A letter from my 17 year old self in Chile

Back in 2001 when I was just 17 years old, I travelled for the first time independently and it was to South America. I was going out with a Chilean guy in Iceland at the time, and he took me to see his home country, but we also travelled around South America. The plan was to see much of Chile, spend some time in central Chile where his family is from and then go to Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and northern Chile. Except we hit some bumps on the road. The first one being a serious finacial crisis in Argentina when we went to see my long time friend Fernando in Buenos Aires, causing us to promptly need to leave Argentina as we had no access to funds (ATMs were shut and cards not accepted in most places), so we found ourselves in Paraguay. There we travelled to Filadelfia in the northwest of Paraguay, only to find out the road to Bolivia was impassable, so we had to go back on ourselves but went to Brazil instead and then back to Chile.

All the photographs and any notes I took on the road are long gone. However, going through my grandparents' stuff after they passed away I stumbled across this folder full of my old blog posts from 2006-2008 that they had printed out, as well as a 16 page letter I had written to them after our trip around Chile, which they had kept all these years! What a time capsule archive! So here below is a copy of my letter to my grandparents from 25 years ago, written by my 17 year old self and translated into English.

Dear grandma and granddad.

How are things back in Iceland? Here in Chile all is well. Really good weather and not excessively hot. The average temperature is around 24 degrees and a slight breeze. One can easily spend many, many hours walking around exploring. Even if you walk the same circuit every day, then you always see something new. The music here is also super fun and you can’t help but dance to it.

On Sunday (27th January) we’ll be back from a trip around Southern Chile. The trip started 2nd January in La Serena, which is about 450km north of Santiago. There we stayed for full 6 days. We enjoyed the sun and sand and explored old buildings. La Serena is by the beach and one day we went on a trip east into the Andes mountains, to a small village that’s called Pisco de Elqui. There they make Pisco, the national alcoholic drink of Chileans, and it was the main reason for our visit there, to see how they make Pisco.

It was insanely hot in Pisco de Elqui. We drank litres upon litres of water and we’d get totally soaking wet with sweat in just 2 minutes!!

We finally found the place where the tour around the factory was supposed to take place. Most of the factory was actually outdoors and we had to wait 30 minutes after the tour started, so we ordered some natural fruit juice and Empanadas. Empanadas are a sort of a crescent-shaped pastry filled with minced beef, raisins, olives, onions and a bit of gravy. I bought myself a recipe book so that I can maybe let you guys try them one day.

Juice-wise, I bought myself a papaya & orange juice, which is the best thing I have ever tasted!!! My boyfriend bought himself strawberry juice. The hotdogs here are made in a slightly larger hotdog bun than back home, they remove a part of the bready centre, put the hotdog sausage into the bottom, then fill up the remainder of the bread bun with tomatoes, avocado and topped with a mayonnaise. I know you won’t believe it, but they taste amazing!

Next destination was a small village called Diaguitas which is known for old indigenous traditions. There, the farmers cut their wheat fields with a scythe and load their produce on their donkey. When we arrived at the village we noticed a billboard from the government. They were celebrating that a water main had finally been laid into the village so the people of Diaguitas could get water straight off the mains. Imagine that! Only just now were people there getting access to water from water mains!!

When we got to the village square, the people of Diaguitas were celebrating Christmas…. On 6th January! There was dancing in the traditional costume and people watching the dances. We only stopped a little while, took a photo and hept on walking. What I found quite interesting is that here, everybody decorated their Christmas tree with little toys. Wow, how things can change just travelling some 150km into the interior from the city!

The next destination was Vicuña. There we went to see the house of Gabriela Mistral. Grandma, you must recognise the name. The house was absolutely tiny!! Not any bigger than the living room in your old house (18) and it was divided into 2 bedrooms and a corridor. Apparently she lived in this house most of her life. From Vicuña we then went back to La Serena.

