For my first real vacation, I spent 3 weeks traveling around the South American country of Chile with my girlfriend, Natalia, and her mother. I spoke hardly any Spanish but, luckily, Natalia and her mother are both fluent Speakers of “Chilean”. For those who may not know, Chilean is very different from other forms of Spanish. Ask anyone from Spain, Mexico, Cuba or any other Spanish speaking country and they will tell you that Chilean’s talk very fast and use lots of metaphors in their dialog. Combine this fact with not speaking much Spanish to begin with, and it all sounded like gibberish. Thank goodness I had two translators with me! Since this was my first time travelling internationally (I don’t think Canada counts as international), I received lots of advice, warnings and generally good tips from various people who have travelled extensively on what to expect and how to protect myself from travelling woes. Most of it was common sense, but it came in handy anyway. Before I left, I had several pre-conceived notions about Chile from things Natalia told me. Most of them were true, the others I never had the misfortune to find out about. By and large, Chile was a very friendly country (especially towards Americans) with some very beautiful areas. The food is outstanding, and I ate a lot of it, even from the street side carts (despite being warned about such behavior from the US State Departments website). I’ve posted several pictures to my flickr account showing off some of the areas I visited, I highly recommend you check them out. |