Bonus Blog - The Voyages of Dad And Leaving Chile

Today I am going to give you a bonus blog about the adventures that my dad has been doing and some of the "dad" things that he does over the time we have been in Chile. This will also be my final blog for this trip because we will be heading home from Chile this weekend. I will probably be very jet lagged because we get back at 11 am after a 12 hour flight so I will have gotten no sleep.

Back when we were in Coyhaique, we went out to a restaurant that had a bar and 2 TVs that were showing a football game. The restaurant didn't have a menu, so when the waiter came to ask what we wanted we didn't know what they had. None of us speak Spanish, so dad tried to communicate and find out what food they had. My dad does this thing where when he is trying to talk to someone who doesn't speak English, he just laughs really loud and he has done this so many times. After a few minutes and google translating, we found out what was on the menu. Once we finished ordering, someone on a table next to ours stood up and walked over to our table. He gave my Dad a beer and took some selfies with him.

Another thing is that Dad mispronounces Spanish words, even when he's used them lots of times, like "Coyhaique", "jamon" and "uno". 

Day 23 - A Day at the Museum

A few days ago, we found out that the museum of natural history actually exists, so we decided to go to it. We saw a big sign outside of the museum that had the Spanish word for dinosaur on it (which was dinosaurios).

Outside of the museum there was a market and a park. There were lots of people walking dogs and lots of different types of stalls. I bought a flag with the pope on it because he was visiting Chile the next day. Some of the other types of things they sold at stalls in the park were: toys, churos, pope flags, candy floss, juice and more things like that.

In the first room of the museum, there was fossils and drawings of dinosaurs as well as a big model of a dinosaur that was almost touching the roof (lots of people were getting photos with it).

The rest of the museum was broken up into different parts of Chile and showing the different types of animals that can be found there. They had different animals in a recreation of their habitats and there was this one owl that was balancing by just one talon. All of these rooms were around the sides of the building but there was one big room in the middle. There was a huge whale skeleton, lots of dinosaur skeletons and animals. Some of the animal were: an ox, two bengal tigers and a few gorillas.

Day 22 - James Bond And Other Stars

Last weekend, we went to Paranal Observatory. Paranal is an observatory on top of a mountain in the Atacama desert and is owned by ESO. We went there for one night then we headed home. We got up really early in the morning to catch a flight to the mining town of Antofagasta. Antofagasta is a city in a desert. We stopped there because it is the closest airport to Paranal. From there we took a two hour long bus ride to Paranal.

Once we got to Paranal, we got given keys to our rooms and had lunch. In the dining room, they have a bunch of dishes to choose from for your meal as well as lots of side dishes. They have a drinks machine with lots of different drinks like: fizzy drinks, juice, coffee and hot chocolate. They also have an ice cream machine.

Once it was close to sunset, we went higher up on the mountain, up to the telescopes. We got a tour of the top of the mountain with the four big 8 metre telescopes (UT1, UT2, UT3, UT4) that had Mapuche names Antu (Sun), Kueyen (Moon), Melipal (Southern Cross) and Yepun (Venus). Frederic showed us his telescope, UT4 or Yepun. We saw the telescope moving, the dome opening and we saw the huge instruments on the telescope. Then we went to the control room where they operated the telescopes from. When everyone else was talking to the observers, I took a nap.

The next day we flew back to Santiago and we got back at one in the morning, and went straight to sleep. The next night, we watched James Bond Quantum of Solace, the James Bond movie that they filmed at Paranal Observatory.

Day 21 - Cities by the Sea

Last week we took a bus to Vina del Mar. The bus was a two story bus and we were on the top. I had a window seat and so did Leah, but her window was covered by the bus logo on the outside of the bus. The bus ride was an hour and a half long and I felt sick on the way there. Vina del Mar and Valparaiso are cities by the ocean. Once the bus arrived, we walked to our hotel.

When we got to our hotel, Mum and Dad communicated with the hotel receptionist through google translate. After sorting things out with the receptionist, we relaxed for the rest of the day. The next day we took an Uber into Valparaiso, the city next to Vina del Mar. Mum and Dad were giving talks at the university.

For the next two days, we went on walking tours around Valparaiso. The tours are each about 3 hours long and you finish the tour at the same square you start it in. The tours are free, but you were supposed to tip the tour guide, called "Tours for tips". On the first tour they gave us free drinks to taste and on the first one they gave us these really nice tasting things called alfajores (two cookies with dulce de leche/manjar in between, then coated in chocolate). On the first tour we got to go on a funicular up the steep cliff.

After than we went to a museum which had the history of different parts of Chile. They had a section on Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, one part showing the different sizes of Easter Island head statues. The upstairs part of the museum was about animals, mainly bugs. They had so many bugs, there were more bugs than there were other animals. After four days we took a bus back to Santiago. On the way back it was much better because I didn't feel sick.

Day 20 - Dancing with the Aztecs

The day after we went to the National History Museum we took the metro back to Plaza de Armas. There we went to the Museum of Pre-Colombian Art. The first room had cave paintings and there was stuff explaining what the paintings were about. The explanations were either text or video. In the video ones there was only Spanish so we didn't bother listening to them, but in the text ones they had English translations.

There was a long pathway to the next room with more stuff about cave paintings along the walls and they had a bit talking about llamas, alpacas and two other animals in the "camelid" category. The next room started off with a video about the moon. The next thing in that room was about dark constellations. Dark constellations are areas of the sky without stars, that look like something. 

My favorite dark constellation was the celestial llama, because it has a neck that is about 3 times longer than its body. The third room started off with these things that you could smell and you had to guess what fruit it was (the tomato smelled the worst). Then it had a map of South America showing which fruits grow where. The room finished off with a dancing game, with different types of dances from Chile. I did a dance from the Aztecs (an ancient civilization, that lived in Southern/Central America).

The final room was on the second floor. The room was filled with pots, little statues, rugs and other artwork. They were divided into different regions of Chile and different time periods in history.

Day 19 - National Not Natural

One day after Christmas, we took the metro to a station called Plaza de Armas. They had a big Christmas tree in the plaza and also a Christmas whale in front of the church. The church had a big poster of the pope on the side because the Pope is visiting Chile and Peru during the 15th-21th January. The church was very nice inside and also pleasantly cool.

Once we got to the plaza, we looked around for the Museum of Natural History, but we couldn't find it. We did find a tourist guide place though, and there we found out that it was actually the Museum of National History. We walked down to the museum and had a look round. The museum was split into two floors. I don't remember what they had on the first floor except that they had a cannon in the courtyard.

The second floor was full of coins, necklaces, jewelry and other small stuff like that. Later on, they had stuff like chairs, guns and swords. As well as all of that, there were paintings all along the walls. They had so many, I don't think there was a wall that wasn't covered in paintings.

Day 18 - Christmas buffet

On Christmas, pretty much everything was closed and it was very quiet around our apartment. When we went outside, we barely say any people. There was also no one around on Christmas Eve. We went out for a Christmas lunch at the very nice Ritz-Carlton hotel by the El Golf metro station. It was a buffet lunch with lots of different foods. They had these little cups filled with stuff like octopus and prawns for starters.

For the main lunch part they had steak, sausage, pork belly, chicken nuggets, roast chicken, and more stuff like that. For the desserts they had chocolate mousse, paris-brest (a toasted meringue thing with cream inside), these little strawberry chocolate domes, mini chocolate-nut rolls, and more things with chocolate. They also had a bunch of different juices. Mum and Dad had wine.

We were there for 3 hours because we wanted the most out of our money. I only really had a steak and some chicken nuggets before spending the rest of the time eating dessert after dessert.