Next destination was then Quilpue, just to get a chance to wash our clothes and we then headed to the central train station in Santiago to take a train to Concepcion, which took some 9 hours or so, but we had our own cabin with a bed, so it was fine. In Concepcion we realised that it would kind of have been more economical to go to Los Angeles instead, as Concepcion is by the sea while Los Angeles is inland towards the middle, so the trip to the next destination would have been shorter – as we were headed for the Andes mountains, to the Laguna del Laja national park. To get there, we needed to go to a tiny village called Abanico. There, we had to walk 5km to the gate of the national park. On the way, we met a completely insane fly. I don’t know what in the world was wrong with it, because we didn’t bump into it or anything and it kept attacking us like it was absolutely mental. No matter how much we tried to swat it away or how much we tried to run away, it just chased us. Oh my gosh, I was so scared!! Then I finally managed to give it a smack with my handbag and after that, it left us alone.

When we got to the national park, it was starting to get darker so it was difficult to see what we were doing. Particularly as we weren’t smart enough to take a flashlight with us. When we had put up the tent, there wasn’t much to do as it was so dark you couldn’t see where you were walking, so we just went into the tent and chatted until we fell asleep. My boyfriend had woken up around 2am that same night and shook me intensely. “Thrudur, Thrudur, wake up!! There’s someone outside our tent. Probably some criminal which as run from the city into the hills!” I asked him to stop talking rubbish. What criminal would travel 150km into the Andes mountains by foot?!? Then he tried scaring me with all sorts of stories that that sort of thing had previously happened. When I finally started listening I could hear that it was true… there was “something” behind our tent. I was so terribly scared that I refused to leave the tent. My boyfriend then started whistling a lot, so loudly that I felt really sorry for the couple that was in the next camping spot. I asked him what in the world he was trying to do, and he said he was trying to scare the person or whatever It was away, as well as trying to wake up the campsite warden. He then put on his shoes, grabbed a tiny flash light that we had been lent from the campsite and leapt out of the tent. And he said I should come after him! I thought, definitely not!!

Eventually he convinced me to exit the tent and when I looked up I gasped!!! NEVER IN MY LIFE HAVE I SEEN THE SKY SO BEAUTIFUL! The stars were absolutely endless…! Small ones, big ones, massive ones!!! It was even possible to see two galaxies with your own eyes!! Then I also saw a falling star, but the star was massive! It also had a massive tail behind it. I think I’ve only just once seen such a sight. The more impressive one was in Iceland. I was on the hill on the side of Heidvangur street and I looked up into the sky. There were the northern lights, which usually are just in one colour, but this time they were in every imaginable colour and spun around the sky and exactly at that same moment, to stars fell from the sky!!

We didn’t stay long to look at the starts. We couldn’t forget that there possibly was a criminal, even a murderer, lurking in the darkness not far from us. Maybe watching us. Therefore, we hurried down to the campsite warden’s cabin, who obviously was fast asleep. After being woken up, he went with us on his jeep to our campsite to light up the place a bit better so that the footprints could be seen. There, only our own footprints, a few from a fox and several large birds could be seen. The warden gave us the explanation that the explanation that these large birds, which I can’t remember the name of, enjoy flapping up dead leaves that lie on the ground.

When the warden had left, I was still annoyed with my boyfriend for having scared me so much for nothing and also making me feel like an idiot. We sat watching the stars for a while and went back to sleep.

The next morning we woke up way too late and got even later out of the tent. It was so indescribably hot that we barely dared to leave the tent! We had plans to climb up Antuco Volcano, at least half the way, but we first went on a specific trail from the campsite. First, it took us to the lava that originated from Antuco Volcano. There, we took a few photos and continued walking until we got to a waterfall. We couldn’t get close to the waterfall because the lava field was too steep, so you couldn’t get down to have a closer look. Even so, the view was absolutely gorgeous.

We however soon had to escape because of these horrible disgusting flies, like the one we had had an encounter with the previous day. We therefore went back to camp and packed our stuff. The heat was painfully intense and we had to walk the same way back to Abanico and then take a bus to Los Angeles. When we were almost there, my boyfriend asked me to look at him. Only then he noticed how badly I had sun burned…. ! My face was covered in large blisters. On the way I had asked him if I had started to become red, as I hadn’t reapplied the sun cream since the day before. He always said no. So I naturally expected that the sun cream from the day before was still doing its job. As described above, at the end of the day, that was not the case!

