Chile Part 3 (El Quisco and Santiago)

Emily wasn’t feeling great the following day so she decided to chill at the apartment and we decided to hit a different beach.

Today we headed to El Quisco and Islã Negra. But first we stopped for breakfast at this little coffee shop in Curacavi. The lady behind the counter was so sweet and spoke English. Look at the pretty coffee and our tasty sandwiches. Sarah is all smiles now, but she was almost dead. Well, dead is an exaggeration. You see, we parked on the street and needed to cross the road. The traffic wasn’t busy but it was steady down this street so we had been waiting to cross for a bit. Then all of a sudden Trevor yells for us to cross and he goes for it. That’s when I see a white van that he didn’t see (this is Trevor here, I did see the white van, we had it by a mile) So I’m yelling, “Go! Go! There’s a van.” Sarah, whose strap on her sandal had broken earlier in the week, starts to run. She almost gets all the way across and the strap on her purse broke, again. Now lying in the road is her purse with her phone inside, as this van is barreling down the road. (Again, maybe barreling is a little strong). Mind you, this is the only phone that is working in Chile, without it we have no communication or GPS. (Our phone plans with Vivo, which boasts of working in over 175 countries, does not include Chile. It was quite bizarre.) Anyway, her phone also contains her “life,” like a lot of us. We all see her stop and turn around and we all know she’s debating – do I stand by and watch as it is smashed to pieces or do I run back out in the road to try to save it and possibly get hit by a van. That split second seems like forever as I thought my children were about to see her get killed right in front of them. But she wisely decided to stay out of the road and the driver of the van was thankfully paying attention and swerved to miss the purse. Thank goodness. It was quite the excitement. So anywho, Curacavi is a cute little Chilean town with nice people but I’m not sure what else you would do as a tourist there other than stop for coffee.

The other day when we were traveling to Viña Del Mar, I saw this weird almost military like entrance and wasn’t sure exactly what it was. Today, I found my answer, it is a nuclear testing site. Interesting.

El Quisco gives me Florida vibes. Houses here in Chile are a lot different from Brazil. Lots of Brazilian homes are made of block with clay tiled roofs. Many homes in Chile are made from wood with metal or shingled roofs. Once you get out of the big cities, many of the non main roads are still dirt.

I thought the beach here was much prettier than Viña Del Mar.

The water with it’s pretty blue and green and the beach, lacking the litter, looked a lot cleaner.

The ocean was just as cold, if not colder, and there were a lot of dogs laying on the beach here. The boys played in the water some but they mainly set their attention to hole digging.

As long as they had a good time, I was happy. Also, we didn’t bring any devices on this trip no iPads, Switches, nothing. It was great. The boys played games in the car with Sarah and Emily and we listened to music and enjoyed the scenery around us; like a good old fashioned road trip should be, in my opinion.

I personally liked the beach here better. It was prettier and cleaner but everyone else liked Viña Del Mar better because it had bigger waves.

We ate at a local place for lunch. The boys each ordered Chilean chorrillanas. Salted fries topped with caramelizes onions, meat, and a fried runny egg. Tuck ordered pork (I ate his egg. He likes his eggs overcooked) and Mason ordered beef. Chorrillanas are said to have originated from Valparaíso, the town next to Viña Del Mar that we visited the other day. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Trevor and I ordered empanadas, which are super popular in Chile.

So we are eating our food with a fork and knife like all civilized Brazilians do, when this older lady from the table next to us comes over and tells Sarah that we are supposed to eat empanadas with our hands; that’s what the napkins under each one are for; to pick up the empanadas and keep your hands clean. A fork and a knife are a no-no for empanada eating. We had no idea. Now we are culturally smarter. Thanks senhora.

