Saturday, January 06, 2007
Tina's Opinion of South America
Most Americans (tourists) see the world as their own private Epcot Center. This seems to be especially true on cruise ships.
I was having difficulty logging onto my blog while we were in S. Am. Now, after 36+ hours of flying and watching CNN in airports…and a night of sleep…I will give y’all my perspective on this trip.
Not worth the money.
I’ve been on this ship, Oceania’s Insignia, two times before and it was quite good. This trip was not. I was seasick almost every day. The swells had to be at least 50+ feet. Most of the time it was open seas and Patagonia/Cape Hoorn is notorious for wild-west-bucking-bronco-might-as-well-go-to-Six-Flags-instead waves.
The ports were small, sad, dusty affairs. Don’t get me wrong. I am interested in exploring other cultures…seems to me to be the whole reason for travel…but when one is paying the big bucks to avoid seeing other cultures, one would expect that there is something entertaining or photo-worthy in a ship’s port of call.
We saw flat barren land, then we saw glaciers, but if you want glaciers…sail Alaska.
The cities we embarked and disembarked in were cool. I liked what I saw in Buenos Aires and Santiago. Either one of those areas would be a good escape from Seattle Rain. BsAs is cheap. It seems to have a fair amount of crime from what I saw and read, but at these prices you could stay in Recoleto (sp?) and pretend you are in Rome…back in the good ole days when Rome was affordable. We had a quick day-tour of Santiago and I loved it…at least what I saw.
Santiago didn’t have the currency devaluation/inflation mania that Argentina had. I suppose Chile is more expensive, but it’s not bad. Even though we saw the usual corrugated tin shanties, I felt safer there. It seems that the government has a firm hand on crime compared to BsAs. (BsAs had a rent-a-cop at every shop door.)
Santiago seems to have larger immigrant German/N. Euro communities. It seems less chaotic. I would love to live there (maybe the artsy Bellavista area) for a month in January sometime. It’s a huge city…can’t remember numbers…maybe 10 million or so. We ended up at an American-style mall for lunch (predictably) and it had a great ENERGY. Because it is a Catholic country there were kids and teens EVERYWHERE. It might have been the first week of summer vacation…but I loved it. It felt very 60’s youthquake, baby-boomer-ish. Wow. If you don’t like crowds of cute girls, with long dark hair, flirting with young South-American Antionio-Banderas wannabes, stay home. Twenty-somethings were usually pregnant or out with their ninas in braids or ninos in baby-gap.
I just loved the crowd. I’m sure there are places where the noise, poverty, sadness would be too much for me…but I loved what I saw. We even saw gypsies camped along a trickling riverbank, complete with colorful tents and gypsy-type clothing in the bright, flowing, stereotypical manner. Yes, Virginia, they really do exist!
The outskirts of Santiago had beautiful vineyards. The weather near the coast and the valleys nearby felt like Santa Barbara. Santiago (more inland) had some smog…not bad and you could see to the Andes…though it might be smoggier other times. By afternoon we were sweaty…but I liked it. I forgot I had arthritis. My migraines stopped. The boulevard with the Galleria-like mall looked like Wilshire Boulevard…sort of.
Anyway, to summarize the trip: Thumbs down to the cruise. Thumbs up to the bigger cities. Next time I want to see Rio. S. America feels like the wide open land of opportunity in a Gringo-transplant-with-money sort of way. I DO acknowledge that I might be wrong. I’m basing this on whirlwind tour bus observations.
I want to return to South America. I want to see what I didn’t see.
I was having difficulty logging onto my blog while we were in S. Am. Now, after 36+ hours of flying and watching CNN in airports…and a night of sleep…I will give y’all my perspective on this trip.
Not worth the money.
I’ve been on this ship, Oceania’s Insignia, two times before and it was quite good. This trip was not. I was seasick almost every day. The swells had to be at least 50+ feet. Most of the time it was open seas and Patagonia/Cape Hoorn is notorious for wild-west-bucking-bronco-might-as-well-go-to-Six-Flags-instead waves.
The ports were small, sad, dusty affairs. Don’t get me wrong. I am interested in exploring other cultures…seems to me to be the whole reason for travel…but when one is paying the big bucks to avoid seeing other cultures, one would expect that there is something entertaining or photo-worthy in a ship’s port of call.
We saw flat barren land, then we saw glaciers, but if you want glaciers…sail Alaska.
The cities we embarked and disembarked in were cool. I liked what I saw in Buenos Aires and Santiago. Either one of those areas would be a good escape from Seattle Rain. BsAs is cheap. It seems to have a fair amount of crime from what I saw and read, but at these prices you could stay in Recoleto (sp?) and pretend you are in Rome…back in the good ole days when Rome was affordable. We had a quick day-tour of Santiago and I loved it…at least what I saw.
Santiago didn’t have the currency devaluation/inflation mania that Argentina had. I suppose Chile is more expensive, but it’s not bad. Even though we saw the usual corrugated tin shanties, I felt safer there. It seems that the government has a firm hand on crime compared to BsAs. (BsAs had a rent-a-cop at every shop door.)
Santiago seems to have larger immigrant German/N. Euro communities. It seems less chaotic. I would love to live there (maybe the artsy Bellavista area) for a month in January sometime. It’s a huge city…can’t remember numbers…maybe 10 million or so. We ended up at an American-style mall for lunch (predictably) and it had a great ENERGY. Because it is a Catholic country there were kids and teens EVERYWHERE. It might have been the first week of summer vacation…but I loved it. It felt very 60’s youthquake, baby-boomer-ish. Wow. If you don’t like crowds of cute girls, with long dark hair, flirting with young South-American Antionio-Banderas wannabes, stay home. Twenty-somethings were usually pregnant or out with their ninas in braids or ninos in baby-gap.
I just loved the crowd. I’m sure there are places where the noise, poverty, sadness would be too much for me…but I loved what I saw. We even saw gypsies camped along a trickling riverbank, complete with colorful tents and gypsy-type clothing in the bright, flowing, stereotypical manner. Yes, Virginia, they really do exist!
The outskirts of Santiago had beautiful vineyards. The weather near the coast and the valleys nearby felt like Santa Barbara. Santiago (more inland) had some smog…not bad and you could see to the Andes…though it might be smoggier other times. By afternoon we were sweaty…but I liked it. I forgot I had arthritis. My migraines stopped. The boulevard with the Galleria-like mall looked like Wilshire Boulevard…sort of.
Anyway, to summarize the trip: Thumbs down to the cruise. Thumbs up to the bigger cities. Next time I want to see Rio. S. America feels like the wide open land of opportunity in a Gringo-transplant-with-money sort of way. I DO acknowledge that I might be wrong. I’m basing this on whirlwind tour bus observations.
I want to return to South America. I want to see what I didn’t see.
# posted by Ray and Tina Gregoire @ 12:51 PM 
