Ecuador

Isn't Summer lovely? I just got back from Quito, in Ecuador, where the temperature rarely gets above 20C due to the altitude. Quito is the world’s second highest capital city at more than 2800m above sea level. Actually, it’s officially the highest; its contender for the title is La Paz, in Bolivia, at more than 3600m but La Paz is only the de-facto capital of Bolivia. The official capital is Sucre.

Anyway, I had a really fantastic little break with the lovely Carolina. I hadn’t been to Ecuador in 7 years (almost to the day) and it was interesting to see how much things have changed there. Or, rather, how much some things have changed.

La Mariscal, or Gringolandia (as it’s where all the backpackers congregate), has completely changed. I lived in the barrio for more than 3 months and, although I had a great time, there weren’t very many bars or restaurants of any decent standard. Now, it’s been completely redeveloped and has loads of cool bars, restaurants and boutique hotels. It all looked really nice. If if weren't for the fact you constantly feel that someone is going to rob you with some kind of loud or pointy weapon, it'd be a really nice part of town.

And Quito’s UNESCO World Heritage Centro Historico is even more magnificent than before. It is truly an amazing place, renovated, cleaned-up and stunningly beautiful. Ecuador, compared to Chile, is under-developed, poor and horribly corrupt. But it has Chile completely beaten when it comes to historical preservation. Chile, and particularly Valparaiso, should be ashamed and embarrassed by its absolutely pathetic mismanagement of its architectural heritage. This country is painfully lacking a cultural conscience. It’s changing, but far too slowly and it’s going to be too late for much of Chile’s most beautiful architecture. It’s time the government stopped passing the buck to private investors (where no profit means no project) and got involved in safeguarding Chile’s heritage for future generations. If less well-off countries like Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia can do it, Chile should be able to. I doubt it’ll happen though- most people here just don’t care.

One of my favourite things in Quito when I lived there was climbing one of the Basilicas. In most other countries, you wouldn’t be allowed to get anywhere near where you can in this one…namely, to the very, very top of one of the bell towers. You start off at ground level and take a normal staircase for three levels. At each level there are panoramic views of the Centro Historico. At the third level, you then take a small spiral staircase to the clock tower. From the clock tower, you take a homemade metal ladder to the next level, another ladder to the next level and finally, another ladder up to the very highest point in the tower. The views are spectacular, obvio.

And then you go back down to the third level, cross a narrow and fairly unstable wooden bridge across the roof of the nave to the Basilica’s spire, where you take a couple of steep ladders/staircases to the viewing point. Awesome.

Basilica exterior:

Basilica Interior- nice fan vaulting:

The basilica is still unfinished...

Inside the clock tower:

Views of El Panecillo and the rooftops of the Centro Historico from the clock tower:

View of the spire from the high point of the clock tower- you can get up to just below the top of it...

Crossing to the spire- that's the fan vaulted roof of the nave you can see:

View of the clock towers from the spire- we climbed to pretty much the very top of the tower on the left, about where the photo gets cut off:

We were followed everywhere by a large group of Mormans, none of whom tried to convert us. Which was nice.

After this excitement, we headed down to the Plaza Independencia and Plaza San Francisco, went into a couple more churches (the Centro is full of them as it used to be pretty much one giant convent) and just wandered around, taking in the sights.

Plaza Independencia- if you click on the link further up the page, you'll see the same photo taken from a film-based camera more than 7 years ago:

The Centro Historico is gorgeous:

View from the hotel in Guapulo, Quito:

We went for dinner at Zazu, a fancy-pants Peruvian restaurant. It was very good, but over-priced at US$50 per person, without wine...They had the biggest roses I've ever seen in the entrance, 6 feet tall:

We also headed off to Banos for the weekend, a 3 hour drive from Quito. Banos itself is a pretty crappy little town, but it’s the countryside around that is the attraction. It’s kind of like the Elqui Valley, in that it feels as if the mountains are right on top of you, but, unlike Elqui, it’s pure green scenery with lots of small waterfalls. If you’re into adventure sports, it’s a great place to go to. I like that kind of thing, but we didn’t have all that much time, so we just ate and drank a lot and drove along the road out of town, taking in the views and hiking the short distance to El Pailon del Diablo, the largest falls in the area. It’s a beautiful part of the country.

I can't remember the name of this fruit, but it looks like a giant pea-pod. The fruit inside is like eating a slightly sweetened cotton swab. As nice as it sounds.

Hotel in Banos- the house was beautiful, the hotel part of it, not so much:

Around Banos:

Me, spoiling the view:

El Pailon del Diablo- it was tricky getting a decent photo of it, so here's one of me:

Other things I like about Ecuador would be the food and the people. Ecuadorian food is fantastic, a mix of tropical and Andean and so much of it is fried, which makes almost everything taste better. The beef is pretty awful, but the chicken and pork (and goat) are amazing. I ate too much. And I drank a lot of tomate de arbol juice, which was always my favourite flavour. I smuggled back some tomate de arbol seeds as well, so hopefully I’ll be producing my own in a couple of years.

Mmmm, seco de chivo (that's goat):

Also, Ecuadorian people are really friendly- everyone smiles when you walk into a shop and they’re almost always helpful and courteous in any situation. This is another thing Chile could learn from Ecuador.

On the flip side, Chile has Ecuador beaten in quite a few other, important ways. Ecuador has a serious crime problem with lots of gun and knife crime. La Mariscal is a den of thieves and the Centro Historico is really bad after nightfall. You do have to be careful as a tourist and, to live in Quito, you have to make some major changes to the way you live your life. The roads are a mess with pot holes everywhere, dangerous sign-posting and some of the world’s worst drivers. Corruption at every level is rife. It’s for these reasons why I think Chile is such a great place to live. You don’t have to change your way of life in Chile. A few small adjustments here and there, maybe, but not major concessions and compromises. Chile is a really livable country and Ecuador, for me, just isn’t. It can sometimes be easy to forget the advantages Chile has. A few days in one of the other South American countries tends to remind you.

So, I’m now back in Colchagua and enjoying the Summer again. It seems to have cooled off a little after 3 weeks of serious heat. I’ve got a busy couple of weeks coming up with clients and other projects so it’d be nice to have some cooler (but still sunny) weather for a while. Tomorrow, I’m hiking up what would be considered a mountain in England with clients to visit this amazing property in Colchagua Valley. The clients will be on horses, but my back problems mean I can’t ride. I prefer the exercise anyway and after a week at altitude, it should be an easy stroll. Maybe.

What Vinamarinos and Portenos Think Of Each Other

Here's a link to an interesting article in the Santiago Times, that cites a study into what people from Vina think of people from Valpo, and vice-versa. There are no real surprises- Portenos are uneducated malcontents, Vinamarinos are cuico snobs, Valpo smells bad and Vina has too many traffic jams. Although they do say some positive things about each other as well...

Valparaiso Earthquake 1906: Some More Images

Calle Maipu down on the Plan:

And a panoramic view of the devastation taken from probably around Cerro Bellavista, judging by the curvature of the bay.

Click here to see more posts (below this one).

Christmas, New Year and Summer

It's been a while (again) since I last posted. So here's another quick summary of what I've been up to for the last few weeks.

Well, I swapped Summer for Winter in mid-December, when I headed home to England (I also call Chile 'home'). And what a Winter it was...one of the coldest on record, a whole heap of snow and the country shutting down due to the total lack of preparation from the utterly, utterly useless government.

But anyway, I started off in London, staying with my brother and family. My other, Paris-based, brother was there as well. Plus, a plague hit my family in early 2010...a plague of babies. Both my brothers and two cousins had little'uns between January and March (and also one of my best friends a couple of months ago). Not being a huge baby fan, I was expecting the worst, but they were all surprisingly well-behaved. Not that you could get a word of sense out of the parents between 6am and 9pm, when all conversation revolved around babies, vomit and poonamis but everyone seemed very content (and tired) and that's the most important thing. I'm happy my family is happy. And I'm looking forward to them all getting older and being able to interact a bit more (the babies as well, ha).

So London was nice. And cold. I met up with some great friends, had a curry down on Brick Lane and large amounts of lovely London Pride.

London snow...

And then after two days, it was time to head up to Knowle, near Birmingham for Christmas number 1, with my Dad and his wife, Pat. We headed out on Saturday morning with severe weather warnings ringing in our ears. I had slept less than 3 hours, due to sleeping on the sofa and had woken up with a pinched nerve in my shoulder, leading to rather savage pain all down my right side. And a hangover. So when we got stuck in traffic caused by the freezing conditions and snow about 10 miles outside of London, I knew we were in for a long day...

We made it a total of 30 miles...in 6 hours before deciding to postpone the trip and pull into a hotel in a little village off the M40. Many people got stuck in their cars overnight, so we were lucky.

English travel chaos...

Anyway, we made it up the next day and had a nice time, despite it being cut short by a day.

A huge Chilean Araucaria in Knowle...

The bros. And a huge barbequed turkey (barbequed in minus 10C...)

Christmas number 2 (the real one) was spent down in with my cousins in the New Forest and was as fun as ever, watching the cricket (that was a hell of a beating you took there, Australia), drinking nice wine and eating so much food. The traditional Boxing Day walk was definitely needed.

The cold weather didn't really bother me all that much. It was a lot nicer than the usual mild, damp, drizzly weather I usually experience when I go back to England. Freezing cold, snow and blue skies are so pretty. It warmed up after Christmas and it wasn't as much fun. Christmas should be cold, anyway. But a Summer new year is a lot more fun that a Winter one. But I still had a good time, hanging out with friends and playing with indoor fireworks (which I hadn't seen since I was about 6 years old).

There was even the one that looks like something a baby produces several times a day...

After new year, there was time for some fairly serious sales shopping in London and also for a trip to Fulham's Craven Cottage to watch my beloved West Brom get beaten 3 nil. And, as I was sitting with the Fulham fans, I had to 'celebrate' all of their goals. Oh well.

And now I'm back in Chile, walking the dogs and enjoying the Summer.

The flight was ok, despite the lack of legroom...

And look who were waiting for me at home, in Santa Cruz, Colchagua Valley...

Summer dog walking. Nice.

I'm also really busy. Work has picked up massively already this year (lots more people interested in real estate in Chile) and I have two, possibly three projects of my own to do. I'm feeling very optimistic about 2011. Here's hoping for a good year for everyone.

And I'll leave you with my favourite book section in WHSmith's ever:

Plaza Sotomayor

Here's a photo of Plaza Sotomayor from the 1880s, looking towards where the big blue Naval building now is and also up to Lord Cochrane's house.

Elqui Valley: Awesome

I haven't blogged much recently. I just can't really be bothered- I love my life here but it's not all that exciting. It's usually just a mix of walking the dogs, hanging out with friends and going to Santiago every now and again. I would be blogging about the flat renovations in Santiago but they're on hold for about a month, so we'll probably restart when I get back from England after Christmas.

But I went last week to Elqui with a lady friend and it's such an awesome place that I really thought I should share.

It's a bit of a drive to get there from Santiago, which is where we started out from on Tuesday morning. It's even more of a drive when you decide to take the scenic route through Ovalle and over the mountains direct to Vicuna, instead of the 5 Norte via La Serena. Still, it was worth the extra time and the 140km of single track dirt road with sheer drops to one side and goats running around trying to force you off the edge every now and again. The views were amazing the constant changes in the colour of the ground was interesting.

See- pretty.

We arrived late afternoon in Pisco Elqui, the last village in the valley with paved roads and a really gorgeous little place full of well-maintained adobe houses.

There's lots of accommodation around as well and we got lucky with the first place we tried. Los Datiles has pretty decent cabanas but the grounds and the garden are incredible, a real oasis of loveliness.

We didn't really do all that much apart hang out, relax and admire the stunning scenery. The green vines against the backdrop of the dry mountains, which look like cardboard cut-outs is just amazing.

But we did make it the 5 km down the road to Montegrande, birthplace of one of Chile's two Nobel Prize winners, Gabriela Mistral (the other being Pablo Neruda, obvio). The museum/house devoted to her is pretty poor but the Plaza and church are nice for a few minutes.

And a few more minutes down the road is the valley's only winery, Cavas del Valle (well, Falernia's also in Elqui but much closer to La Serena. The rest of the vines are all to make Pisco, for which the valley is famous). They make an interesting Syrah which I enjoyed enough to buy a bottle of and a couple of less than interesting whites, both of which I found to be almost undrinkable (although some people really like them). It's well worth a drop in as there are very few truly boutique wineries in Chile and they need to be supported.

We also spent a few hours in La Serena- a very pretty historic centre and a windy as hell beach.

That's Coquimbo giving La Serena the finger.

And that's about all for now.

Chile Investments on Twitter

If you're interested in getting news and views about Chile and finding out about real estate for sale in Chile, then you can follow Chile Investments' Twitter feed by searching for @chileinvest or simply clicking here.

At some point, I hope to have time to actually blog about something. Until then, look me up on Twitter.

Changing Santiago

December 2003, Cerro San Cristobal.

Anyone who knew me or met me more than about 18 months ago might be a little surprised by the fact that, not only do I rent a flat, but I have also bought one to renovate in Santiago. For years, I loathed Santiago with a maniacal passion and made this clear to anyone who would listen (people learned to back away slowly when my rants were just getting started).

Why did I hate it so much? Let me take you back to December 2003. I'd just spent 3 of the most fun weeks of my life in Argentina, my first stop after Ecuador. Argentina in December is probably the most fun you can have anywhere in the world. Seriously. Schools and universities break up for Summer at the end of the first week, the weather's fantastic, Christmas is around the corner and January and February holidays are coming up. The atmosphere and energy are almost tangible. It's an energy I've never experienced anywhere else. If you don't believe me, go out on Aristides Villanueva in Mendoza for the first or second weekend in December and you'll see what I mean.

So after partying and generally having a great time every single day of the week in BsAs and Mendoza, I rocked up in Chile on a Monday afternoon. And I hated it after my first 13 seconds. In Argentina, everyone queues up in an orderly fashion to put bags on and off the bus. There's no pushing, no shoving. Getting off the bus in Santiago, I was elbowed in the face by an 85 year woman and pushed over twice whilst trying to pick up my rucksack by other Chileans who had clearly been trained in the art of social niceties by a pack of rabid chimpanzees (this was, and sometimes still is, my view of how Chileans act in public).

And it didn't really get much better, to be honest. Santiago was, in 2003, possibly the world's most tedious city. There was nothing to do. Bars and restaurants were either not open on week nights or they were completely empty (in Argentina, they were full every single night until early morning). Everything was grey. There was no atmosphere. I was unsurprised to learn that Santiaguinos have one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

And Santiago Centro was sketchy as hell. In the Plaza de Armas, you could literally see the thieves eyeing up their next victims. A friend had his camera stolen from a pew in the cathedral when he looked away for 2 seconds. Cerro Santa Lucia was also really dodgy at that time and I was warned away from it by everyone I met (a German guy in my hostel got mugged and pretty badly beaten up there, which rather reinforced the warnings).

And it wasn't like I was there on my own and didn't know what to do- I had two Chilean friends who were showing me around (and who became increasingly desperate to show me something fun and interesting to do- they failed, quite miserably, until we went to Renaca after Christmas).

I also spent Winter 2004 living in Santiago, in a freezing house on Salvador con Bilbao. That was a truly miserable experience and I spent the entire time desperate to get back to my home in Buenos Aires, a city I adored with as much passion as I detested Santiago (I had come to Chile to see whether a relationship would work- it did for 4 years).

After moving to Valparaiso in January 2007, my hatred of Santiago continued. But it started to change towards the end of the year when my mum came to visit and we spent a couple of days there. We made the obligatory trip up Cerro San Cristobal via bubble lift and came down the other side in the funicular. That was my first time in Bellavista since 2004 and the neighbourhood had really changed. Patio Bellavista had just opened and that development made me realise that there was hope for the city.

Not only that, but the Costanera Norte, which opened in mid-2006 (I think) had a huge effect on the livability of the city. Anyone who arrived after it opened will have no idea of the traffic misery that people used to have to deal with. To get to and from Vina del Mar, for example, pretty much everyone had to go down Alameda. Alameda! I remember getting stuck in 2 hour + traffic jams on Sunday evenings upon arrival on the outskirts of Santiago on a regular basis. Airport trips, which now take 35 minutes in rush hour and 15 minutes at other times could easily take up to 90 minutes. It was hell. The CN took thousands and thousands of cars away from the city centre and improved the lives of millions of people- not just car owners, but pedestrians, cyclists and public transport commuters as well.

And in the past couple of years, Santiago has improved so, so much in terms of decent restaurants, bars and cultural life. The cultural centre under La Moneda is an incredibly beautiful space and Barrio Lastarria and Bellas Artes have exploded in recent times. There are foreign owned businesses catering to expats and the general security in tourist areas is way better than it used to be. Cerro Santa Lucia is now completely safe to walk around and the Plaza de Armas has constant police patrols. And the fact that a lot of banks and offices have moved up to Las Condes and El Golf has reduced the amount of people in Santiago Centro dramatically, making it a much more pleasant area to wander around.

Although I know I could never live permanently in Santiago (the smog is as bad as ever and I prefer living in the country), I do really enjoy the time I spend there now. It's fun to do all the tourist stuff I never did before. That is something I can honestly say I thought would never be true.

View Of The Port, From Cerro De La Concepcion

Photo from the around the late 1880s, when 'de la' still appeared in Cerro Concepcion's name. Click to enlarge.

The 7 Year Itch

It rather shocks me to say this...but September 1st will be my 7 year anniversary since I left England (not for the first time but this is the longest I've been away) and moved to South America. It was never supposed to be this long. The original plan was to spend 6 months out here, learn Spanish and then move to Spain. Barcelona was high on my list of places I wanted to live.

But things never work out as you expect...and here I am, 7 years later, living in Santa Cruz with a house, a business, 2 cats and 2 dogs and a whole life in Chile. Incredible. But really nice. I really like my life here.

So to celebrate this milestone, I'm going to bore you with a photo tour and commentary about what I've been up to all this time. It's going to take a few posts, so feel free to have a nap.

I started out in Ecuador. Why Ecuador? Well, I wanted to learn Spanish and someone had mentioned that Ecuadorian Spanish is really clear and pure (it is- definitely the 'best' Spanish I've heard down this way). And Ecuador is a small country with a mix of everything South American- tropical beaches, Andean culture, jungle, temperate rain forest, mountains...the lot. The perfect place to start out. Added to that was the fact that when I took the decision to come to South America, I was working in Bournemouth, England as an English teacher to foreign students. Once I decided on Ecuador, I successfully set about making Ecuadorian friends and had a couple of locals to look up when I arrived.

And here's a weird coincidence...I fell out of touch with the friend who was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and show me around Quito on September 1st, 2003. We're friends on Facebook but hadn't actually spoken or emailed or anything for almost 6 years. That was until last week when she borked her Facebook profile and had to create a new one, re-friending me (uh, that's such a horrible phrase and I feel dirty writing it) in the process.

Anyhow, I asked how she was and we got chatting. It turns out she almost died a couple of months ago from a serious case of pneumonia and is taking some time off to recuperate and travel. She said she wanted to visit Chile at some point, I offered to show her around and she's now arriving on guess which date...Yep, on September 1st, I'll be picking Caro up from the airport in Santiago, 7 years to the day she did the same for me in Quito.

So I spent 3 months in Quito. I left sooner than I expected as I got itchy feet and then robbed at gun-point (well, I'm pretty sure it was the guy's finger but I was tipsy, it was 4am and he had 6 friends with him so, despite pointing that out to him, I still handed over the $20 I had on me). But at least 5 other friends were mugged at gunpoint and I got tired of living in fear. Having to sprint the 4 blocks home from a bar or club to avoid getting robbed after dark got old pretty quickly.

Despite the danger aspect, I enjoyed my time in Quito and made some really good friends, some of whom I'm still in fairly regular contact with.

So I bought the cheapest ticket to another country that I could find...and that happened to be Argentina. Which I'll tell you about in another post.

Here are some photos from my time in Ecuador, back in the day when I was 25 years old and had pretty much no responsibilities. How times change. Apologies for the random picture sizes. Long story, too dull to tell.

Caro, the aforementioned old friend who's coming to visit in a couple of weeks, up at some Volcano near the equator. It was cold, windy and foggy and we saw nothing. I ate a guinea pig. A fun day out.

Me up El Panecillo, overlooking Quito's beautiful UNESCO rated old town.

I can't remember the name but this church had been under construction for something like 100 years...you could climb to the very, very top of one of the steeples and the views were incredible.

Quito's main Plaza in the old town.

I lived with some great people and made some good friends in the house known to everyone as La Casa de la Felicidad, on account of the massive, impromptu parties that were always thrown. It wasn't conducive to the 7am starts I sometimes had for work but, hey, I was 25 and could handle it. My leaving party lasted about 3 days. Good times.

That's Arne, Sophie, Gary, me, Frank and Sissy. The hand thing was in honour of that whenever the phone or doorbell sounded, whoever was last to put their thumb to their forehead had to answer. I was incredibly quick on the draw and only answered them about 5 times in 2 and a half months.

Sophie, Zia & Sissy

Lily acted as my guide on a trip Cuenca (she was a friend of a friend). Despite me not speaking much Spanish and her not speaking any English, we muddled through and got on quite well. Sometimes it's better not to be understood.

She took me with her family up to a tiny, dusty little village high in the hills where they were having some kind of festival (I never understood what it was about). It was weird and interesting. I ate guinea pig again. It's actually rather nice, a little like rabbit. And I really liked Cuenca- such a beautiful town. Apparently, the Cuenca accent sounds like bird-song, but my Spanish was so low-level at the time that I didn't notice. I'd love to go back and see if it's true.

I also went to Mindo, a gorgeous little town in the cloud forest. I took a lot of photos that weekend. Then I asked a friend to take one of me up in a place where you jump off a mini-cliff into a freezing pool of water. It's next to a waterfall. She walked backwards off the waterfall. And broke my camera. And she miraculously came out completely unscathed. Which kind of annoyed me a little- for a broken camera, I wanted at least a concussion.

And I went to the hot springs resort of Papallacta a few times- it's only a couple of hours from Quito in bus and a lovely way to spend a lazy Sunday. No photos- my camera was wet, remember?

I also spent a weekend in Montanita, Ecuador's top surf town. I took no photos with my new camera on that trip because it rained solidly for 3 days and the town was, literally, knee deep in mud. It's apparently a fun place when the sun comes out.

Next stop was Buenos Aires, where I ended up living for 3 years...