Santiago, Chile Feb 27th - Mar 3rd, 2011

Travelling: I took a short, few hour bus ride over from Vina del Mar.  It was a relaxing, quick ride.

Playing around with shade effects on the ride

Lol airport seats on my way flying out, I dove on them to nap for a little

Culture/Stuff about there: Santiago is the capital of Chile.  It is a nice sized city with lots of their business culture here.  Most people don't realize that most of the southern part of Chile is inhabited, and is Patagonia, a beautiful place to trek for a week or two.  I enjoyed it here, the night life was okay, and the view of the Andes Mountains all around you make it an amazingly beautiful sight to see all the time. They also love their ice cream.

Random downtown business building

My good friend Alejandra took me for ice cream and proceeded to complain that I was not allowed to have a chocolate/vanilla cone when they had over 50 flavors.  Fair enough, thanks again!

Language: Spanish, besides Brazil and some of the French owned countries up North, everywhere in South America speaks Spanish. It does change from location to location, just like how people speak differently in California than New York.  In Chile, it was the most difficult for sure, people joke that you need to speak Chileano.  The pace of their speaking here is a much quicker and more difficult to understand Spanish.  It was nice to be able to try and recall some Spanish from high school, and attempt to start learning again. I did a little Rosetta Stone here, but knowing the key verbs is crucial to get points across, even if they are not used correctly.

Safety: I felt safe here as I have on most of my travels, I did not see anything suspicious going on.

Transportation: Car is the main means of transportation here, with some bikes and such. It is much like a US city with cars and the subway, and taxis.

Population: ~5,000,000 people

Currency: Chilean Peso, currently 1USD = 506 CLP

Place Stayed at: Again, it has been so long that I forget the name of the hostel, nothing to write home about though so no big deal.  I met some cool people at it though, and I at least have a few pictures of this one.

I remember it mainly as the pink hostel

Chillin with my peeps

Food: Nothing special stood out to me as far as food went, not the worst, not the best, and about 1/2-1/3 of the US prices I am used to spending, but not as good of quality.

Beers/Drinks: None of the beers seemed like nationally popular beers, and the main drink was pisco, which was a grape berry pisco, lemon, and sugar.  It was not my cup of tea so I didn't have too much of it, but had to try it.  I enjoyed it, but too sweet for me.

Whack, this is what you come to love about South America, chillin on the streets walking around with drinks

Yeah, i'll indulge in $2-$5 bottles of wine

Entertainment: The nightlife was decent, the city view from the mountain top was nice to see.  There did not seem anything too crazy here though.

I had to stop about ten times on my ride up, I had a one speed bike and it took me 2 hours to the top

Almost there...

It took me 3 minutes to get down at sunset...

but the views when I reached the top were worth the effort

Big shopping mall they had

Internet: My internet at the hostel way okay, I cannot comment on a set up home internet connection though.

Sites to see/Things to do: Take the trolley to the top of the mountain to view the city, do not bike, IT TOOK ME 2 hours, and I almost died.  Also, walk around and take in the beautiful setting of the Andes Mountains enclosing you.

Romantic spot to watch this display with a loved one, didn't have a loved one, and took the picture on an awful setting

Recommendation: Come visit for a few days on your way to the Atacama Desert on your way up North, or on your way down to Patagonia.  I also recommend renting a bike for like $5-10 and riding around the city for the day

This is the beginning of Rick and I touring the city, we soon got told after a bunch of stairs that it's really frowned upon to have shirts off in public here.  Jersey problems I guess, it was hot as could be though.

Cool other view point we found

This girl was loving my pose

Some more views

Other Pictures:

This had to be my first picture here, 2 girls with throw back dress basketball jerseys, so sexy

Huge church procession going on when we arrived

At the top of the mountain they had this statue overlooking the city (maybe providing protection)

Rating: 7/10, cool city to see as it is the capital, nothing piqued my interest to stay long though.

