A slide show of our trip to the coast!
The past 2 weeks I've been spending going to school every day from 9am to 1pm, spending the afternoons with friends and doing homework, going on a couple of outings with our cultural monitors (Chilean students, as part of our ILP program that take us on cultural activities to show us the city), and trying to get my life organized before I leave on vacation. I've also been apartment hunting because my Chilean host sister will be getting married on Febuary 20th, and moving out of my house by the end of the month, leaving Alejandra and I to ourselves. I've decided to move out and find an apartment to share with other Chileans, so I can feel more independent and live with people closer to my own age. But other than keeping busy with school, things have been pretty relaxed!
As I told you all in my last post, part of our grade for my Intensive Language Program (ILP) class was to go with a small group of classmates to a city outside of Santiago to learn about the culture of that city and then present some information to the class in a creative way to share what we learned. I got together with my friends Christina, Lena, and Ali and we decided to go to the western coast of Chile, to the neighborint cities of Viña del Mar and Concón and do somewhat of a culinary tour of the area. What a great experience we had! We had good luck all weekend talking to locals to find out about the local restaurants, and the process of getting food on our plates, and we ended up having a great project to present to the rest of the group.
On Friday, we all met at the Metro station that has a huge bus terminal on top and bought a one way ticket to Viña del Mar. Luckily, when we got there, there was a bus that was about to leave, so we only had to wait ten minutes to leave for the beach! We left around 4pm and arrived by six, where we checked into our first hostel. It was located about 2 blocks from the bus terminal, and it ended up being in a house of an older couple that rented out a few of their back rooms to travelers passing through. For one night, we only paid 6,000 pesos each, which is only US$10. After putting our bags down, we decided to go out to explore the area a little bit since the sun doesn't set till about 9pm here. We found the ocean, which was a big sigh of relief for me, since it's the first time in my life where I've lived where I can't see a body of water at all times! So it was nice to see that the Pacific still exists :)
We ended up meeting up with another group from our class who had decided to explore Viña, too, and we went to a very touristy Mexican restaurant to get a little something to eat before dinner. We hung out there for a couple of hours before parting ways to find some dinner.
We had gotten a restaurant recommendation from the woman who owned the hostel, and we set out to try and find it. We walked around for about half an hour with no luck finding it (since the woman wasn't exacly sure where it was, nor what it was called), so we decided to ask some locals for a good place to eat, since it was getting pretty dark and we were getting increasingly hungry. Originally, we had wanted to find seafood, but everyone we talked to said the best place to get seafood wasn't in Viña, but in Concón, where we were going the next day. Finally, we found this guy who told us that there was a very good and popular Chilean food restaurant about 3 blocks from where we were standing, called La Flor de Chile ("the flower of Chile"). And he was right! When we got there, the restaurant was completely packed... with only Chileans! We took that as a good sign and we ended up having to wait about 15 or 20 minutes just to be seated, and let me tell you, it was really worth the wait. While we were hanging around waiting to be seated, Christina and I were looking at the specials menu that was posted outside, and we ended up talking to a Chilean woman becasue we didn't understand everything on the menu. So she explained to us the different dishes, and ended up giving us some great recommendations. That night we enjoyed some delicious salmon, beef, salad, and an escapola rellena (basically a milanesa - breaded meat, but this one was filled with ham and cheese!). I can definitely say it was an amazing start to our tour of the food on the Chilean coast.
After dinner, we walked back to our hostel and went to bed (we were all exahusted after our long day at school and traveling!). In the morning (Saturday), We woke up and showered, and then walked around to find breakfast. We ended up at the local market, where we got to see super fresh fruits and vegetables, meats and fish. Unfortunately, the owner of the market wasn't in the mood to talk to us about his work, but we did get some good pictures. We bought some fruit for the rest of the day, and walked down the street to a little bakery where we were able to order a couple of eggs and bread for breakfast, and we each got a couple of pasteries for the road. And hit the road we did!
We walked back to the hostel to get our bags, and then walked a couple of blocks to a bus stop to catch a ride to Concón. One thing I really loved about traveling on the coast was that there were busses to take people to all the little cities bodering the water, so it was no problem for us to catch one going about 20 minutes north to Concón. The busses going up and down the coast work like cabs, in a way, that they don't just stop at their specified locations, but also whenever anyone can hail one down, the drivers wanting to pick up as many people as possible. After a pretty bumpy ride, we got off the bus around noon at the top of a hill where, immediately, we saw a huge pink building whose sign said "Hostel, La Casa Rosada." Although we had already put our name down at another hostel, we decided to just do what seemed like the easiest and most convenient thing, and stay at the big pink house. Luckily, we made an excellent choice! There was vacancy in a huge room that was furnished for 8 people, and we got it all to ourselves, plus the copy of the one key, so we were able to keep everything in there safely. Not only that, but when we told the woman that was working the front desk about our project, she got really excited and called her son. As it turned out, her son, Alfonso, worked in the fish business, preparing all of the fish for a restaurant right on the water. We couldn't believe that we got our first interview handed to us! She gave us his number and directions to get to the restaurant and told us to find him while he was working.
