for our 3 week intensive language program, everyone has to do a group presentation on a part of Chile outside of Santiago. my group decided to go to a very small
pueblo on the pacific coast called Isla Negra (the name of the town is deceiving because it is not an island). the only reason anyone would go to Isla Negra is to see Pablo Neruda's favorite house because there is not much else to see
the bus process to get to and from El Rincón del Poeta (the name of his house, translated: the poet's corner) was a bit more complicated than i had anticipated
11:30 am we arrived at the bus terminal at the University of Santiago metro station where we managed to cut the entire line to buy tickets. we figured we would have plenty of time to take the 1.5 hour trip to Isla Negra for our tour at 6:20 pm and spend time at the beach beforehand, however the earliest available bus time was 3:00 pm because everything else was sold out
for the next 3 hours we wandered the not-so-nice part of the city. the highlight was that i finally found a place to buy postcards to send back home
we boarded our bus (the seats were super comfy!) and got to Isla Negra at 5 pm and proceeded to eat at this little seafood restaurant, however none of us actually ate seafood because we wanted to save money.
 |
"churasco completo sandwich" the waitress considered this a SMALL meal. i could only finish half.
  |
Pablo Neruda's house was only a short walk from the restaurant and the area was absolutely beautiful. this was the first time i had seen the ocean since being in Santa Barbara, a very sentimental moment for me nonetheless. we took a self-guided tour with those devices where you punch in the number and listen to the information about each part of the house/his life (all in Spanish of course)
 |
| view from the house |
 |
| good ol Pablo |
 |
| there's now a nice restaurant |
 |
| the boat-shaped bar |
 |
| another view from the house |
 |
| sculpture in the yard |
 |
fish's eye
|
 |
| me, keelin, shermila |
 |
| some of his poetry was written all around the walls outside |
|
|
Neruda's bar inside the house
|
 |
| shermila, russell, keelin, me |
  |
the waves were breaking big
  |
after we finished the tour we had an hour to kill before our return bus to Santiago, so we ordered espressos
30 minutes before our bus back to Santiago we walked back to where the bus driver told us we would be picked up. soon it was 15 minutes past when our bus was supposed to arrive so we started to worry that we had missed it or were waiting in the wrong spot. the confusing part was that we had already asked 6 different people that were waiting at the same place if we were in the right area and everyone had told us we were.
something still did not seem right because buses for the company we had tickets with kept driving past us and none would stop to let us on, and also all the people around us did not have prepaid tickets. most were hitch hiking or trying to catch one of the local buses. after attempting to flag 4 buses down, one finally stopped for us but we literally had to jump right in front of it to get it to take us seriously. a really nice hippy chilean couple helped us talk to the driver, who eventually told us that we were at the wrong stop.
thus, we walked the next block to where he said to go and there was no bus stop to be found. after asking more people where we should go, we were told the office we were supposed to be at was 6 km away and that we needed to pay for a taxi -_-
luckily we flagged down another bus from the right company and the driver was nice enough to let us on for free to take us to the bus terminal. at the terminal it was kind hectic trying to find out if there was enough room for us on the bus and we ended up having to wait another 30 minutes (until 10 pm) to see if there was space for the 4 of us. it was pretty cold outside considering we were all in shorts and tank tops and were no longer in the urban heat island of Santiago. at 10 pm we boarded the next bus and had to awkwardly keep moving around because we were taking other people's seats. in the end, we all found a vacant seat and made it back to Santiago around 11:30 pm.
at the terminal in Santiago this extremely generous chilean man that we met on the bus walked us through the not-so-nice part of town (it's definitely a lot worse at night) and got us all a taxi to take home
lesson: ask at least 15 people to make sure you are getting accurate directions/information
