Next morning we went up to the utterly massive cross they’d built recently on a high hill in Coquimbo. They’re big on religious symbolism in South America it seems. The cross itself was very impressive and imposing, and the view from up near the top inside it was spectacular.

At the base of the cross, before the elevators to take you up to the viewing area in the horizontal beams, there was a very large and ornate church, and a museum full of jewellery, goblets, fine robes and art, including giant paintings of the last couple of Popes (the current one really does look evil). The thing that struck me about this was all the people living on the hill around the cross, were in a state of total poverty, living in buildings which were often no better than shacks. Personally, I found it incredibly distasteful. My cousin later mentioned the same thought to me – I was glad I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about it.

Keeping things reverant

After the markets and icecream, we spent much of the afternoon just sitting in the sun, eating, catching up on emails, uploading photos, that sort of junk. It was really quite plesant and relaxing.

We then had an invitation to have drinks (mainly of vodka) at Laura’s house that night; we got dropped over there, and then went down to the local bottle store, which we were told is set up as a front for the local drug-running mafioso,  and because of this, and their not caring too much about making money, prices are kept, shall we say, quite low. A wonderful night was had by all four of us, and the conversation in half English / half Spanish flowed very well.

Pisco Elqui

Pisco Elqui Plaza

On Wednesday, we went for a trip up to Pisco Elqui valley with Paulina. That is where the local spirit, Pisco, is made; it’s very strong grape liquor and is a little bit like a brandy.

To get to there, we had to take two busses, firstly to Viquña, then from there to Pisco Elqui. The busses were of the small and rickerty variety, and filled to the brim. We had to stand up in the second bus for some of the way, as we barrelled down the road at well over 100km/h in the heat.

We passed through small and picturesque village, and finally reached Pisco Elqui after a couple of hours. We wandered around the town plaza, and through the small markets and around town for a bit.

After a while we got hungry (and not just a little overheated), so we found a neat restaurant a distance away from the main part of town. It was called “La Esquela” (The School), as it was apparently converted from an old schoolhouse. We ate Pastel de Choclos, which I hadn’t had myself in many years, and for desert, this crazy traditional drink which was peach juice, with dried peaches floated on top of a bed of wheat grains. While very tasty, they were also huge, and we couldn’t finish them.

Pastel de Choclo

Dessert drink

After eating, we walked down the road, through to a set of cabins owned by our Aunt and Uncle, and down to a riverbank at the bottom of the property, the idea being to get away from the heat; maybe dip our feet in the water or go for a swim. However recent heavy rains had apparently changed the shape of the river considerably making this unfeasable, so we just rested in the shade for until it was time to go on the distillery tour at 5pm.

Although it was entirely in Spanish (and the guide punctuated every sentence with ‘ya’ which I found funny),  the distillery tour was pretty cool. Pisco is a liquor made from a particular kind of grape, and then distilled and aged. It tastes a bit like a rum I guess. Pisco Sour is the most common cocktail made with it, and the ones on offer here were much better than any I’d had back at home.

Coqiumbo at night

After arriving back in La Serena after our Pisco trip, we had a quick dinner and were then told that we were going to be driven out to Coquimbo for a few drinks, with our cousin and aunt and uncle. After a very slow trip driving along the beachfront road (traffic was horrific); we made it into Coquimbo at maybe 10pm or something like that.

Downtown Coquimbo was pretty lively, there were a number of bars around the central area filled with people, street performers in the plaza, and a bus with the label “Tourist bus” on the side; a double-decker lit up affair with an open roof, music blaring out, and people dressed in various costumes (barney, mickey mouse etc) dancing on top of it.

We found one street that had been blocked off to cars, with bars down one side of it, and filled with tables and chairs. Three of the bars had bands set up in front of them, and each band was taking turns at doing their sets. We managed to find a table in the crowd eventually, sat down and ordered a round of mojitos. One of the bands was seemingly playing traditional classics and every body in the crowd was happily singing along:

After some incredibly tasty nibbles including palm hearts, cheese bits, amazingly tender beef, and spicy sausage, and another round of mojitos (darn those two for one specials, haha), we were treated to some latin beat freestyle rapping curtosey of one of the audience members and his friends:

All in all, an exhausting, full on, and fun day had by everyone.

Tongoy

This morning it was announced that we would be going to the beach yet again, but this time to one a bit further away from town, in a place called Tongoy.

