Friday, July 9th: Ocean Treasures Treasured

Technical pit stop at Viña
Today we want to find out what treasures the Pacific coastline has to offer us. Our first stop is Viña del Mar, a big coastal town basking in the sun,  just north of Valparaiso. Flaunting our latest resort wear on the high street is not really our thing, we're soft-core backpackers. However, need dictates us to pick up a bit of men's cologne and a USB memory card reader, so we dive into the first department store we encounter. To be honest, the sight of the frantic activity in this beehive, combined with aisles that are filled to the limit with consumer goods and smiling department store clerks, dolled-up goddesses softly urging you to spend, spend, spend the almighty dollar (or peso if you have to) makes my stomach revolt. It's an all-too-familiar claustrophobic shoppers world, a world we had conveniently forgotten about on the Altiplano.  We get the necessary, then make our way out as fast as we can, in search of blue skies, ethnic oxygen, but all we find on the high street are more department stores, restaurants, and boutiques. And strolling tourists, peanut vendors, and people offering romantic horse-and-buggy tours around the centre of town. Aaaargh!

Ballers of the world, unite...please!
I cherish the desire to get a shirt of a local basketball  team from every country I visit. It wouldn't necessarily have to be the Santiago Saints, actually the more obscure the better. My search for such a shirt in Bolivia was fruitless, so I'm hoping for a Chilean slam dunk here in the commercial heart of Viña Del Mar. After an hour of being sent from one sports store to the other, I give up.  Turns out that this city, geared up to the max to sell whatever you want, cannot deliver. Anyway, our stomachs have indicated that they're unemployed.

The pelican-can at Concon
We grab one of the buses that hugs the coastline, in search of the perfect seafood lunch. Carolina, a Chilean friend of mine who lives in California, has been boasting about "El Gatito de Concon". Concon lies another 30 minutes up the coast, but hey, we're happy to leave Viña and check out this restaurant. Without address it may be a bit tricky to find it, but the bus driver say "El Gatito? No problem" and drops us off right in front. The place is packed, we're told to wait 30 minutes for a table, well below the 1 hour waiting time we were promised beforehand. To kill time we watch a flock of huge pelicans sit on the edge of the roof of the next door restaurant. They're neatly queueing for kitchen scraps that occasionally appear out of the kitchen window below. There's a code of conduct between pelicans, a pecking order: they've all read their rights in a Pelican Brief. The roof counts roughly 30 birds, but only 3 or 4 fight for food. I'm not even sure it's a real food fight, it seems more like a lot of wing flapping to get the best position.  Once eaten, they fly in a wide circle over the beach to the next pelican-snack bar and start their dance all over again. Blandine has never seen these majestic birds with huge beaks from this close before and is overjoyed: "Here, Kitty, Kitty" does not work, the birds simply ignore her. Probably for the better: a wild adult pelican is not exactly the kind of pet you would want to land on your shoulder. Though I admit, I'd happily take a picture of that type of mess. We stroll down to the beach, camera in hand, to get a closer look at some of these birds. They've got an enormous beak, an even bigger wing span, yet they fly so graciously. We're still in awe when we hear our name called. Time to go create some kitchen scraps of our own!

Seafood con-convulsions
 A table by the window, overlooking the Pacific is waiting for us. All around us are happy, chatty customers. It's Friday afternoon and it seems the week-end has already begun.  We decide to get in the mood as well and order something to whet our appetite. The house appetizer is to die for: fresh abalone, mussels au gratin, and other local favorites, all prepared to perfection. We order a bottle of wine, something to match our mains. The choice is easy: house-white or house-red, so we go with white. Blandine's main is a fish with a mushroom-cream sauce. ), mine is a huge piece of "reineta", steamed just the way I like it, swimming in a slightly sweet sauce decorated with fresh abalone (they call it "loco" over here, because the taste is just madly delicious). We've got some veggies, rice and a salad on the side. While one of the waiters grabs a guitar, I open my belt buckle and slide my belt one hole over to make space for the dessert: peaches and cream. Yummy, I could not think of a better way to complete our treasure hunt. I lean back on my chair and look out over the Pacific, thinking: "I came, I saw, I conquered, but only just. They may have to roll us out of this restaurant". I dinner so perfect it makes me shed a tear. Or is that from the cheesy guitar songs played by the waiter?

Lacking the lingoBlandine's tugging my jacket rather nervously, so I shake hands with these men, and we leave the scene. There are no bus stops here, you just wave down the bus and it'll stop right in front of you. A country that doesn't need bus stops, that must be JC Decaux's worst nightmare.


Travelling daze
We make it back to the Pilcomayo hostel late in the afternoon, then rush to the bus terminal for our return to Santiago. Back at the Pajaritos bus terminal in Santiago - which seems to be the hub for any from kind of transport in and out of the city  - we hop on the subway to the centre of town. Still in a digesting daze, we concentrate just enough to get off at the right place, somewhere downtown. It's dark when we emerge from the subway with our heavy backpacks, so we check into hotel Paris (ironic, no), a standard type of hotel, willing to go half-price to have us. They even got info about tours to local vineyards, we're set! The room is okay, so we take a hot shower (what a pleasure) and fall on the bed, exhausted from all that travelling. I remember watching a bit of telly and smelling loads of smoke coming from the adjoining room, but being too tired to do something about it. The smoky smell eventually is replaced with loud snoring.  Oh well.