Lost in Translation

The seaside resort of Vina del Mar is where wealthy Chileans buy holiday homes. We'd already planned to go there so when we asked in tourist information about rodeos and were told there was one in Vina today, we jumped to it. We'd highly recommend the intercity buses in Chile. Local ones are really run down and are driven just as badly as in Rio, but the buses between cities are luxurious. We paid £3 each to get to Vina del Mar, 2 hours from Santiago. The bus had individual headphones, tv, toilet, combined clock and temperature indicator (it also told you when the toilet was in use), air conditioning and we were given a blanket and pillow for the journey! Sarah took full advantage of this luxury and put her pyjama fleece on and had a 2 hour kip. On arrival in Vina del Mar we couldn't immediately find the rodeo so asked in local tourist information. They didn't know of a rodeo in town. Hmmm. We headed to the location the tourist office in Santiago had given us, but no rodeo. I think they may have misunderstood what we meant by rodeo because what was there instead was a circus. A very dodgy looking circus too. Disappointed, we tried further along the road and although we didn't see a rodeo we did see the warm up for the Vina horse races. We'd asked the tourist office in Santiago to reserve us a hotel and after the mistake over the rodeo, we were worried what we'd end up with. We needn't have been concerned though. Oh, on the way to the hotel we saw the tourist attraction in Vina, the Vina del Mar flower clock. Anyway, the hotel turned out to be a suite. We had a huge room with a triple bed (what do they expect from their guests?), a kitchen, wide-screen views of the Pacific and a jacuzzi bath! We'd never had one of those before. We'll spare you the pictures though. Checking the map we realised that if we got a boat and sailed a course due West, the next land we'd come across would be Australia somewhere just above Sydney! We got the confusing hotel lifts (get in first one and your on level 1 and you go down to -3. Down the corridor and get next lift where you're now on level 8 and go down to level 1!??) to the beach front level and had a look round the casino, castle and beach. We didn't go for a swim. Not many people do as the water is so cold. The Hombolt current sweeps Antarctic waters right up the West coast of South America, taking tons of plankton along with it, which is how penguins can survive at the Galapogos Islands on the equator. After the casino we had lunch and then took in the Fonck museum to see the Easter Island exhibition. It was cheating a bit but we did get our picture taken next to an Easter Island moai. The exhibition also had three heads that had been shrunk by an Indian witch doctor. They were tiny. About the size of a tennis ball! (Though still substantially bigger than Craig´s head). On the way back to the hotel we had a look round the Rioja palace, which was more of stately home than a palace. It was a good insight into wealthy Chilean life at the turn of the last century. One interesting feature of the house was that it had a suspension. This was because the majority of Chile is an Earthquake zone and the suspension helped the house to survive tremors. The suspension meant that the floor vibrated when a bus went past outside. It felt like a small Earthquake.