When we arrive, we are taken to a restaurant just a few meters away from the beach, where the entire extended family are already waiting for us (plus a few others we hadn’t met the other night, and whose relationship I have to, still remains completely unknown).

Palm heart empanada

After the ordeal of ordering food for 20-odd people has been sorted out, it started to arrive. I had two kinds of cheese empanada, one was palm hearts (yum!) and the other was scallops. I don’t normally go much for seafood, but these were utterly delicious. I suspect everything at this restaurant had probably had been swimming in the ocean nearby no more than a few hours before we ate it.
More fresh fish, salads, ice-creams and beer followed. Very pleasent indeed.

As a huge group, we then all went in search of a beach to lie on for a good few hours. There is a smaller, prettier beach we were trying to get to, but once we arrived, we realised that about a million other people had the exact same plan as us that day, so we diverted back to the larger beach.

Sun setting over Tongoy beach

After 3 days of laying in the sun, I’ve started to develop quite a tan by my standards, yet I am still easily the whitest guy on the beach; also it will surely all revert back to it’s usual pastiness within a week of my return home. Ah well.

A quiet day

The next day, we kept things pretty quiet. We wandered down to the markets again for a little while, picked up a couple of presents for people, stuff like that. I especially liked these spiced peanuts which are a local thing apparently; they’re pretty much just peanuts with chili powder and some other things on them.

Paulina took us to an ice cream shop, that does super sold school traditional ice cream. My cousins used to go there when they were little children and their grandmother was friends with the lady who runs it, who is still there, and still selling the exact same ice creams she’d been selling for decades. There are only ever 4 flavours available on any given day, but they’re all delicious. I had Strawberry and Cinnamon. Mmmmmmm.

Beach

After having another big sleep in (I think jetlag is still accounting for this). We get up and are fed again (Empanadas I think)  and are taken down to one of the beaches near La Serena. The weather is lovely, and the beach is very nice, but because the water was unusually warm, there were hundreds of jellyfish floating around. Most were dead, but there were a couple of live ones, and one of them managed to sting one of our cousins on the back of the leg. Nothing dangerous, but enough to itch annoyingly.

Paulinas Birthday

That night was our cousin Paulina’s 27th birthday. For celebrations there were to be drinks and nibbles at one of our other extended cousin Laura’s, house. We met a bunch of people who seemed to remember us from when we last saw them. (I might have been either 6 or 16 at the time, I don’t remember which). There were a couple of people who spoke some English, but they were quickly distracted. After several drinks (which just kept on coming), it became very hard to try and follow the multiple conversations going on at once. In the end I just gave up and started taking photos.

We arrive at the apartment building, and attempt to talk to the doorman to get up to the room. We spend a few hours at Cristi’s relaxing, checking internet etc, and then our Uncle Jose, Aunt Lucia and cousin Paulina arrive, and we pack into a car, at this point it’s about 10pm, and drive 5 hours north to La Serena. I’m still really blocked up with my head cold, which has become quite unpleasant by now. I sleep on and off for much of the trip, which is down a 4 lane highway. There are many trucks, often pulled over to the side of the road as the drivers sleep. There was the obligatory group of people sat in the back of a pickup truck covered only in a tarp, barreling down the motorway at 120km/h.

Woke up today finally at 2pm. What an epic sleep. Sharing a room with Fran, I feel sorry for her, because of my freight train snoring. Almost immediately after having breakfast, we wander off into town for lunch. It’s at this point I remember that in Chile, everyone has a massive lunch. I stuff my face with chicken and chips and salad until I am beyond full.

View from Cristi's apartment in Santiago

We hang out at the house for a bit, and then Paulina’s friends turn up, who have just been at a camping festival of some sort. One of them is wearing a Metallica t-shirt and notices that Fran is wearing an Opeth one, which she had borrowed from me. Opeth then gets played on his iPhone via a small speaker. Reactions are mixed

The talkative one of the two speaks very good English. We wander into town around 8pm, and visit the squares and see some of the nice buildings. One of the them is the “lovers square” and sure enough there are several couples sitting there making out. We find a small market and caramelised Papaya is found, along with peanuts coated in some sort of herb+chili powder, which is very tasty.

After another market (one which I remember from last time) we visit the supermarket for some beer, which is very cheap. LIke $5 for a six-pack of Heineken cheap.
Come back to the house and talk in a group, mainly in English. It’s a bit embarrassing how little Spanish we are using, and Fran especially seems quite happy to prattle away in English. Will try and make a really good effort to use more Spanish tomorrow.

After the Barrytown adventure, we eventually got Fran all packed up and ready (a massive ordeal that she’d probably be upset with me over, if I detailed here), and we made our way up to Auckland to see our parents before heading off to Chile.

I had a couple of days to kill up there (Fran only had one, as she flew out the day before me), and we had a couple of free tickets we’d managed to score to St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, which was having it’s first year in Auckland. It seemed quite odd to me, as it started in Melbourne, by the people who ran the St Jerome’s bar, and actually took place in the laneways in the city. Some things to note:

• St Jeromes itself has now shut down, because Myers wanted to use the building
• This year’s laneway in Melbourne isn’t being held in the laneways anymore either, because of crowd problems last year, where lots of people couldn’t see the main acts, because they had been put in the very small and narrow Lt Londsdale Street
• I am dissapointed about this, because my new apartment has a big balcony overlooking Lt Londsale Street, and I would have to got an awesome view of it for free

Laneways itself was alright, held in the plaza above the Brittomart complex in downtown Auckland, and wasn’t too crowded. We got there pretty late, and saw the 3Ds, Echo and the Bunnymen, and sat and listened to much of Florence & The Machine, who seemed quite excitable. We’d heard the Dirty Three on the radio on the way into town, and that seemed like enough for us so we went home.

Flight

Airports are funny places. I got all checked in and sorted fairly easily, after my loving parents just dropped me off at the door (after doing the long goodbye thing with Fran the day before), I got some lunch and pretty much then had to wait for my flight to board. I love the announcements that the planes are waiting for passenger so-and-so, and that EVERYONE is waiting for THEM. Even when said in a quite flat tone, it somehow manages to be completely condecending at the same time…

I wasn’t expecting much from the plane, as LAN Chile isn’t that known as a fancy airline, but this was an Airbus A340, and it was fairly new, at a guess. It had inflight entertainment units in the seat backs, which I was not expecting. All of the announcements in were repeated in English, which I was very grateful for, because it was at this point, I realised just how little Spanish I comprehended when spoken at full speed. Mental note: Watch the Destinos language DVDs at some point during the flight….

The inflight music selection was surprisingly good, from Metallica to Leonard Cohen to Gotan Project, as well as the usual chart hits. I watched “It might get loud” documentary featuring Jack White, Jimmy Page and the Edge from U2. Basically it’s where somebody put those guys all in a room, with their guitars, and they play a bit, and talk about guitars and talk about their musical backgrounds and stuff. Jimmy Page is a total gentleman, Jack White is the coolest man alive and The Edge is a total douche who still can’t play a guitar to save his douche-y life.

When the whole cabin is dark, and you turn on the reading light, it’s like you are lit up by the fire of a thousand suns. I didn’t read much during the middle segment of the flight.

Even for such a big plane, the bathrooms are tiny. I have no idea how people are supposed to fuck in those things.

Descening through 36,000 ft with massively blocked up ears from your persistent headcold isn’t much fun either.

I finally arrive in Santiago after 11 hours or so in the air, and after managing to negotiate my way through immigration and customs (even having accidentally not received and thus not filled out the immigration form), I come through to the arrivals area, and am greeted by Fran, who has spent about 30 hours in the air by this stage, and had been waiting for me for 6 hours in Santiago airport already. The news of the day is that her luggage is lost somewhere in Los Angeles airport because she was the only person on the American Airlines flight code, and everyone else was on LAN Chile.

Ah the joys…

So far, I have (in no particular order):

Flown a plane
Been tattooed
Been scuba diving
Been abseiling
Travelled to 4 continents (and a bunch of islands)
Won a trophy for lifesaving
Been to big outdoor raves
Been to big heavy metal concerts
Played in a rock band
Played in an experimental ambient electronic band
Played in school orchestras
Been in choirs
Crashed several cars
Moved to a different country, sight unseen
Got a degree
Applied for a job as a spy*
Designed and built systems used by thousands of people
Been poor and unemployed
Been very comfortable
Taught myself to play guitar
Taught myself to program a computer
Learnt Spanish
Forgotten Spanish
Acted responsibly
Acted very irresponsibly
Been a theatre audio / lighting tech
Been in love
Been heartbroken
Been drunk
Been high
Been hungover and on the comedown
Made friends I know I will have for the rest of my life

*I didn’t get the job. I think I most likely failed the psych profile test

I think that’s pretty much what I said when, probably no more than 3 minutes from touchdown in Wellington, it was annouced that due to fog that had just this moment rolled in, we were to divert to Auckland. The prospect of a 12 hour drive down to Campus A Low Hum was too terrible to contemplate. Luckily we were only stuck on the tarmac there for 45 minutes or so before we were fuelled up and returning to Welly.

