Chile and Santiago in particular is by far the nicest place in Latin America I have been to. Besides Medellin – the second biggest city in Colombia, this rivals Santiago in my opinion due to its much smaller size and modernity, and beautiful women which we will leave aside at this time.
Economically Chile hasn’t done wonders like Japan in 80th, but it is by far the most successful country in South America. It gradually built wealth for itself and its citizens by running a small government and country is one of the very few examples in the world transforming it’s mineral wealth in the ground to a people’s wealth above it. Bad examples here would be Saudi, Venezuela and Russia among many others.
Today is my second day here in Santiago and I am staying with some pretty crazy in a good way local guy. He hosted me through a couchsurfing.org website where people from around the world are looking for couches in the place where they will be travelling and this website gives them an opportunity to find people who want to host. Of course I was kind of late with my coach requests for Santiago so somebody recommended going to a last minute coach group in Santiago (works similar to Facebook groups of interest). First to respond was a 40 year old lady with some decent recommendations (recommendations work similar to ebay) living on outskirts of Santiago and the other respondent was Sebastian – the guy I was staying with. Not sure why I didn’t go with the lady option but probably mostly due to her home location.
I didn't know that Dakar moved its famous race to South America 2 years ago. Sebastian is a big fan.
In the morning of the first day I went to meet an immigration lawyer i found in internet. His office was in a new downtown area of Los Condos located inside of small apartment style place where he, his secretary assistant and couple more people were located. From conversation with him I took out that it is not very complicated to stay in Chile. And 2 main options he mentioned were 1) getting a job offer from Chilean company and 2) opening a company. That will give you a 1 year visa. Company is actually can not be just a fake one and actually need to do some financial activity of making or losing money. After that if approved by authorities they grant you a permanent residency! ?? (I will need to confirm that) and after 5 years of permanent residency you can apply for a citizenship. Everything is more or less transparent. Lawyer also mentioned though that immigration guidelines generally are very broad that makes emigration officers fully in control of your application (on his mood?), but all Chilean officials have been pretty decent so far …
Everything here in Chile is not cheap but I find that the ratio of quality to a price is quite reasonable. I am generally bad in prices but I know that a latte and a small apple pie in Starbucks in US would cost me no more than 5 bucks. Here I am paying 7.5. Kind of ridiculous. Still cheaper than Moscow of course but not what I like to see. Colombia’s latte prices where half of those in US. I remember that well. Chilean peso has been very strong lately by the way so that’s one of the reasons. Another reason is that Chile has a very strong middle class eager to consume. Apartment rentals in one of the best neighborhoods of Santiago would run starting from 600 $ unfurnished for 2 bedrooms and furnished would probably be something close to a 1000$. One has to pay a price in order to live in developed place.
My second night in Chile we went out with Sebastian and his friend. Well, the friend of Sebastian occurred to be Macarena – Chilena he knew for many years. After a few drinks in the fancy place we moved to apartment of his cousin. There were his brother, cousin and also a couple of friends. They all were very nice and welcoming people and asked millions of questions. Among themselves they were referring to each other as perros (dogs). Hey dog, give me that bottle of rum)). We kept drinking pisco and rum till 4 am in the morning! And that was Monday night!
Pisko is something made of grapes but it actually is pretty strong – one we had was 35% alcohol. Of course everybody would ask me what the best Russian vodka is, and my answer is always the same – it’s Stolichnaya, though to tell the truth I have no clue which one is the best, but i knew everybody knows Stoli.
After I woke up at about noon I decided it’s time to move on from Santiago and took a comfortable Pullman bus to Valparaiso for 8$. Valparaiso occurred to be a pretty decent place. Quite old port city which has lost its importance and deteriorated after canal was built in Panama and took most of the business.
Valparaiso's Wall street with all the banks located on it.
I checked in at the hostel and the owner – the German who lived in Chile for last 17 years told me I was his first Russian staying in hostel. I asked for a special treatment for that occasion and I guess he treated me such by putting me in a room with one British and one Aussie girls.
Still quite ran down Valpo (Valparaiso) is definitely is having its renaissance at the moment with many old buildings being restored. It is located on several hills and from their tops opens a pretty nice view on the Pacific Ocean and the port.
Valpo has has it's nice 3-d world feeling at some places.
