A month in Chile - June 2019

Well I have had a fun packed month in Chile. First I landed in the capital, Santiago, but on the first day I went on a bus to visit Joaquin’s uncle in San Antonio. We went to visit a museum, Isla Negra, which is a house of a famous Chilean poet (Pablo Neruda). He won a Noble Prize for Literature. Then it was back to Santiago where we spent the morning visiting the city. In the afternoon I spent some time with his brother and niece’s before taking our flight up to Antofagasta. 

The coin palace - where the president works

I need to introduce you to Cheetah, she is a leaving present from my Brownie pack in England, her name is Cheetah as that was my name in the pack. They asked me to take her with me and take photos of her doing things. Monty will be happy to have a travelling buddy. 

This month I have been trying a lot of different treats and food they love to eat here and most of them contain manjar/dulce de leche; this is like carmel. My favourite is a Berlin, this is like a doughnut with manjar. I have also tried empanadas one of the locals favourite lunches. One treat is called brazo de reina – arm of the queen. I also went to a Chilean Barbecue; I tried the diaphragm of a cow, it was very delicious!

I have visited some sites in and around the city:

 

 The Plaza Colon, this is a clock tower that was given from the UK to Chile to celebrate 100 years of independence. It could not be taller because at the time no buildings were aloud to be taller than the Catherdal.

  The beach

  The hand of the desert

 The flea market

 Some things that are a little different here:

There are many street dogs; they are looked after by the communty who feed them but some are not in the best condition. They are mostly friendly and will walk with you down the road, I think this is because they are hoping that you will feed them. One man was playing with them and he had a pack following him while he was throwing bottles for them to fetch. You definitely have to watch out for poo where you walk though!

The houses are very different to one another as they are aloud to just bulid and add to their houses as they like. There are no building regulations and some do not look too safe either! The houses are all caged in and have bars on the windows this is for added security. There is not much recycling here and it is a little fustrating to put things in the bin which you know can be recycled. On the positive side they don’t have plastic bags at the supermarket so you must bring your own.

 

I have also met up with a pack of Scouts and have been joining them each week in their activities. It is interesting to find out how they run their programme here and I will be writing up more about this in other blog posts. This month they had a camp which I went along to for the day. Cheetah came along to meet them too. On the camp we played games, had a passing ceremony; where the younger ones moved up to the next pack. I cooked the dinner and we had a camp fire.