-Reese

Vina Del Mar & Valparaiso, Chile

Traveling: I took a bus over from Mendoza, Argentina to this beach town area.  It was certainly the most miserable travelling experience I've had.  The bus for some reason played music videos really loud almost the whole time, from about 8pm until the morning or so.  I took this bus to sleep over night by the way.  When we hit the border, instead of the usual bus driver getting off to get our stuff stamped, we were woken up, had to wait at customs for an hour.  Then they took out all our luggage and put them up on a table for dogs to sniff.  Then they went through scanners.  After this, I got back on the bus, and passed out for a few hours.  By the time I arrived, I was not in a good mood, but you can't be mad for long if you want to enjoy life.  I met up with a few people on the bus, Yanna and Rick, when we got off the bus, it took us another miserable hour or two to find a hostel to stay at since we did not book ahead of time and this was a spur of the moment trip before Santiago.  I took some deep breaths afterwards and was ready to see the city.

My pathetic dessert on the way there

Culture/Stuff about there: This is a beach area of Chile.  I was pleasantly surprised, the night life seemed pretty solid, and it is one of the graffiti capitals of South America.  Everywhere we went, there was amazing graffiti around.  I will focus mainly on that for this blog entry as I don't have many other intriguing stories.  We went to an Alejandro Sans concert, where all the young girls were going nuts for him.  I would compare to the crowd to that of a Justin Bieber concert in North America, although I've never actually been to one.  I still enjoyed it though.

Language: Spanish, besides Brazil and some of the French owned countries up North, everywhere in South America speaks Spanish. It does change from location to location, just like how people speak differently in California than New York.  In Chile, it was the most difficult for sure, people joke that you need to speak Chileano.  The pace of their speaking here is a much quicker and more difficult to understand Spanish.  It was nice to be able to try and recall some Spanish from high school, and attempt to start learning again. I did a little Rosetta Stone here, but knowing the key verbs is crucial to get points across, even if they are not used correctly.

Safety: Again, I felt completely safe, the only concern were people trying to scalp false tickets for the Alejandro Sans concert.  The cops were also going after scalpers, luckily we did not get scammed here.

Transportation: Car is the main means of transportation here, with some bikes and such. It is much like a US city with cars and the subway, and taxis.

Population: ~300,000 people

Currency: Chilean Peso, currently 1USD = 506 CLP

Place Stayed at: It has honestly been so long that I do not remember the hostel, we searched and found a random one, which was very nice and family oriented

My boy Liran and I as I caught him randomly on the way to the hostel

The first and only hostel write up I've done to this day

Food: Nothing special stood out to me as far as food went, not the worst, not the best, and about 1/2-1/3 of the US prices I am used to spending, but not as good of quality.

Beers/Drinks: None of the beers seemed like nationally popular beers, and the main drink was pisco, which was a grape berry pisco, lemon, and sugar.  It was not my cup of tea so I didn't have too much of it, but had to try it.  I enjoyed it, but too sweet for me.

Entertainment: The nightlife was okay here, I do not recall the areas.  The main attraction is to get to the beach and see all of the great graffiti work that is around town.  A photographer would have a great time here for a few days.

Internet: It was similar here as elsewhere, I just had a random hostel wireless connection that was mediocre and slow.  I cannot compare it to a set up connection that is inevitably better.

Sites to see/Things to do: The amazing graffiti art, the beaches.

Ma boy

Insanely realistic

My favorite piece

Politician?

Two people having sex?  Both female?  No idea here

People at work, they are told to do graffiti and get to work on the streets

Same spot, different person

Some more really cool graffiti

Recommendation: Don't spend much time here, but as with Mendoza, if you have some extra time stop by for a few days to see all the amazing graffiti around the city.

Other Pics:

Views of the city

Statue of some dude I don't know

Cool steps

Building on the cliff looked like it was about to topple over

Rating: 7/10, the nightlife was okay, the beaches were decent, and the graffiti was amazing.  I would not live here, but enjoyed my visit.

-Reese

Mendoza, Argentina - Feb 23rd-25th, 2011

Traveling: I took a bus, it took about 16 hours and cost about 380 Argentinian pesos, slightly under $100 USD.  It was comfortable and I slept a good portion of the time.  I also typed up a bunch of stuff on my laptop and read the other part of the time in Spanish to learn a little more since there was nothing else to keep myself occupied.  I ended up meeting Rick getting off the bus here, and traveled a few more places with him.  He's a chill dude that travels a ton, and when he doesn't have money to travel anymore, he sets up shop to make money to fund future travels, my kind of person.