Right next to it is located a vacation beach town with very romantic name of Vina del Mar (Wine of the Sea). It is a playground for all the rich Chilenos and would be something like a Santa Barbara of California. Everything is cleaner, nicer and also more expensive there. I had a lunch in a restaurant there and paid 26$ for a main course and bottle of wine. I guess OK price by American standards. After that tried to put my feet into the ocean – water was pretty cold and that was almost the warmest time of the year. I have seen only 3 or 4 people in the water but plenty on the beach sunbathing. I guess you would need to go deep north to get warmer water. That evening I spent in the hostel drinking wine with an older well travelled Dutch guy who moved in our room the next day and broke my hegemony with 2 abovementioned girls. Dutch guy was a freelance software engineer and worked only part of the year while traveling the rest of the time. After that we went to the kitchen area for a seafood dinner prepared by the hostel (they do it once a week for 10 $) and kept talking with other people in hostel till about midnight. That’s when we finished the pisco bottle Sebastian gave me after as a farewell present.
Vina del Mar
I like staying in hostels when I am travelling alone; it gives the opportunity to meet all kind of open minded people from all over the world who can tell you some exiting stories about their travels. Same applies about couchsurfing, but in this case it is rather a expedited introduction to a Chilean culture. But I know that kind of experience is not for everyone.
A family of Australians with their little girl named Shanti really impressed me. They did a “W”. Apparently everybody knows what “W” means in Chile. As I was explained it’s an adventure tour all the way south of Chile – meaning that for several days they had to walk a huge distance every day, sleep in a tent, experience all kind of Patagonia weather, and all that with their daughter Shanti, who was not even 2 years old! Next morning they had to get up at 5 to catch a bus north. I wander if my wife would agree for something crazy like that? To do it with 2 kids is way more difficult as well I guess. But still it would be something I would love to do one day.
The next day I checked out from the hostel (that ended up costing me 15$ a day) and went to Vina del Mar where I could rent a car. There were no rent-a-cars in Valparaiso itself. I was going to Santa Cruz – a little town 2 hours away south of Santiago famous for its vineyards. I was going to return the car back at Santiago airport. Car rent cost me about 90$ a day for a not very big Samsung sedan. My Google maps showed me the shortest distance of 240 km and about 4 hours of travel. I thought I was going to make it in about 3 hours, and in reality spent almost 6 because I had to do a 2 hour return because the road which supposed to be connecting to another one I needed to get to in reality led to a ranch with bit sign “Privado… something …something”. But that part of the road was the most beautiful part so I do not regret it. I was generally impressed by quality of the road not only in Santiago but also outside of it. In the countryside if the road was paved at all (and most of them were) they were pretty descent quality with clear signs. American style. I finally made it to Santa Cruz about 6 pm and checked in to some fairly shitty hotel for 40$ hoping for a good company. Hotel was formed from couple of houses standing next to each other. I was likely the only guest and nobody there spoke a word in English so I was forced to practice me Espaniol. 15 minutes later I went out to look around the town and it occurred to be a very small but cute little colonial town with the main hotel on the main square and a big casino behind it. As wine tours were already over for today I just went to the casino and spent the evening there drinking and trying to talk to everybody in the bar. Being a foreigner in that small town actually was a big plus as everybody seemed interested who I was and where I was from. On the way back but still on Casino’s territory I looked inside of very noisy restaurant and what I saw very much looked like a wedding to me with all the tables located the way so everybody would face the middle of the room (like half of the sun with tables being rays). At least that’s how weddings look in Russia. But here there were no bride or groom but rather everybody were wearing crazy costumes and hats and there were contests going on among 4 teams and people creamed and supported their representatives. Not sure what that was but it wasn’t a wedding.
Chile's countryside.
Next morning I checked out of the hotel and headed towards Santiago. On the way I called another Russian girl from coouchsurfing.org that moved and lived in Santiago for almost a year. I asked to meet in a city center because I was interested in how is she doing after the move. I came in the city around 1 pm and traffic was OK. When I was leaving the city around 6 there were no major congestions on freeways either. Natasha lived in Santiago for almost a year and came from Saint Petersburg to her Chilean boyfriend with whom she broke up recently and moved in with another guy now (pretty quick I thought). Seemed like she was in her emotional low at the moment after initial excitement after move to Chile as she seemed to like nothing in the city (but she admitted she would never consider moving back though). We discussed those emotional cycles as I went through the same after move to US. First you excited and love everything, than cultural differences start to surface more vividly and It brings frustration and finally follows the period of emotional stability and understanding that you made the right move.
Studio she was renting was 350$ a month in city center which is not considered to be the best area. Sounded pretty cheap.