With that good news in mind, we set off on our first walk, to explore the area a little bit. The weather could not have been better, it was sunny with a light breeze coming from the water, and we were just basking in it, not really paying attention to where we were going. At one point, we past a little fresh produce store, and house whose garage was open to the water, giving an amazing view. When we walked in there to take a picture, an older woman came out of her house looking slightly defensive. When we told her we just wanted to take a picture of her beautiful view, she realized that we were foreigners, and then spoke to us in English. One thing led to another, she introduced herself as Elia, and we found out that she had lived in California for a few years with her husband, Anthony, who was from New York, and now, in their retirement, they were running a fruit and vegetable stand out of their house, to sell the avocados that they grow, as well as produce from local areas. When we told her about our project, she insisted that we come back the next day to meet her husband for coffee and to talk with him about their business in agriculture. Again, we couldn't believe that another chance encounter led us to an interview to add to our project! We were so excited that we were going to be able to have something to say in front of the rest of our group!
After arranging a meeting for the next day, we finally continued our walk and went to La Playa Amarilla ("the yellow beach"), that Elia had recommended that was near some godo sea food restaurants. Since it was already 2pm by this point, we were feeling very hungry, and, after much browsing of the restaurants on the strip of street that faced the beach, we decided to go to the first one we had seen, already craving the food that was posted on the specials board outside. At this place, they brought us bread with ceviche, a lemon-based fish topping, with onions and bell peppers, as an appetizer. It was so good!!! A great first-coastal-seafood choice. As our entrees, we ordered calamari, a seafood empanada, a shrimp and cheese empanada, and salmon with a shrimp sauce. Everything was so good! We left happliy, and satisfied, with a lot of fun pictures of our plates to show the class. With full bellies, we walked across the street to the beach and took a nap in the sun.
Around 5:30 we decided to get up and walk to find Alfonso's restaurant to talk to him about his work in fish. A half hour walk later, we found ourselves at his restaurant, Aquí Jaime!, asking for him. Alfonso came out, and we talked to him about what it is like working with fish. He was so excited about it! We could tell that he absolutely loved his job, and we learned a lot! Alfonso's job is to fillet the fish that come in for the restaurant, and get them all ready for the chefs to cook. He told us that filleting a fish is like an art, that he started learning how to do it from his grandfather when he was 10 years old (most people in the fish business learn the trade from their families). We were surprised to learn that Concón is not as much of a fisherman's town as we expected, that the fish are shiped mostly from the south of Chile, and there are only a couple of types of shellfish that are caught in la Quinta Región (the fifth region of Chile, where Concón is located). After talking for a while, and taking a couple of pictures, Alfonso showed us the dock that was right next to the restaurant where he thought we would be able to talk to some actual fishermem.
That's when we met Jorge, a 78 year old man who was standing, guarding the dock. Alfonso told us that he was one of the founders of that specific dock, and a very experienced fisherman. Jorge talked to us, almost non-stop, for an hour and a half, wanting us to know everything, even if it didn't have anything to do with what we asked him about! We got a lot of information from him about the problems of living a fisherman's lifestyle, especially during the three months of winter when there are hardly any fish to catch, and how big businesses make it really hard for small fishermen to earn a decent living. By the time we finally had to stop him from telling us anymore, it was already starting to get dark! We were able to hail a bus (yes, a bus) to take us back to where our hostal was, where we got ready to get some dinner.
My friend Diego was also visiting the coast that weekend, because both his brother and his sister had rented apartments in Viña del Mar, and Reñaca, another small city on the coast. He invited us out that night, after dinner, to go with him and his friends to a really cool dance club in Reñaca. The club we went to looked like a castle on the outside. We had to walk up 2 flights of stairs to get to the front door, and the dance floor opened up onto a huge balcony that looked over the water. Needless to say, after a long day of hard work, we had a lot of fun.
On Sunday, we woke up and ate our included breakfast at the hostal coffee, tea, and bread with jam) and we packed up and got everything ready to go. At eleven, we walked back down to Elia's house to meet her husband, Anthony, and talked to them for a while about their business in agriculture. They own an avocado orchard, about an hour away from the coast, that has 600 trees. They only began selling their avocados about 5 years ago, and also other produce from local farmers. After our interview, we all bought a couple of pieces of fruit (the nectarines were delicious) and returned to the hostal to check out, before catching a bus back to Viña del Mar.
We checked out an artesan fair for a couple of hours before heading back to the bus terminal to get a ride back to Santiago. Looking back, I would not have done anything differently on our trip. We had amazing luck and chance encounters that gave us a solid, and well-rounded presentation on Wednesday afternoon. We learned so much and had so much fun that I can't wait to go back to visit the coast when I can find a good weekend!
School finished on Friday, and we have 2 weeks break before our real university classes start. Since then I've been planning my next big adventure: Brazil!!! I leave on Monday afternoon to go to Salvador de Bahia for a couple of days before going to Rio de Janeiro. Carnaval will be amazing I'm sure, and I can't wait to tell you all about it!
Thanks for your patience again everyone, and you'll be hearing from me in a couple of weeks!
Love,
Amara
P.S. Here are some extra pictures that I've taken in Santiago, including ones of my host family, teacher, and our cultural monitors!
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