviera, it’s not.

This flag was right outside our stateroom. It ended tied up in a knot by the time we left, because of the violent changes in wind direction

That haze isn’t a cloud, but stone dust

In the town (why did Doug take this photo? No idea.)

Our boat, moored

The boat had to be tethered to these mooring islands, and the pilot and crew had the dangerous task of landing the guys onto this (all with gales blowing) and then releasing the ropes. Not a job I would want!

Montevideo, Uruguay

By this time, we were both tired, and had little interest in Montevideo as a destination. It looked uncannily like Sydney or Melbourne with its stone colonial architecture, though. We docked at the container yard, which stank, and gave me even less reason to go out, so I stayed in and packed, as we had to separate our luggage into two parts for the Iguazu falls part of the trip. Doug went out, and it looked interesting enough to spend a day there, if you were bored.

Buenos Aires

We had a day in Buenos Aires before the official end of the tour, and then an evening and half a day on the return from Iguazu. True to form, I managed to hurt myself within twenty minutes of setting out, spraining my ankle pretty solidly, but still had to walk three kilometres back to the city centre to get some cash, buy an ankle support, and catch a taxi. (You can imagine how thrilled I was to sprain my ankle right before we spent three days in a nature reserve.)

Ironically it was in a nature reserve where I did the damage, tripping over my own feet. We had discovered an ecological reserve near to the city and the docks, which was apparently good for bird watching (it was!) and caught a taxi there. Unfortunately the taxi driver took us to the far end of the reserve (despite us insisting we wanted the other entrance) so when I hurt myself just after we entered the place, I had to walk all the way back and then into town – it was hot as hell and humid with it too.

So my view of BA was necessarily jaundiced, but even Doug agreed it was a pretty grotty town (although the reserve was nice and full of twitchers.) Lots of grand buildings and posh shops, but again, broken pavements and roads. Additionally, as you walk through the main shopping area (which isn’t very glitzy, more Tottenham Court Road than Oxford Street), you are accosted every couple of seconds by people saying ‘Cambio, cambio’ – in other words, money changing. Though this is completely illegal, the cops were apparently blind to it going on, walking past the spruikers without saying anything. It made the experience very creepy, and didn’t make me want to see more of the city, ankle or no damn ankle.

After we got back to the ship and I was ensconced with my foot up, despite many strong warnings from our excursions director on the boat, and my own warnings (grrr), Doug walked solo through the docks area and up to MALBA.  We had both wanted to see this, but on his arrival, he met a couple with whom we’d become friendly, who told him the gallery was really not worth visiting. So they decided to catch a taxi over to the natural sciences museum instead – and that’s when Doug was passed a fake hundred peso note (about AU$10) by the bloody taxi driver. This is the only time this, or any other crime, has happened to either us while travelling 🙁

Doug reported that the museum was nice – dusty, but with a great collection of Argentina’s dinosaurs. I wish I’d seen it. We didn’t go out to the town to eat or watch tango, but there was a tango/bolo show on the ship that night, which was enough. I’m not that big a fan of tango.

The entrance to the reserve, looking back towards the town

There was some wonderful habitat – hard to imagine this expand of reeds is on the edge of one of the busiest cities in South America.

A goose nesting on an island in one of the ponds

The road back to the city centre

Christmas tree up in the shopping centre where I got more cash:

Dinosaurs at the natural sciences museum.

Arctotherium, an extinct short faced bear

On our return to BA we stayed at the third Sheraton of the trip – Sheraton Libertador – and we were most unimpressed by the tiny room (you had to pretty much go into the bathroom sideways) and the high prices of the food and drink (nearly twice what we paid at the much nicer Sheraton in Iguazu). I was still hobbling and we were both exhausted after the falls excursion, so we didn’t go out to explore any more of BA. Correction, I didn’t go out, but Doug made a return visit to the reserve and obtained some very good photos of the local birds. I can’t say I’m sorry at all. It’s not somewhere I’d want to return to – the whole country in fact. I didn’t like the people much, although we met a couple who were lovely. It was all so very different from Japan, that’s for sure.

But these were just dots on the overall experience we had, and despite my whining here, I wouldn’t have missed the entire trip for the world. But if I ever go back to South America, it will be for the natural beauty, not its towns.