Next destination was then Valdivia. The landscape around Valdivia was just beautiful, green and lush, rivers running all over. The city itself wasn’t anything special and we only stopped there for a day. We went to see an old Spanish fort called Fuerte Niebla, where there were cannons from the 1800s!! There was also a massive museum which, with my limited Spanish, I didn’t really understand. Even my boyfriend who was Chilean, couldn’t really understand either, as much of the Spanish was so ancient.

We stopped for a rather short time in Valdivia. Only one day. And the next destination was Puerto Pontt. We thought this should be a really nice, pretty city, but in just a day, we realised that was not the case. As soon as we arrived at the bus station, people immediately started surrounding us and asking if we wanted to stay in their guesthouse here or there. We told everyone no, but the horde just followed us, how annoying!! We eventually ended up with accommodation at a guesthouse owned by a guy called Herman. He offered us a room with breakfast, cable TV and a free transfer from, and back to the bus station. He also said that the city centre was just 400m from the guesthouse, which was the main selling point. Later we found out that he had lied. Downtown was about 2km from his house!! The room itself was fine, but I had nothing to drink with breakfast there, as I didn’t drink tea or coffee. And sure, there was cable TV in the common room, but it was always occupied by others so it wasn’t possible to watch the TV until 11pm, but we were then asked to lower the TV to such a low volume that we couldn’t actually hear it. Who wants to watch the news without sound!

Same day we went to have a look around Puerto Montt. There was dirt and rubbish everywhere, it was disgusting. I had also never seen so many poor people. Both children and adults were dressed in dirty rags and it was obvious they hadn’t had a chance to get a shower for a long time. Then there are the gypsy women. They reminded me of witches!! They try to touch you and ask if you want to know anything about your life. Many people who speak to them lose lots of money and they steal people’s cellphones and watches. They stop in each city for about a week and then go to another city with the money they’ve taken from strangers.

Then there’s another generation of poor people. That’s the drunks on the street. During the day they beg money from people and in the evening they spend all that money getting drunk, rob people and then sleep on every street corners. Yet another group of poor people are people who can’t help themselves – people with terrible diseases or missing parts of their bodies, like their legs or hands and the government does nothing to help them, so they are forced to beg for money on the street. I found it horribly difficult to see, but I do admire people’s resilience despite being in a difficult situation. The blind play instruments and sing. Those that still have hands make things with their hands and sell their craft on the street. Then there’s another group of people who are not poor at all. They steal from about 12 shops every day and then sell the stolen items on the street for half price, making more money this way than many people who have gotten themselves university education! You can find all these types of people all over the country, but especially in Puerto Montt, where it appears as if the ratio of poor people vs people that are well off is a lot higher than elsewhere. All the houses also look extremely basic and in bad condition, even in the town centre!

The next day we had planned to go on a sightseeing tour around the region, but as we had almost no money in cash, we needed to get to an ATM to take out some money for the trip. But for some reason the ATM said that our pin code was wrong. Well, we thought maybe there is a chance we got it wrong so we tried again, but the same thing happened again! We then decided to try the other card, because we were 100% certain about the pin code for that one. But that was just the same, the bank said the pin was wrong. We therefore went to an ATM that was attached to a bank, in case the other one was faulty. But what happened there was that the ATM swallowed our card!! Therefore, we definitely didn’t dare to try the other card! We spoke to the security guard at the bank so that we could have our card back. But that wasn’t possible!! At least not until around 2pm, but the worst thing was that the card wouldn’t work for the next 24 hours after it had been liberated. One of the bank staff advised us to try the other card anyway, as we had almost no money. We tried it, but the ATM swallowed that card too. We had no idea what in the world we were supposed to do. It all looked like we’d have no food and no place to stay for the next 24 hours at least.

We called my boyfriend’s mother to check if she could help us. Luckily, it was possible and she sent us an “ultragiro” which had arrived in Puerto Montt 2 hours later, so we were saved!

We had had enough of Puerto Montt by this point and therefore went to Frutillar, which is about an hour’s drive from Puerto Montt. It was so pretty! Totally different from Puerto Montt. The Osorno volcano is visible directly ahead of the village located a few kilometres away and at its base is an enormous lake, which stretches all the way to the shore of Frutillar and Puerto Varas.

