The Weekend on the Coast: July 11-12, 2014

For the weekend, Lindsay, Garv, Diego (one of Garv's co-workers), and I went to the Pacific Coast of Chile.  It's winter down here so the coast isn't crowded, but it's no where near as cold as as an Iowa winter so Chileans still go to the coast on weekends.  There was a lot of craziness and awesomeness this weekend, especially Friday and Saturday, so I'm going to divide the weekend into two parts. Also, instead of writing in prose, I'm going to bullet point the highlights and lowlights(?)...

1. The Trip to Zapallar, Friday, July 11, 2014
The trip from Santiago to the coastal town of Zapallar was supposed to take about one hour and forty-five minutes.  Instead it took three hours.  First, coming out of Santiago, we missed an exit because their exits here are poorly labeled.  So we had to turn around.  Before missing an exit, we paid the west-bound toll.  But then to get back to where we wanted, we had to pay the east-bound toll at the same toll plaza and then pay the same west-bound toll.  Three F-ing tolls in five minutes!  That cost us fifteen minutes and eight dollars.

The next adventure cost us an hour as crawled along the interstate because the road went from one lane to two for construction.  So not the best start...



2. Seafood in Zapallar
We found a restaurant on the Pacific.  It was a delicious--though I didn't take any pictures.  There was a Porsche parked next to us in the parking lot.  That anecdote is relevant for #3.

3. Finding a Hotel
When we set off to Zapallar, we planned to find a room in Zapallar.  Zapallar is a town of 4000 people.  There was a Porsche in the parking lot of the seafood restaurant.  Then there are these first two sentences from Fodor's Travel Guide's description of Zapallar:

"An aristocratic enclave for the past century, Zapallar doesn't promote itself as a vacation destination. In fact, it has traditionally been reluctant to receive outsiders." 

Obviously, we didn't find a place to stay as Zapallar turned out to be a place didn't want three random gringos and a Mexican-American to show up.  There was a hotel in Zapallar, and it was very nice, but there was no one there to check us in.  They probably didn't expect anyone to show up at 12:45 at night.  Since we were unlucky in Zapallar, we set out south to find a hotel.

4. The Panamerican Hotel in Quintero, Chile
After about an hour drive, we found the Panamerican Hotel in Quintero, Chile, a port on the coast.  It was probably best we drove in during the dark as the drive out of town the next morning revealed lots of sketchiness.  Quintero is an industrial chemical city so imagine the type of town and hotel you might find there. The hotel was rated "4-star," but these were Quintero and not American standards.  The room was a 1-star level.  We had to share beds that were not very big, it was not very clean, and it smelled, ummm, musty?.  The reason the hotel was a 4-star, however, was because of this:

That is from the doorway of our room--incredible view.  But it doesn't account for the fact that the interior made it made a Motel Six or even Joe Schmoe's Budget Motel seem paradisical.

5. The Drive Along the Coast: Concon, Renaca, Vina del Mar, and Valparaiso
Saturday, July 12, 2014
On Saturday morning we made our way down the coast through resort towns until reaching Valparaiso, a major port in Chile.  It was a gorgeous drive and helped us forget about the previous night's accommodations.  Below are some of the pictures we took at the stops:

6. Traffic Stop in Valparaiso
Immediately after entering Valparaiso we were unluckily stopped at a random road block.  Naturally, the carabineros (Chilean police) had a lot to digest with four foreigners in a rental car. There were two things that really confused them.   Diego rented the car and drove.  He has dual citizenship in the US and Mexico and that really threw them.  But what REALLY confused them was that on his Iowa driver's license and his passport card (for citizens who travel from the US to Mexico or Canada frequently, they can get a passport card the size of a driver's license), he only had one last name.  They wanted to know why his second last name wasn't on his documentation.  He had to explain over and over that in the US, we only used ONE last name!  Eventually it took long enough that their shift ended or they had fulfilled their bureaucratic obligation or whatever so they let us go and took down the roadblock.  Why was the lack of a second last name (one's mother's maiden name--so I would be Anthony Michael Klein-Dunn) such a big deal? Because in Chile, one's family, school, parish, and neighborhood are very important and says a lot about someone.  It's even very important in getting a job.

  What would they be able to tell from an American's second last name? Who knows?  I guess it's just a habit for them.  Throughout the questioning, we weren't really worried--we just wondered what they were doing because all of the discussion between Diego and the police were in Spanish.  But as Diego informed us about what was going on, we couldn't help but laugh.  Four foreigners in a rental car?  No big deal.  The US Federal government and the state of Iowa only includes one last name on official forms of identification.  That's a big deal.