She said that only a super lazy person would not be able to stay in Chile legally as ways to do that are clear and they are fairly simple. She got her 1 year work visa after some fake company gave her a paper saying they agree to take her to work. As easy as that. Now she is opening her own small company (she is teaching Russian and Spanish to Russians) to get visas legally. She makes about a 1000$ a month doing that, she said.
All highways in Chile seem to be toll ones. So in order to get from Santiago to Valparaiso the bus I took stopped twice and paid total of ~ 6$. Not very cheap. And in Santiago all along the freeways there were automatic toll machines installed which withdrew the money from a little card on my car’s window. It made it beep every time I passed those gates. I passed probably 7 or 8 of them while driving in Santiago and to the airport and each of them cost 185 pesos (40 cents). Sebasien, the couch surfer I stayed with at the beginning of the trip, told me he spends about 80$ a month just on tolls driving to and from work every day. Talking more about prices he said his 2 bedroom apartment on 17-th floor of not the best but still quite good neighborhood cost him 100k$ a year ago and his note was 600$/month. Add another 100$ a month for utilities and another 400-500$ for food and stuff and you can get an idea how much it may cost to live in Santiago. Sebastian was making 3000$ a month which was very good by Chilean standards (and he was likely spending them all as well as far as I could tell).
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to go to other places I wanted to – La Serena and The Elqui Valley and Patagonia of course. But among Santiago, Valparaiso, Vinas and Santa Cruz I think my personal choice would be Valparaiso which is interesting reviving place that is relatively cheap (not sure what the prices were as I couldn’t find any English speaking real estate agent) and right next to overpriced and shiny Vina del Mar which you can access on metro that is running along the coastline in 10 minutes. Town has its special spirit. For comfortable living one would need about 2000$ for a family of 4 (like mine) I think.
I did not experience any earthquakes during my week there though hoped for a small one… just for experience sake. May be it was a bad wish looking at Japanese disaster. …
Some other prices:
- Big Mac meal – 2700 pesos or 6$.
- In Vina del Mar 3 bedrooms apartment in a high-rise building of total 78 m2 (840 ft2) was quoted for 178 k$. it was not exactly a beach front but pretty close.
- Toyota Corolla 1.6 in basic version - 16 k$
- 4 hour parking in Santiago center (on the street) on business day – 10 $
- Gallon of regular gas – 5.6 $
Economically Chile hasn’t done wonders like Japan in 80th, but it is by far the most successful country in South America. It gradually built wealth for itself and its citizens by running a small government and country is one of the very few examples in the world transforming it’s mineral wealth in the ground to a people’s wealth above it. Bad examples here would be Saudi, Venezuela and Russia among many others.
Today is my second day here in Santiago and I am staying with some pretty crazy in a good way local guy. He hosted me through a couchsurfing.org website where people from around the world are looking for couches in the place where they will be travelling and this website gives them an opportunity to find people who want to host. Of course I was kind of late with my coach requests for Santiago so somebody recommended going to a last minute coach group in Santiago (works similar to Facebook groups of interest). First to respond was a 40 year old lady with some decent recommendations (recommendations work similar to ebay) living on outskirts of Santiago and the other respondent was Sebastian – the guy I was staying with. Not sure why I didn’t go with the lady option but probably mostly due to her home location.
I didn't know that Dakar moved its famous race to South America 2 years ago. Sebastian is a big fan.
In the morning of the first day I went to meet an immigration lawyer i found in internet. His office was in a new downtown area of Los Condos located inside of small apartment style place where he, his secretary assistant and couple more people were located. From conversation with him I took out that it is not very complicated to stay in Chile. And 2 main options he mentioned were 1) getting a job offer from Chilean company and 2) opening a company. That will give you a 1 year visa. Company is actually can not be just a fake one and actually need to do some financial activity of making or losing money. After that if approved by authorities they grant you a permanent residency! ?? (I will need to confirm that) and after 5 years of permanent residency you can apply for a citizenship. Everything is more or less transparent. Lawyer also mentioned though that immigration guidelines generally are very broad that makes emigration officers fully in control of your application (on his mood?), but all Chilean officials have been pretty decent so far …
Everything here in Chile is not cheap but I find that the ratio of quality to a price is quite reasonable. I am generally bad in prices but I know that a latte and a small apple pie in Starbucks in US would cost me no more than 5 bucks. Here I am paying 7.5. Kind of ridiculous. Still cheaper than Moscow of course but not what I like to see. Colombia’s latte prices where half of those in US. I remember that well. Chilean peso has been very strong lately by the way so that’s one of the reasons. Another reason is that Chile has a very strong middle class eager to consume. Apartment rentals in one of the best neighborhoods of Santiago would run starting from 600 $ unfurnished for 2 bedrooms and furnished would probably be something close to a 1000$. One has to pay a price in order to live in developed place.
