Music. We found American music more than you’d expect in the little lodges and restaurants, the kind that’s overplayed at weddings and in moderately boring bars. Jen and I would roll our eyes and worry they were playing this for us. But then we would notice Chilean Families singing along at the next table to ‘Country Roads Take me Home’. Then, when we went to a more touristy restaurant in Ensenada (gateway to many tourist Patagonia adventures), they were playing what seemed to be heavy-handed “traditional music”, so then THAT was for us.
But otherwise, there’s lots of great popular bachata, merengue, salsa, your standard music that’s across all Latin and South America and sounds of sun, palms, and devoted happy couples dancing together.
Otherwise, Chile was quieter than other places I’ve visited. Not music blasting from every pharmacy (Ecuador) or from multiple boom boxes on the beach (Costa Rica), or thumping from tricked-out low-riding cars (Puerto Rico). There was frequently music playing in grocery stores, of course, and one time I was delighted to observe a store employee dancing a bit as she stocked the pasta.
Street dogs. So many quiet and mournful, also sometimes busy, dogs that just sleeping next to the grocery store entrance or trotting down the road by the park. Jen noticed they almost always were male dogs. Usually large mutts. Once we encountered 3 puppies, and obviously had to stop and give them some of our biking cookies. People of course have dogs as pets, but they are behind fences and usually barking aggressively as we bike past. We did have to shout down a couple dogs that came running at us into the road.
PDA. Fewer public displays of affection, compared with the full-on bus stop make out sessions in, say, Costa Rica. But so much holding of hands!: older couples, friends, and whole families sometimes, just walking down the sidewalk in a string.
Safety! Chile was by statistics, and also felt, extremely safe. Jen and I tried to sense why, I suppose a hard thing to specifically name. Barely any visible poverty from the road (meaning, tarps, shacks, garbage piles, impossibly disgusting water, obviously homeless people) but we were not in any big cities. The main difference with other places in South and Latin America where I’ve traveled, is that you saw families strolling out together at all times of night and day, rather than packs of single dudes slouching along in a fast walk.
Cigarettes. Barely anyone was smoking (compared to Europe).
Coffee. Most coffee shops do not open until 830am. For us morning people, this is not even a time of day anymore. But in coffee shops you can get a glorious cappuccino, flat white, or Americano. Otherwise for hotel breakfasts, people’s homes, and eateries, it is all Nescafe. And on the table are plastic bottles with liquid stevia and liquid Sucralose to put in your Nescafe.
Indoor lighting. Unlike Costa Rica (my most recent Latin American travel) which was a single, bare, unforgiving bulb stuck in the ceiling with no shade or accessory, Chilean rooms and homes had thoughtful attractive lighting.
Grass. No lawn mowers. People took care of their small yards with weed whackers.
Tourists. MUCH fewer American tourists than in Costa Rica for sure. It took me 2 weeks into the trip to see anyone remotely appearing to be European or North American. Most tourists are from Chile and neighboring countries (judging from hotel guest books, observations).
Bank transfer. Chileans send money over bank transfer like Americans use Venmo. How bizarre to me: for one of our lodging nights, a Chilean woman gave me her full address and bank routing number, and I was all confused what that amount of revealing was for. Then we realized there must be a strong system for this because people will post their routing number and other bank info outside their businesses, so you can pay for a single banana if you wanted. There’s a couple different phone apps for this. Otherwise, credit card is widely taken, even for something as small as some loaves of bread. And of course cash, which comes in inflated values, so that 1,000 CLP is 1 USD.
Plants. In some ways, the Chilean lake and volcano district felt like a southern Finger Lakes Region. Tons of dairy cows on rolling pasture, forage production, tall pines, lakes under swaths of dark green forest. And the occasional palm tree for a little thrilling sense of place. Costa Rica and Ecuador were all wild monstera and begonias, the sort you keep as house plant pets. Plants in people’s gardens in Chile were hydrangeas, roses, foxgloves, snapdragons. It felt like my favorite Ithaca gardens, just 5000 miles south. Even the weeds were the same as we would find at home. Chicory, birds foot trefoil, red clover, thistle.
I regret that error messages kept me from posting photos here (do check Facebook). Thank you so much for reading along!
2 comments:
Fascinating and very detailed post! Thanks for virtually taking your readers along with you.
Thank you for the extensive and insightful report. I was in Chile and southern Argentina in 1993/94, albeit with buses and planes, not by bicycle. From my memory most of what you say, still rings true today. It felt more European than Costa Rica, Ecuador, or Peru.
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