With our bellies full, we were ready to head to Islã Negra. The only thing about driving is the parking. You almost always have to pay to park. So Trevor looked for a spot a little bit away from the restaurant to avoid paying. The weather was beautiful so no one minded walking. When we left the car this guy with an orange vest from over at a pay parking lot came walking towards us. We had no idea what was going on and he was acting so sketch so we just kept walking. I turned and saw him hugging some lady that was behind us. So weird. Anyways, we were expecting to find our car stolen when we got back but thankfully it was fine. As we round the block that same guy starts following us from a distance and we were all kind of spooked. I am trying to get the boys to hurry up and get in the car and they are just flapping their gums about who sits in the back. We get in the car and start to drive off before the guy gets to the car. Whew. As we are driving off, I see a sign for paying for parking. We didn’t see this sign where we were parked. I’m guessing the guy was the parking guy but we had no way of knowing. He was so sketch, following us like that. It’s so hard because most of the parking people wear logoed uniforms so you know that are legit. Oftentimes, people will just throw on vest and tell you, you have to pay to park when in reality, they don’t work for the city at all. Sometimes you can even get a ticket from the city because the fake parking guy parks you were you shouldn’t be parked. I don’t pay cash to any parking guys. If they don’t have the uniform and a credit card machine, I’m out.

I didn’t get any good pictures at Islã Negra. The beach we stopped out was super crowded and we didn’t stay but about an hour. So many Chileans smoke and they are allowed to smoke in outdoor restaurants, which I hate eating my food and tasting and smelling the smoke. There were too many smokers on this beach for me and the water was too cold for the boys, so we left.

Nothing left but to head home, which would prove to be harder said than done. There’s a little detail I left out from earlier in the day. Remember how way back in Part 1 when I said our car rental had a toll tag, well it had worked perfect all week until today.

About an hour into our drive down the same interstate highway we came across a manual toll. We roll up and show her our tag and she says no. We ask if she takes credit or debit card and she says no; cash only. We don’t have any. So Sarah is trying to explain that we were told the tag worked at all the tolls. We didn’t know what to do because we are in the middle of nowhere an hour into this trip. Thankfully, she was so kind and allowed us to go through. Well, we decided to go home a different route as we forgot to get Chilean pesos in town. Well, the new route had a manual toll too and this one was even more expensive and this lady was not having it. She said we had to backup down the road and turn around. The alternate route was going to take us over three and a half hours to get home. The trip only takes like an hour and a half. Uuuggghh. So we pulled over at a convenience store and Trevor and Sarah go in. The plan was to buy ice cream and ask if they could get charged more and have the cash back to pay the toll. Remember, Emily is our translator and she wasn’t with us. The longer it took inside the store, the more frustrated I was getting setting in the car. I recommended getting a few pesos when we first arrived but an “I told you so” wasn’t going to get us through the toll. It took Sarah a little longer but in the end, she was successful. They come back out with ice cream and 3,000 extra pesos and big smiles; that was until I told them that the toll was 4,000 pesos. So all that, and we still couldn’t go through the toll. I was in no mood for ice cream. On top of all this, my stomach had started hurting and when Trevor told me to eat my ice cream for the second time, I lost it. I don’t understand why I can’t just be chill. No, I have to act like a brat. At this point it has been an hour since we left the beach and we are right back where we started. So we tried to find another route home. Trev and Sarah decided to take some back roads to get to Casablanca in order to get back on the interstate. I tried to explain that I thought Casablanca wasn’t far enough up the road to miss the toll. They didn’t listen. Must have been my delivery. (This is Trevor here again, it was definitely the delivery) So anywho, we take this tight backroad and popped out on the interstate at Casablanca. Casablanca was exactly where the toll was. Uuuuggghh. All that extra time and we still ended up at the toll. We all held our breathe until I saw the sign. The toll here was only 2,800 pesos and we had 3,000. Everyone started screaming. You would have thought we had won the lottery. We made it back home but, needless to say, it was way too late to grab Emily and go out to dinner. We scrounged up something to eat in the apartment and went to bed.