My second night in Chile we went out with Sebastian and his friend. Well, the friend of Sebastian occurred to be Macarena – Chilena he knew for many years. After a few drinks in the fancy place we moved to apartment of his cousin. There were his brother, cousin and also a couple of friends. They all were very nice and welcoming people and asked millions of questions. Among themselves they were referring to each other as perros (dogs). Hey dog, give me that bottle of rum)). We kept drinking pisco and rum till 4 am in the morning! And that was Monday night!
Pisko is something made of grapes but it actually is pretty strong – one we had was 35% alcohol. Of course everybody would ask me what the best Russian vodka is, and my answer is always the same – it’s Stolichnaya, though to tell the truth I have no clue which one is the best, but i knew everybody knows Stoli.
After I woke up at about noon I decided it’s time to move on from Santiago and took a comfortable Pullman bus to Valparaiso for 8$. Valparaiso occurred to be a pretty decent place. Quite old port city which has lost its importance and deteriorated after canal was built in Panama and took most of the business.
Valparaiso's Wall street with all the banks located on it.
I checked in at the hostel and the owner – the German who lived in Chile for last 17 years told me I was his first Russian staying in hostel. I asked for a special treatment for that occasion and I guess he treated me such by putting me in a room with one British and one Aussie girls.
Still quite ran down Valpo (Valparaiso) is definitely is having its renaissance at the moment with many old buildings being restored. It is located on several hills and from their tops opens a pretty nice view on the Pacific Ocean and the port.
Valpo has has it's nice 3-d world feeling at some places.
Right next to it is located a vacation beach town with very romantic name of Vina del Mar (Wine of the Sea). It is a playground for all the rich Chilenos and would be something like a Santa Barbara of California. Everything is cleaner, nicer and also more expensive there. I had a lunch in a restaurant there and paid 26$ for a main course and bottle of wine. I guess OK price by American standards. After that tried to put my feet into the ocean – water was pretty cold and that was almost the warmest time of the year. I have seen only 3 or 4 people in the water but plenty on the beach sunbathing. I guess you would need to go deep north to get warmer water. That evening I spent in the hostel drinking wine with an older well travelled Dutch guy who moved in our room the next day and broke my hegemony with 2 abovementioned girls. Dutch guy was a freelance software engineer and worked only part of the year while traveling the rest of the time. After that we went to the kitchen area for a seafood dinner prepared by the hostel (they do it once a week for 10 $) and kept talking with other people in hostel till about midnight. That’s when we finished the pisco bottle Sebastian gave me after as a farewell present.
Vina del Mar
I like staying in hostels when I am travelling alone; it gives the opportunity to meet all kind of open minded people from all over the world who can tell you some exiting stories about their travels. Same applies about couchsurfing, but in this case it is rather a expedited introduction to a Chilean culture. But I know that kind of experience is not for everyone.
A family of Australians with their little girl named Shanti really impressed me. They did a “W”. Apparently everybody knows what “W” means in Chile. As I was explained it’s an adventure tour all the way south of Chile – meaning that for several days they had to walk a huge distance every day, sleep in a tent, experience all kind of Patagonia weather, and all that with their daughter Shanti, who was not even 2 years old! Next morning they had to get up at 5 to catch a bus north. I wander if my wife would agree for something crazy like that? To do it with 2 kids is way more difficult as well I guess. But still it would be something I would love to do one day.