We explored Frutillar for a bit and there we found someone who offered us to camp in his garden for a good price. He had a huge house that kind of looked like a haunted house, 2km from the town, so we went there walking. His wife showed us first a room on the upper floor, if we fancied better staying indoors. The upper floor looked horrendous!! The floor was just a single piece of wood, with the lower floor below. The room itself wasn’t any better. Huge, but with nothing inside except for a single dirty mattress without bedsheets. NO! I was NOT going to sleep in that shitty bed, if you could call it that. We therefore went outside and camped there.

The next morning we went back to Puerto Montt to go on the tour we had planned to go on the previous day. We retrieved our cards, the ATM worked, we got tickets for the trip and everything went as planned. The first destination was Puerto Varas where we walked around and had some food. Next we were taken to a viewpoint to get an even better view of Osorno volcano and the lake. There we took a few pictures. What was massively irritating me though were these flies that are called “Tabanos”. Black, huge, incessantly irritating and have a red bottom. It was the same fly we had seen in Laguna del Laja national park.

Next stop was Saltos de Petrohue. There was meant to be a nice waterfall there, but as an Icelander we’d just call this a small stream. We still took some pictures as the landscape was still pretty, albeit underwhelming. The fourth place was the Vicente Perez Rosales national park, which is the second oldest national park in Chile. There was a lot of people. Everybody was enjoying the great weather in beautiful surroundings. Everything was covered in trees and zig-zagging trails through the forest. There were also small ponds and lakes which are used for fish farming. My boyfriend was having a blast smashing the “tabanos” flies causing them to drop into the lakes and being swallowed instantly by the salmon, which jumped up to grab the flies.

Next stop was a very short drive to the lake Lago de Todos los Santos, or “Lake of all saints”. The lake is absolutely enormous and reaches all the way to the border of Chile with Argentina!! I was 4km from Argentina, so I could have easily crossed the border if I could climb mountains! At Lago de Todos los Santos we got on a boat and sailed for about 30 minutes.

The last stop was in a tiny zoo where you could see a few different animal species, get a cake and a coffee or swing on a swing rope pretending to be Tarzan. From there, we then headed back to Puerto Montt. Due to the time we arrived, we were forced to stay another night in Puerto Montt. We decided we’d find accommodation recommended in the Lonely Planet guidebook this time, but on the way we met a person who offered us to stay in a house that was quite close to the bus station, which was what we needed, as we had tickets to go to Chiloe early the next day. When we got there, we didn’t really like the house or the family. The first issue was that we had to wait for a long time until the woman opened the room to show it to us. We then heard raging screams of anger from the husband elsewhere in the house, which made us want to leave, so we did. In the same street there was another guesthouse, but when we were about to go and knock on the door, several men that were staying there brought through whole bunch of alcohol, clearly planning a party later that night, so we voted against staying there. So we kept on searching. The third option wasn’t particularly special but better than the other two, and they offered breakfast. The street was disgusting. Drunks passed out all over the place. We stored our luggage in the bedroom and then went out to get something to eat, trying to stay as close to the house as possible, because we didn’t like the types loitering on the street. We therefore ended up at some tiny place where the waitress dressed as if she was a stripper and on the other tables there were nothing but men getting drunk, starting at us as we had our food. After eating, we hurried back to the house, in case one of the dubious characters followed us.

When we got to our accommodation, we just went straight to bed. I didn’t even want to use the toilet there first. You aren’t allowed to throw toiled paper into the toilet but into a bin next to the toilet, which was completely full and gross. The people who built this house could also just as well have saved themselves the trouble of building walls, as the soundproofing was as good as if it were curtains separating the sleeping spaces.

