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Chile / Peru: lost cities, coca heads, mules, constipation

Lagging Behind

Rhymer1
2005-03-28 21:25:50

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As anyone who´s flown from London to New York knows, flying east-west is no problem whatsoever - you just have a longish day. But flying back is another matter altogether; even though the time difference is only five hours, you feel terribble. So the flight from NZ to Santiago de Chile must be one of the worst in the world. It has just about everything. It´s in the wrong direction; it's about 12 hours long and you cross the international date line for a time difference of 16 hours. All of this meant that when we arrived in Santiago our body clocks were buggered as never before.

Despite my rather jaded outlook, I found Santiago a very pleasant city. It's a popular misconception that South America is all a bit latino and loco - most people forget that the Spanish and Portuguese weren't the only European nations who whose colonial ambitions played out across the continent. Chile, for example enjoyed a big German influence. And, for the most part this had a reasonably positive effect. I mean, the Chileans speak Spanish and everything but, mein Gott, the buses run on time and it´s a pretty orderly place. Mercifully no leather trousers and donkey porn though.

After NZ Santiago is also pleasantly lacking in tourists: not many rucksacks and ill-matched tribal prints came off our plane. Indeed, the Chilean capital is joyously free of internet cafes serving banana pancakes decorated with ethnic-nacks. It is a city going about it´s business and, to my mind felt a little like the Madrid of twenty years ago. Interestingly you have to suspect that one reason that gyp-knack travellers tend to eschew South America is that nobody, but nobody speaks English. Which means you have to interact with real foreigners, not just the kind who run bars and cheap guesthouses and speak amusing broken English. Can you imagine? Of course, I should point out at this point that I don´t speak Spanish either, but at least I have the good sense ...