A weekend in Santiago de Chile

First time for me travelling alone. I was picked up in the airport by my boss who I work for in Finland. He is a friend of my dad. He got married two weeks ago to a lovely woman called Fransisca. First we went to their appartment and I got to know their family there, 4 kids of ages 13, 15, 21 and 23! First night was time for BBQ-party at a local club. Jose (my boss) and Fransisca are members of this club so they can have parties there whenever they want. Also their wedding was located there. A lot of their friends came there to eat and drink wine. Chilean wine is very good! Joses nepweh, Santiago 27 years, came to the party and then when it was over we decided to continue partying and went to his place with his friends. It was fun to know new people and talk about differences between Europe and Southern America, and languages.

Chilean beer

The club

Fran and her boyfriend Pablo

Santi

The next morning Jose picked me up and I got to go shopping with Fransiscas oldest daughter (also called Fransisca). It is a tradition here to give the oldest daughter the name of mom and oldest son the name of the father. I found a dress and a skirt. AND a HAIRBRUSH, which I've been looking for in Lima for 3months and never found one. :D After that we went to the boys, Felipes and Guillermos, school. It was some kind of fund riser event with children selling food and lottery tickets. The fund was called MariaAyuda. After that I was droven to my hostel Santiago Backpackers. I can't thank Jose and his family enough for being to kind and helpful. They even gave me a phone with a chilean number if something happens :D

Felipee! :)

Anton, the Hebrew and me :D

The first night at the hostel I got to meet my roommates: 2 swedes, one danish guy, one chilean guy and a colombian guy. There was also one man that I didn't get to know, I only know that he snored so loudly that I couldn't sleep very well, just my luck! But the first evening I just chatted with the swedish girl (Veronica) and boy (Anton), and the danish guy whos name is too hard for me to spell :D I noticed that I had difficulties to remember words in swedish because I've only been using Finnish, English and Spanish the last 3 months :o We also met a weird hebrew with stories about evil spirits and that the bible is a lie, the garden of Eden is actually located in Etiopia and the river Nile is not Nile, wrong language has been used for years and so on... I hadn't any clue what the hell he talked about or what he had been taking :D

Sweden and Denmark

The next day we went for a 4 hour walk, before my flight left, with Veronica, Anton, the danish guy and Bree from England. Our plan was to go to every museum located near our hostel but we had bad luck because everything was closed! It was some kind of election day in Chile so nothing was open. Not even busses did go to Cerro San Cristobal and sadly I didn't have the time to climb up to see the views. Well anyway it was nice to look around the city and get to know this people. It was very hot and the sun was shining! Santiago have a very organized traffic compared to Lima, no combies and crazy drivers. Also the look and design of Santiago is very Western and European. I liked it very much! It has been said that Santiago is one of the most safest capitals in Southern America.

Goldmuseum and sandboarding

Last wednesday our day classes were cancelled so we went to Perus' goldmuseum. There were many gold objects from the time of Incas and also old weapons from all over the world. Also objects from the time when Fransisco Pizarri came with his 180 men to Peru from Spain to conquer the kingdom of Incas. The Incas were too weak because of the sicknesses and civil war that they had gone through. Also Europen weapons were highly developed compared to the indians weaponery. This happened in 1531. By the year 1542 Peru was under the Spanish flag and almost every important tribal leader were slayed. Another interesting thing left a mark in my mind; Lord of Sipan. There were a recreation of him in the museum. He is a mummy found in a tomb in the 80's in Chiclayos area in Peru. He was found wearing over 400 jewelries and a lot of gold and silver. He was buried with 3 other women and children.

The tomb of Lord of Sipan (wikipedia)

Then on Thursday after school we decided to take a 3hour lesson of sandboarding right outside of Lima. The teacher came to pick us up with a car and drove 1hour to the dunes. There we got to practice how to go standing, in Ica we only got to go on our stomaches. It was fun and I did not fall on my face! In Finland I have now the courage to try snowboarding.

I hated the part to walk up again after going down...

Lazy blogger

I'm sorry that I haven't been updating my experiences so often. Life in Lima is so normal and kind of same from Monday to Friday. But here is a little update what has happened last week.

We had midterm exams before the trip to Ica. I had 4 exams, but two of them were in English and I got to do them at home, just a few page essays. I passed the exam of Pasteleria y Panaderia by 16.2/20, here in UPC you have to get 13/20 to get a pass. In other universities in Lima it is 10/20 so I actually have to study to get pass from the spanish exams. Of course I get to bring my dictionary with me to translate the questions but it's still difficult and slow to read. From the Enologia, bebidas y maridaje -course I got only 11/20 so I did not pass... I have to study harder for final exams.

Last Friday I had my riding lesson. This time I got to ride an whole hour, I'm so in love with this hobby again. I even got to gallop with the horse together with one other girl, the others practised trott and gait. One girl did fall from the same horse I rode with, it was before I got on the saddle. It reminded me that horseback riding is not so easy in the beginning, but some students in the course are just hopeless... Niina had ridden 1 time before this course and she has no problems with the horse or positions. I would like to continue with this hobby in Finland but it is so expensive.

On Saturday we went to a electronic music concert (Laidback Luke). Partied all night untill 6 am, it was so much fun and finally music that I like. I hate latin music! On Monday I went to Hospital del Niño again for voluntary work. This time I got to know a 12-year old girl that wanted to see me next week as well, and a 8-year old mentally handicapped boy who loved to play every single game I suggested.

Finally pictures about things I miss about FINLAAAND:

+ Many others!

Ica - Huacachina - Paracas

Ica is a sunny city over 300km south of Lima. We spent there two nights. Lovely weather with +25 and I already got burned :D Nothing was really open because it was weekend but we managed to get a free tour in a wine yard and the guide told us how to make Pisco. Pisco -tasting was also included, I bought two bottles with me (as souveniers of course). Also  a local museum was open. The theme there were the history of Ica, Nazca, Paracas. Many scary mummies and skulls. It was forbidden to take photos there :( Few of the skulls looked like alien skulls, very long in the back. This is because in the cultures of Nazca and Paracas they started to bind heads already in baby age so that they would form like that. Official name Artificial cranial deformation. Apparently it was about demonstrating social status. The skulls were about 2000-2500 years old. 

We visited the oasis of Huacachina, including sandboarding in the desert and the man who drove us there was crazy while driving up and down the sand hills, it was like in a rollercoaster. I have to upload a video from it later. Sandboarding was gliding on a snowboard with your belly down. It was so much fun! On the last day we visited the city of Paracas about 50km from Ica. It is located by the sea. A lot of birds like pelicans and seafood restaurants was the highpoints of the city. We took a 2 hour boat-tour to Las Islas Ballestatas - huge rocks in the sea = a home of thousands of birds and hundreds of sealions! :) Amazing to see these creatures in the nature and not in the zoo.

View from our hotel Ollanta

Ica Museum

El Catador wine yard

Huacachina

Las Islas Balletatas

Paracas skulls, picture from Google.