Culture/Stuff about there: This area is not known as a large tourist attraction, it is simply the wine area of Argentina where most of their wines are produced.  Argentina as a country are very well known for their steaks and wines.  I was heading over to Chile, so why not make a stop at my first winery in an area well known for it on the way.  Other than that, it is your normal smaller city with not too much going on. 

Language: Spanish, besides Brazil and some of the French owned countries up North, everywhere in South America speaks Spanish. It does change from location to location, just like how people speak differently in California than New York. It was nice to be able to try and recall some Spanish from high school, and attempt to start learning again. I did a little Rosetta Stone here, but knowing the key verbs is crucial to get points across, even if they are not used correctly.  People are nice and will help if you try.

Safety: I felt rather safe here, it is a small city area with not much going on except for the wineries that are plentiful to visit.  However, a lot of streets out of the main area seemed poorly lit, as well as lots of random ditches to funnel the rain.  Walk cautiously on the sidewalks to not become a victim to them.

Transportation: It is best to just walk the city area as everything is close here, and take charters to any events you want to do such as visiting wineries or going rafting.

Watch out though, apparently the roads flood easily

Population: 111,000 - it's a small city to see while passing through

Currency: Argentinian Peso, it is approximately 4 pesos to 1 USD

Place Stayed at: I believe I stayed at hostel Internacional, it was fine, nothing special.  It also had some more of its own hostels through out the city to party with which was nice.  However, I think some of the others were nicer and I'd recommend them over this one.

shot from outside w/ the graffiti 

Ooooops, looks like we could reach down and grab some alcohol to take shots of.

Food: The way to go in Argentina is just steaks, steaks, and more steaks, with tons of wine.  We had about 5 good bottles of wine, and amazing steak dinners each for about $120 total or so.

They were happy I was getting a shot in front of their place

Beers/Drinks: 

Entertainment: The rafting was fun, white water rapids.  I think we did a level 4/5 or something like that.  It was my first time and supposed to be challenging, however I thought we did not go through enough challenging stuff, still fun to do for a first time.  And the view through the Andes mountains was something surreal.

Let's do it up

Little man stepping up to the plate, there is probably an age requirement in the USA, but not here

Not sure if he was having fun with me, or pissed that I snapped a shot of him

Some Randoms of us:

The toughest part by far

Notice who has no paddle, we were joking about how it was not tough enough to potentially fall out, and then we stood up and hit a rock, which tossed 3 of us over, and my paddle down stream

Myself and the Andes Mountains

German+Me+Andes

Team shot afterwards

So insanely peaceful, would love to sit somewhere like this all the time

Same thing

The water was freezing, it was not worth it to stand in the water for this shot

Next was the wineries, which Mendoza is very famous for in South America, I am not sure how they compare with the rest of the world.  I will just post a bunch of the pics from the wine tours.

    Sure, I'll take some grapes to kick it off

Where a bunch of the wine is stored

All dem barrels

And me with them

My lovely tour guide pouring for the whole group

My crew

Wine fields where the grapes are grown

Not sure, I like it though

The fields again

Rick going to town

That's quite a bunch of bottles

The wine cellar for tasting

I had no idea there was an English explanation, I sat at the Spanish table for half of the explaining

Take it to the house

We also went to learn about oils and some food sampling as well

Internet: It was not great at the hostel, but sufficient

Sites to see/Things to do: This is a great area to do the rapids and wine tasting, nothing else special though

Recommendation: No nightlife or anything, skip this city if you are pressed for time.  If passing through with free time, stay for a few days and enjoy the activities I did

Other Pics:

Graffiti #1

Graffiti #2

There was a beauty pageant which I idiotically missed

A decent shot of the Andes in the distance

Pepitos!

She took orders on the laptop and processed them remotely, odd for a McDonald's

The center of the town had a big event going on

The busy street at night time

A shot on the way back from the rapids, I wish I had a better camera to capture the way this place truly looked

Rating: 6/10

-Reese