The next day I checked out from the hostel (that ended up costing me 15$ a day) and went to Vina del Mar where I could rent a car. There were no rent-a-cars in Valparaiso itself. I was going to Santa Cruz – a little town 2 hours away south of Santiago famous for its vineyards. I was going to return the car back at Santiago airport. Car rent cost me about 90$ a day for a not very big Samsung sedan. My Google maps showed me the shortest distance of 240 km and about 4 hours of travel. I thought I was going to make it in about 3 hours, and in reality spent almost 6 because I had to do a 2 hour return because the road which supposed to be connecting to another one I needed to get to in reality led to a ranch with bit sign “Privado… something …something”. But that part of the road was the most beautiful part so I do not regret it. I was generally impressed by quality of the road not only in Santiago but also outside of it. In the countryside if the road was paved at all (and most of them were) they were pretty descent quality with clear signs. American style. I finally made it to Santa Cruz about 6 pm and checked in to some fairly shitty hotel for 40$ hoping for a good company. Hotel was formed from couple of houses standing next to each other. I was likely the only guest and nobody there spoke a word in English so I was forced to practice me Espaniol. 15 minutes later I went out to look around the town and it occurred to be a very small but cute little colonial town with the main hotel on the main square and a big casino behind it. As wine tours were already over for today I just went to the casino and spent the evening there drinking and trying to talk to everybody in the bar. Being a foreigner in that small town actually was a big plus as everybody seemed interested who I was and where I was from. On the way back but still on Casino’s territory I looked inside of very noisy restaurant and what I saw very much looked like a wedding to me with all the tables located the way so everybody would face the middle of the room (like half of the sun with tables being rays). At least that’s how weddings look in Russia. But here there were no bride or groom but rather everybody were wearing crazy costumes and hats and there were contests going on among 4 teams and people creamed and supported their representatives. Not sure what that was but it wasn’t a wedding.
Chile's countryside.
Next morning I checked out of the hotel and headed towards Santiago. On the way I called another Russian girl from coouchsurfing.org that moved and lived in Santiago for almost a year. I asked to meet in a city center because I was interested in how is she doing after the move. I came in the city around 1 pm and traffic was OK. When I was leaving the city around 6 there were no major congestions on freeways either. Natasha lived in Santiago for almost a year and came from Saint Petersburg to her Chilean boyfriend with whom she broke up recently and moved in with another guy now (pretty quick I thought). Seemed like she was in her emotional low at the moment after initial excitement after move to Chile as she seemed to like nothing in the city (but she admitted she would never consider moving back though). We discussed those emotional cycles as I went through the same after move to US. First you excited and love everything, than cultural differences start to surface more vividly and It brings frustration and finally follows the period of emotional stability and understanding that you made the right move.
Studio she was renting was 350$ a month in city center which is not considered to be the best area. Sounded pretty cheap.
She said that only a super lazy person would not be able to stay in Chile legally as ways to do that are clear and they are fairly simple. She got her 1 year work visa after some fake company gave her a paper saying they agree to take her to work. As easy as that. Now she is opening her own small company (she is teaching Russian and Spanish to Russians) to get visas legally. She makes about a 1000$ a month doing that, she said.
All highways in Chile seem to be toll ones. So in order to get from Santiago to Valparaiso the bus I took stopped twice and paid total of ~ 6$. Not very cheap. And in Santiago all along the freeways there were automatic toll machines installed which withdrew the money from a little card on my car’s window. It made it beep every time I passed those gates. I passed probably 7 or 8 of them while driving in Santiago and to the airport and each of them cost 185 pesos (40 cents). Sebasien, the couch surfer I stayed with at the beginning of the trip, told me he spends about 80$ a month just on tolls driving to and from work every day. Talking more about prices he said his 2 bedroom apartment on 17-th floor of not the best but still quite good neighborhood cost him 100k$ a year ago and his note was 600$/month. Add another 100$ a month for utilities and another 400-500$ for food and stuff and you can get an idea how much it may cost to live in Santiago. Sebastian was making 3000$ a month which was very good by Chilean standards (and he was likely spending them all as well as far as I could tell).
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to go to other places I wanted to – La Serena and The Elqui Valley and Patagonia of course. But among Santiago, Valparaiso, Vinas and Santa Cruz I think my personal choice would be Valparaiso which is interesting reviving place that is relatively cheap (not sure what the prices were as I couldn’t find any English speaking real estate agent) and right next to overpriced and shiny Vina del Mar which you can access on metro that is running along the coastline in 10 minutes. Town has its special spirit. For comfortable living one would need about 2000$ for a family of 4 (like mine) I think.
I did not experience any earthquakes during my week there though hoped for a small one… just for experience sake. May be it was a bad wish looking at Japanese disaster. …
Some other prices:
- Big Mac meal – 2700 pesos or 6$.
- In Vina del Mar 3 bedrooms apartment in a high-rise building of total 78 m2 (840 ft2) was quoted for 178 k$. it was not exactly a beach front but pretty close.
- Toyota Corolla 1.6 in basic version - 16 k$
- 4 hour parking in Santiago center (on the street) on business day – 10 $
- Gallon of regular gas – 5.6 $
No comments:
Post a Comment