Santiago, Chile - Entiendo Castellano muy, muy poco

Buenos Dias from Chile! Our first travel post.

Well within an hour of landing in Santiago we paid our first Gringo tax! After failing to decipher the public transport, we ended up being shown to a taxi by a man outside the airport – who then jumped in with us. On the drive in he told us about the various places in Santiago he had been punched or mugged (reassuring!) Despite agreeing the price in advance, he then demanded payment halfway there (plus a tip) and jumped out at an intersection. So 5000 pesos paid for dubious “services”! Seems obvious in hindsight, but it was pretty overwhelming at the time.

The next day we went on an English-speaking walking tour around the central city. This was a great way to get to know Santiago a little in the one full day we had here. Best story of the day: apparently Chilean coffee was so terrible a few decades back that, in order to get some business, some enterprising Chilean businessmen came up with “Coffee with Legs” – a café where the coffee was served by women in skimpy dresses. This innovation reportedly overcame deficiencies in the coffee! Coffee with Legs was then taken to the next level behind shaded glass doors:

The new Coffee with Legs

The skimpy dresses have been replaced with bikinis and there are reportedly four daily “Happy Minutes” where the doors are locked and it all comes off. No we didn’t go in!

We spent the rest of the day with a Kiwi we met on the tour and enjoyed some traditional (?) Chilean food in the evening. It genuinely seems like the locals eat this sort of food a lot (by the way, we did share these dishes!)

Chorrillana (front) and Pastel de Choclo (rear)

To explain the title of this post, we are certainly out of our comfort zone with the language! Entiendo Castellano muy, muy poco means I speak Spanish a very, very little. Which is probably still an overstatement! We’re trying to learn some key phrases and we’ve had some very brief conversations in Spanish (Hello! How are you? I’m from New Zealand. And you? … Goodbye!)

Although we’re still feeling very “fresh”, we’ve really enjoyed our couple of days in Santiago. With a third of all Chileans living here, it’s a huge city.

Plaza de Armas, Santiago

We’re writing this on a bus to Mendoza, Argentina where we will be CouchSurfing for the first time. The guy on the hostel reception desk had some wise advice as we walked out the door: “For godsake – learn some Spanish!”

Comments from WordPress

• Daniel Phillips 2012-06-07T20:32:51Z

  Great first post Craig and Sal!

  You’re bound to get ripped off by the locals at first, but by the end of your trip I’m sure you would’ve learnt a thing or two by then.

  Coffee with legs brings a new meaning to “coffee addiction” perhaps that’s a trend that would work in NZ (hmmmmm…) :)

  Food looks interesting - great big portions.

  Take care and good luck!

• Enomec Nz 2012-06-07T21:20:17Z

  Hola Craig & Sal - Me gusta su primer puesto!

  That’s almost all the Spanish I know (courtesy of Sublime, Bablefish and possibly Sesame Street?). Good to hear you landed safely in Chile and excluding that loco-taxi-intervention are enjoying the sights and sounds of Santiago. Look forward to hearing more…

  Take it easy,

  Cemone

• Garry 2012-06-07T21:49:26Z

  5000 pesos … about NZ$13. Not so bad for the first scam, I guess!

  Take care out there.

• Tim 2012-06-08T23:09:31Z

  Wow sounds amazing! The jealously levels are rising!

• Tam 2012-06-09T00:45:47Z

  Ah well, hopefully it wasn’t too stressful being scammed.

  Ohh - what was the food actually? Looks like some delicious fry up at the front.

  Good luck with the couch surfing, that might help with learning some spanish :)

• Craig and Sal 2012-06-11T02:49:15Z

  Chorrillana is fries, covered in fried onion, covered in scrambled eggs, covered in sausage meat and fried beef. Heart healthy!

  Pastel de Choclo is like a baked corn chowder with chicken, mince and a crumbed topping.

  Quite tasty, but obviously you wouldn’t want to have these too often!

• Alice 2012-06-09T09:33:23Z

  Lol Tim you’d be totally screwed without me! I can translate both from Timglish to English and English to Spanish…

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson