After a delicious breakfast me, Kat and Barbara piled into the back of Remo and Monika’s car and head to the hike via the supermarket. And oh what a supermarket! It was HUGE and I could’ve spent hours in there. Instead I grabbed a ham and egg sandwich, key lime cookies, soda crackers and water for the day. We also bypassed the body spray aisle where they had testers of brown sugar and vanilla body spray so Kat sprayed our stink shoes and we ran away. 

The hike

After an hour’s drive we arrived at the hike start point. We just so happened to arrive at the same time a bus load of kids did. Thankfully they head straight for the visitor centre so we started on the walk. 

After only a minute we came across a cool horse who looked hungry. Barbara and Kat had a pat and the horse seemed to like the taste of sunscreen or just Barbara in general. I, being the half animal lover I am, took photos from a distance. 

The walk wasn’t too well marked (read: not marked at all) so we took a wrong turn almost immediately but got back on track just as quickly. 

We crossed one river by balancing on rocks and clambering over logs. Barbara misjudged a rock and ended up with both feet in the river. Thanks to a decent pair of shoes her feet weren’t too wet so we carried on. 

There was a lot of up and down and a few sweaty rest stops. Though it wasn’t nearly as strenuous as the Tongariro Crossing, whose pain is still fresh in my memory. 

We got to a point where we could hear the second river we were going to have our lunch stop at then turned around as Monika was still recovering from an illness and we didn’t really mind where we had lunch. So we head back to the first river and found a nice clearing to eat our supermarket-bought lunch. 

The highlight of the lunch has to be seeing Remo and Monika eating Toblerone sandwiches. My eyes have been opened to a new way of consuming Toblerone!

After we were stuffed full we head back down the track and found the horse who remembered us. Barbara gave him her chunky apple core which he devoured then followed up by licking her hand and daybag before trying to eat the strap off it. 

Back at Casa Chueca

What better way to round off a 3 hour 45 minute hike than with my very first pisco sour in the pool?!

It was super strong so I’m glad it was followed up by a delicious vegetarian meal of a barley stack with sautéed veges and a pumpkin sauce with flan for dessert. 

We didn’t quite know what to expect when we got to Talca. We knew we had to get a bite to eat and call Casa Chueca to come and pick us up from the Taxutal terminal.

BIGGER

Across from the station we found BIGGER, a supermarket, of sorts. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of fresh food so we grabbed some custard apple yoghurt, biscuits and Doritos. Healthy lunch, much?

We then walked across the road and parked our butts on a step and chowed down.

It is worth noting that an Asian girl and a 5’11″ white girl walking through a Chilean supermarket get quite a few stares. 

Local call

Trying to call Casa Chueca proved to be more difficult than we first thought. First we got the wrong number. Then we couldn’t dial at all. A guy came up to us and asked if we needed help. He was lovely and actually helped but we couldn’t help but think he was trying to mug us.

When we had failed a few times we went to the internet cafe to ask how to dial the numbers we had. It turns out that we needed to add an extra number when dialling… how the heck were we supposed to know that?!

After a frustrating talk with Casa Chueca – cut off once thanks to not keeping an eye on the time ticking down – we managed  get them to come and meet us at the terminal.

I’ve been saying “we” but I mean “Kat”, who did all the talking.

Taxutal

So you’d think getting the local bus would be easy… and you, like us, would be wrong. We asked a few people where the bus station/stop was and most people didn’t even know what we were talking about. A security guy seemed to know what he was talking about and enlisted the help of a guy standing by the door. We set off and still had no idea where we were going. Then a French guy asked us if we were lost. We still felt like we were going to be mugged. He ended up sending us in the right direction and didn’t mug us, woo! 

That didn’t mean that we caught the bus straight away. One Linea A bus passed us so we went to find where it stops to pick people up. Kat asked the snack shop lady where to get the bus from and she said we could catch it from the corner. So we waited and when another bus came by I tried to flag it down… no such luck. When a second Linea A bus came by I flagged it down and it actually stopped! We loaded our stuff and ourselves on to the bus and paid the $400 each for the ticket.

We finally felt like we were on our way! If this trip was done on my own I’d feel very nervous about the whole ordeal. There is some weird comfort you get from travelling in a pair where if things don’t go according to plan, at least you’re not alone.

Casa Chueca

We were picked up in a van by Michaela. When she got out of the van it decided to roll away down the road. Apparently the handbrake wasn’t working today.

1.9km later we arrived at Casa Chueca and it is lovely!! It feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s a pool and a bar and they offer dinner for cheap. Meals are vegetarian and oh so delicious. We had a cold pea soup followed by a vege lasagne.

We also met a Swiss couple and an Australian lady who sadly lost her iPhone. We chat for ages and are off for a hike together tomorrow and are staying an extra day to do sand dunes the following day. Making friends and changing our plans already. I love it.

We checked out of our hostel and hopped the metro to the bus terminal. Thankfully we went early as the bus we wanted to get was already full and the next bus only had two seats left: 5 and 25 so we weren’t even sitting next to each other. 

More planning

We spent the next 2 or so hours until our 13:21 bus sitting on a bench seat trying to rehydrate before our bus ride and figuring out our next week. This consisted of reading a Lonely Planet and saying, “Where the heck should we go? What the heck can we do there?!” and randomly pointing at pages. 

We made a quick toilet stop before we got on the bus and what did we find? A bidet alongside the row of sinks where you wash your hands… What the…?! It was next to a baby changing table so maybe that was what it was intended to wash… We’re not in Kansas any more!

Tur Bus

We put our bags under the bus and found our respective seats. After we left a guy came around with a clipboard and asked for my name… upon replying he handed the clipboard over because clearly mine is a name Chileans have never heard before let alone know how to spell. Then he asked for my phone number which I wrote down then I handed back the clipboard. 
“Terminal?” 
“Talca.” 
“Terminal?” 
“Uhh…” face of, “I don’t speak Spanish. What more could you want from me aside from ‘Talca’?”
silence followed by a face which said, “How else can I say this?” “Terminal?” 
“Uh… Terminal? Talca?”
“Talca?”
“Talca.”
“Talca.”
smile and move onto the next person

Phew! Awkward turtle conversation over!

After falling asleep at 2:40am, iPhone still in hand (messaging New Zealand while people were awake), I woke up at 12:15pm with Kat’s face in front of mine. All I managed to utter was, “Water.”

Then we got up and went to my Disneyland aka the supermarket. Fresh veges were the goal, plus some essentials like shampoo – when you travel with just a carry-on bag those ziplok baggies can be restricting!!

I also managed to run out of PIN attempts on my card which means no money for me. Thankfully I called Caxton just before they closed and they reset my PIN attempts so I can try again. It can only be one of two PINs so I’m wondering what the heck is going on with my card.

Mas lomo?

We picked up Luis, an Argentinian guy, from our hostel room and went in search of a late lunch. And where did we end up? None other than the sushi bar where we had drinks last night! Sadly for us the set lunch menu was finished for the day so we had steak and papas bravas. 

And now here we sit on Kat’s bottom bunk bed sleepy from steak and needing to book some accommodation for the high season so we’re not left sleeping on a bench.

After getting to the airport last night and hopping the Tranvsip shuttle to the hostel (only $6,000 and highly recommended) I was shown to my room to find Kat in her bed. I’ve never been so happy to see her in my life!

We had the brilliant idea to go out and find booze. So out we went and had caipirinhas and mojitos and caught up on the last two weeks. Had I really only been gone for that long???

Lomo a lo pobre

Done with our boozing we found lomo a lo pobre, took it back to the hostel and devoured it. 

This dish is uh-mazing! Chips, steak, fried eggs and fried onions all piled up together. It wasn’t even cooked properly but it was tasty nonetheless.

All in all I have never had a better welcome to a country than this!!