So having arrived several hours late, our original plans were in dissarray, hasty arrangements were made, and I got driven out to pick up Chants’ MX5 from her ex, in Stokes Valley (which is a little way out of Lower Hutt). I get about halfway through the 2 and half hour drive through to Palmerston North, when I realise that I’ve left about $200 worth of duty free booze back at Steve’s place. These particular bottles probably would not have been fully appreciated by this ex, so again, arrangments were hastily made to try and get Fran to pick it up on her own way out of Wellington.

We’d also just found out that Maccu Piccu, one of our intended travel destinations, had been hit by torrential rains, the rail line was wiped out, some people had been killed, and they were airlifting people out of the area. Guess that’s not going to happen after all…

So far, this month-long holiday of mine wasn’t going very well.

Things improved, however when I finally arrived at Chants’ place, where I could finally rest up for a little bit. A couple of drinks were had, the customary showing off of all my new toys (new phone, macbook, camera lenses), and eventually we settled in to watch Drag Me To Hell.
I was pleasantly surprised by that movie – I’d very much recommend it if you’re a fan of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series… good classic fright moments combined with just ridiculously over the top comical splatter horror. 3.5 stars.

I now see why. God, that movie was terrible. As far as I could see, there was no explantation for anything that happens in it at all.. it was like a bunch of retard 10 year olds came up with the script – “hey lets have these different bad-ass alien things come down to earth and fight each other, and a bunch of people totally get killed for no reason and there’s a love interest between the sort of nerdy guy and the really hot girl that would never go for him, but dumps her jock boyfriend anyway, but it doesn’t matter because she gets totally fucked up by the Predator later, and then some more people die, and the lady who has come back from serving in Iraq just runs away instead of kicking ass like Ripley would have, and then the US Govt just nukes the entire town, and no-one seems to mind”.

That movie was robbed of an Oscar.

At least I also watched The Darjeeling Limited, which was actually fantastic.

Gigs:

Little Pictures (x2): Fran mentioned that these guys would be hitting town, and I remembered seeing them at her alternative craft fair event last year, so I thought I’d pop along to give them some support as it’s got to be hard playing in an unfamiliar town.
Anyway, their first gig is at some weird multi-level club, in the basement level. Apparently the event is some end-of-semester student thing, and there are a very very young and very very drunk kids running around. Dressed in fluro. Throwing up all over the place. Most of them luckily spend their time upstairs away from the bands. I actually had to talk my way past the bouncers because I looked too old. Good grief.

Little Pictures at Pony

Managed to have a good chat to Mark and Johanna from LP anyway
Their second gig (well it was their third actually, they played a show at The Tote as well) was at Pony, which was a much more age-appropriate venue. Even though their set started at 2am, by that stage, the place was packed out, and they were a real hit with the crowd that night, who were begging for encores by the end of it. GG guys

Angelspit and Baal: This was actually the night after the first Little Pictures gig, and held in the same venue. This time, however, instead of a few drunken teenagers, there was probably a hundred or so cyperpunks and goths in full dressup, dancing away to Industral rock from Japan (Baal) and Electro/Industrial from Sydney (Angelspit). Both bands were pretty awesome, both Clara and I enjoyed it a lot

The Mars Volta: Since Clara put me onto these guys a while back, I’ve become a fairly big fan… mainly their album “Deloused in the Comatorium”, which is pretty epic. Anyway, we both got tickets for their gig at the Forum Theatre, which is pretty epic in of itself:

Forum Theatre Mezzanine

Forum Theatre Auditorium

It has this crazy painted-blue ceiling, so it feels like you’re standing outside, in this crazy Roman Colosseum sort of place.
The Mars Volta themselves… hrmm.. well they played for about 3 hours, and as far as we could tell, it was only material from their new album, which neither of us like anywhere near as much as “Deloused”. They seem to be big fans of the super-extended jam versions of their songs with additional sonic wankery toppings. They were very tight and had moments of sheer brilliance, but it got old after a while, and a bit of self-editing I think would have helped my enjoyment considerably.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself with nothing to do, as plans I had fell through, and then I remembered that Joe Satriani was playing in town that night, also at The Forum. The Friday night show had sold out a long time beforehand, so I didn’t think there’d be any tickets left, but I went along to the box office at 7:30 or so anyway, and yes, they did have some available. Joe was excellent – I managed to get a decent spot, and could see and hear everything pretty well. Stu Hamm was pretty good on bass, although it sounded like the crowd were booing him at several opportunities.. I later found out they were yelling “Stuuuu”, which is some kind of in-joke with him. Videos here: Cool No 9 and Summer Song.

The Greenmatics: This is a band that a friend of Frans is in… Mel has been living in Melbourne for a couple of years, so it was very nice to be able to head along to their gig at the Roxanne Parlour – which is pretty hard to find (typically), and have people to chat to. Mel’s friends are crazy, like good crazy

Tricky: This was at the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda, on the day before Fran arrived back in town to visit. Ended up going by myself, mainly because a certain friend of mine who is a massive Tricky fan, was feeling too broke to come along, which was a huge shame. The gig itself was pretty awesome – the singer he had, which is a replacement for the one he used on the records, was amazing. Tricky himself “sung” on a handful of tracks (something for which a reviewer later gave him crap for), but he spent most of the time ‘conducting’ the band – being the producer that he is. Anyway, the show utterly rockes. Videos here: Pumpkin, Black Steel, Overcome.

People:

Well, this is going back quite a few weeks now, but the notes are there so here we go…( in roughly chronological order – I think)

Went out with Dana (the American girl I met at a cocktails meetup thing ages and ages ago) again, this time out to Pahran, because neither of us had been out that side of town before. Ended up wandering around looking for suitable bars… we managed to find a couple, including a very cool tiny little place, which was more a cafe than a bar, but it had a DJ playing in the corner, a going fireplace, a bunch of friendly looking people who seemed to all know each other, and Monteiths Golden on tap. It kinda had a bit of a “Sputnik Cafe” vibe – for those of you in Chch who remember that wonderful place We also managed to stumble upon the infamous Revolver bar, which seemed pretty cool… but mind you, we there during it’s more civilised hours – it’s open all weekend without closing….

The girl I mentioned in my last post.. didn’t really work out like I thought it might… eventually she had some time off during the weekend, so we arranged to meet up at Pony, to Little Pictures, and whatever band happened to be on before them. I get there, and she’s with this other guy, who she had mentioned meeting a little while earlier, but said they were just friends. They were definitely not just friends. Ah well, move on….

Managed to catch up with Greta, who is the younger sister of a guy I was friends with in primary school, who has moved here in the last 6 months or so. Went down Brunswick Street to find a cafe to get something little to eat and have a chat… we got pretty lost looking for the Black Cat, which is a place we both knew. It was hopeless Turns out our stories in how we ended up here are pretty similar. Anyway, headed into town after that, went to Murmur, which is a little bar, which I was a bit hesitant about the look of at first, but turned out to be pretty damn cool. We met up with some friends of hers there (including someone who was in the same year as me at the same high school… we knew some of the same people…. small world!!), and moved on to the Croft Institute, which is a two-level place, with the bottom level all decked out like a 3rd Form science lab, with the benches with sinks in, and science-y glassware all over the place.. very cool.

Also I’ve been helping Clara out with her computer woes. It hasn’t gone well so far… as most computer woes tend to do… I’ve also got her hooked on my Outrageous Fortune DVDs. Can’t blame her really, it’s the awesome

Went out again with Dana, this time to the Espy, hoping to see a band (whose name escapes me now), as neither of us had been there before either Turns out the band we wanted to see didn’t start till like 1:30am, so we went to the back room to watch whatever band was on in there. Whoever they were, they weren’t good. At one point, what we could only presume was one of the band member’s girlfriend got on stage and started to attempt to play the Tamborine… quite half-heartedly, while holding a can of coke. It was so appalling, we just had to stand there and laugh Then we wandered around St Kilda seemingly in an attempt to play every pinball machine in every bar we could find. Anyway, the night ended well. I’ve been hoping to catch up with her again, but her pending work-related trip overseas, plus the millions of vaccinations required seem to be conspiring against me

Movies:

I saw the Get Smart movie, and was actually surprised at how good it ended up being. Cool.
Managed to find a couple of really good box-sets of the original Battlestar Galactica (which is truly cringe-worthy) and the Evil Dead trilogy. These things make me a happy chappy.

Stay tuned for the next episode (hopefully coming pretty soon) in which Fran visits town again, we see a band from Iceland, an awesome movie on a stupidly big screen, eat rather too well, see an old friend, and get a rather sad bit of news…