Well, I tried to go to bed but my stomach still didn’t feel good. It wasn’t cramping or anything; it just didn’t feel right. Around 1:40am I felt like I needed to throw up and by 2:20am all the violent hurling had stopped. I felt like junk but I felt better than I had.

The next morning, we were ready to explore more of the city. Since we were driving, I felt better about being out and about. We found a parking deck and then walked a short ways to breakfast. You just never know what you’re going to see: from a divided one way bridge, Corte Transversal monument, to dancing gorillas.

The Blue Jar had pretty good food. Tucker felt like hot stuff with his cappuccino and fruity french toast. The waitress asked Trevor if he wanted anything added to his sandwich and he told her he would just eat it the way it came. Apparently, it only comes with meat and a bun. Haha! I decided to skip breakfast and just drink water.

We also learned that Santiago had a Kristy Kreme, so of course, we had to try it. Second breakfast like little hobbits, except for me. There was no way I was putting basically pure sugar on a weak stomach. The boys loved it and made short work of the dozen doughnuts. If the building on the left looks tall, well, it should. That is the Sky Costanera, the tallest skyscraper in South America. We thought about going but not all of our crew likes heights and we had done a similar 360 degree view experience in Curitiba. But if you want to go it cost about $18 per adult and $6 for kids. It’s located on the 61st and 67th floors of the Gran Torre Costanera and it houses the highest restaurant in the city.

After breakfast, we found a currency exchange place and grabbed pesos for our adventure tomorrow. Thank goodness. I still wasn’t feeling wonderful but it wasn’t terrible, so we grabbed the car and headed to San Cristóbal Hill.

San Cristóbal hill on the northern side of town is the third highest peak in the city with plenty of things to do. You can ride the funicular (incline tram), the teleférico (cable cars), or hike. It has the Chilean National Zoo, a Japanese garden, a 72 foot tall statue of the Virgin Mary, and a small chapel where Pope John Paul II prayed and blessed the City of Santiago back in 1987. The plan was to ride the funicular up and the cable car down. Why then, is this picture of the funicular going down? Well, on the way up I got sick. I tried to keep it down twice but the third time, I puked out the side of the tram. There was nothing I could do. Thankfully, it was only water but nonetheless embarrassing. Sarah was so sweet rubbing my arm as I tried to keep it down. So I puked and rallied.

The view from the top was amazing.

The boys and Sarah continued the hike to the Mary statue, while Emily and I chilled by the amphitheater. She encouraged me to drink some more water, which was well meaning as it was blazing hot, but it only led to me puking up the water in the trash can. What is wrong with me?

We rode the funicular down, as I was too scared to be fully enclosed in a small space with people at the moment, and then we had to walk back up to the zoo. There used to be a stop in the middle so you don’t have to walk back up but it is currently closed. Once, we got to the zoo, the animal smell was a bit much for me so I found a step and sat down while the rest of the group explored the zoo. They have elephants and lions and the animals were all out and about, unlike at some zoos where the animals are all bedded down and you can’t see them. The one thing to note is that the zoo is extremely hilly so be prepared. I was ready to go home by this point. Luckily, the rest of the group showed up and were ready to leave. We decided to have a bathroom break before we hiked back down. Good thing, too, because as I entered the bathroom I felt sick again but all the stalls were closed and the closest thing to me was the sink. Yep, I just threw up in the sink. The lady beside just stared at me but there was nothing I could do. Like I said it was nothing but water so it wasn’t as disgusting as it could have been. At that point I was done. They dropped me off at the apartment around 5pm and I went to sleep. They came back at 7pm and Trev checked on me and I ate a cracker, which I threw up later, and then went back to sleep. Tomorrow was adventure day and I wasn’t about to miss it. I slept until the next morning. I have no idea what they did all evening.

I woke up feeling better so I braved another cracker. This time the cracker stayed down. I was good to go! Let’s take an adventure.