7. Boat Ride
We make it to Valpo, parked, and headed toward the port to check out the huge cargo ships (like the one in the background, not the smaller ones in the foreground).

While checking out the huge shipping vessels, we were quickly accosted by hockers selling boat rides in the harbor.  For $60 total, we could get a private ride on a smaller boat, which we quickly agreed to.  Below is our boat:

Here we are on the boat:

Here are some sea lions, which like to sun themselves in some places I wouldn't expected.  According to our guide, they can jump six feet out of the water.  And we got within six feet of them...

And here's part of Chile's naval fleet.  You can see three ships: one bought from the US Navy, one bought from the Dutch navy, and one bought from the British navy.  Side note: in the 1880s and 1890s, Chile had a larger navy than the US.  Theodore Roosevelt changed that.  It's one of many reasons he's on Mount Rushmore.

You'll notice how calm the water was.  Apparently, it isn't always this nice in Chile in the winter but I've caught amazing weather when I was here.  Here's another picture of the tranquility, which the city of Valpo extending up the hills.

It was a calm and beautiful day on the water.  My only concern was if a sea lion would jump into our boat since we were so close to it.  Lindsay's concern was whether or not the engine would blow up since something wasn't quite right and the two guys on the boat kept messing with something.  I think it was the bilge pump that wasn't working properly.  Regardless, they got out a dime and fixed the idle so it was all good.  (That previous sentence is an inside joke that only Mom and Dad will understand.  Also, it's Garv's joke and not mine, but I found it uproariously funny.)

8. Valparaiso's Lows and Highs (Literally and Metaphorically)
Valparaiso is a rough town because it is full of sailors, stevedores, and teamsters, not necessarily known as scions of culture and erudition.  Near the port area, it's pretty rough.  I didn't take any pictures because I was scared to take my iphone out of my pocket.  But in this rougher area, we did find a restaurant called Porteno's that was being featured on national television as we walked in.  It was seafood, but it wasn't as good as the previous night.

Valpo is built on hills overlooking the harbor and it creates some really interesting urban geography.  We randomly made our way to a very nice neighborhood which offered this view of the water:

We ended our day at bar in the more touristy area on the edge of the tough part.  We wanted to catch the end of the third place match.  Here's a picture of Garv and I watching soccer.  You can tell we just started watching since we weren't bored yet.

And then here's the group toasting the end of our trip to Santiago.  And toasting cheap beer.  A pint was only $2.

In retrospect, Valpo is one of the most interesting cities based on urban geography because of the vertical zones and wish I would have given that aspect of the city more attention.

9. Best Western
After our beers in Valpo, we drove to Vina del Mar which is the next city over.  It's the resort area and we had much better luck finding a hotel.  We found a very nice Best Western that was completely westernized and got two rooms so that we could get some decent sleep (clean, towels, breakfast).  We arrived there at 7 PM, took a siesta, and then went out to eat at about ten.

10. Earthquake!
The whole trip I really wanted to eat Argentinian food which is basically lots of steak and lots Malbec.  We get to the restaurant and the power along that block is out.  So it's apparent that I won't be eating Argentinian while I'm here.  But that's ok because next summer we might do a weekend trip to Buenos Aires so I can get the real thing.

So instead we went to an Italian restaurant that was highly recommended.  The food and wine were excellent (again, no pictures!) but the highlight was the earthquake.  Before the entrees came, we feel a little shake for about five seconds and then it stopped.  Then the people in the restaurant started clapping since it was only a little one.  It was my first earthquake and was a 5.something--not as severe as the 6.1 in the northern Chile on Sunday.  I wasn't really scared because it was over before I fully processed what was happening.

11. Karaoke Bar
We finished the night at a Cuban-themed karaoke bar.  This is the only picture I took inside because images of Fidel Castro and Che Guevera annoy me and I am not going to promulgate them.

Cuban Revolutionary decor aside (and I'm sure I was the only one perturbed with the communist propaganda on the walls) it was an awesome karaoke bar.  What made this one awesome was that there was a DJ and one singer who could actually sing.  Then on the screens throughout the bar, the words would scroll so everyone could sing along (this is better because then I didn't have to listen to people who suck at singing try to sing).  And my do Chilean women love Mexican and Puerto Rican pop songs (possibly more on this in a subsequent post).  They went nuts.  We knew the origin of the songs because Diego pointed out them out to us.  The gringos, however, did not like the Spanish language songs as much and by about 2:00 AM, we'd had enough.  The Chileans probably partied for three or four more hours, but it was bed time for us in our clean, comfortable, western, and decidedly non-communist hotel rooms.