Early the next morning we took a bus to Chiloe, which is a large island in the south of Chile. The trip took 1 ½ hourswith a bus and 1 hour with a ferry to the city of Ancud. We found this really lovely guesthouse in Ancud, which was just the home of an elderly couple that offer homestays. We only had to pay 10,000 pesos (£11 or 1600 ISK) for the two of us, with access to the bathroom, hot shower, internet and cable TV in the room, as well as a fantastic breakfast. The couple was incredibly kind and lovely, especially the husband whose name was Victor. He invited us for a drink and we chatted late into the night. In Ancud we went to see a festival by the beach where there was singing and demonstration of traditional dances from all over Chile. There was also on offer all sorts of traditional food. There we ordered “Curanto al Hoyo” which includes shellfish baked in a hole with pork and chicken. We had to wait a while for the food though, about 2 hours or so as it cooked in the hole. When I went to check whether the food was ready I faintly heard some people next to me speaking some Nordic language. Then I immediately realised that these people were ICELANDERS!!! What a coincidence!! Chiloe isn’t a place with a lot of people and European travellers tend to stick to the travellers’ trail, so it was incredibly funny and random to pump into these people. They had arrived on the island the same day as us and had a ride back to the mainland later in the evening. They ended up spending most of their time on Chiloe chatting with us at this festival while eating Curanto al Hoyo – which tasted decent but I wasn’t overly impressed.

The problem with Chiloe is that it gets really chilly in the evenings, so we needed to get back indoors before all the entertainment and shows were finished. Luckily we did have cable TV though in the room, so we weren’t bored at night.

While on Chiloe we also went to the town of Castro, which is famous for the stilt houses that stretch into the sea, as well as for the church which is very colourful and is one of the oldest churches on Chiloe.

From Castro we then went to Dalcahue where we saw the famous Chilean rodeo, where there are two contestants on horses. The arena is circular, with a smaller circle inside the bigger circle. There, the cowboys or “Huasos” need to excite the bull, making it run 2 circles inside the little circle before releasing it into the big circle. There, they need to make the bull crash head-on into pillows of sorts in the other end of the arena, in effort to stop it running and then they slowly and steadily direct the bull through the same gate as it came in from.

In Ancud we also went on a tour to see penguins (yes, penguins!!). The trip cost 850 ISK which included the transfer to the beach where the penguins live and 30 minute boat tour. The trip to the beach took about an hour because the route included country roads made of gravel and cobbles with big hills and winding roads, with such tight curves that three times we almost ended up in a head-on collision with an oncoming vehicle!! We did manage to arrive safe and sound though at the beach. We were the later group to go there, so we wandered around for half an hour. I found some seriously huge shells, nothing like those we have in Iceland. Once on the boat, the waves were pretty high – our boat bounced 2 m up on a wave and then dropped almost twice as far down. Not really for people who get seasick. We were taken towards four islands where you could see the penguins at a distance of about 10m. There were two types of penguins; “Humboldt” which you can find from the southern coast of Peru until Chiloe, and “Magallanes” which you find from Chiloe down to Antarctica. Both species were about 60cm tall.

From Chiloe we then headed yet again to Puerto Montt to get on a flight to Punta Arenas, which is one of the southernmost cities of South America. The flight was fantastic because the pilots tried to make it as close to a scenic flights as possible, so you could see all the most beautiful places from the air, like Laguna San Rafael which is a glacier lagoon and Chile’s most famous national park called Torres del Paine, or “Towers of Paine”, because the place has several giant natural “rock towers”. However, the landing was absolutely horrible!! I had thought that the landing in Atlanta with Delta had been bad, but the landing in Punta Arenas was at least ten times worse! The problem is that Punta Arenas and that general area gets extremely strong winds, causing the plane to be swept left and right and frequently plummeting many meters down in what felt like zero gravity. MANY TIMES!!! All the babies and children were crying and half of the grown-ups screaming every time the plane plummeted. I thought I wouldn’t get to see another day and my poor boyfriend was shivering with fear and held my hand so tightly that blood couldn’t circulate properly. Then we were suddenly flying above the sea and there the pilots lowered the flight significantly, so I was totally starting to thick that we were going to be landing on the sea!! The plane then took a big swing and landed on the airstrip but was so tilted to the left that the wing was literally inches from scraping the ground!! When the plane finally came to a stop, everybody started laughing in sheer happiness because they had all been scared shitless throughout the entire landing.

At the airport my boyfriend’s uncle, who lived in Punta Arenas, came to pick us up, along with his wife and three children. One of the children was actually already a grown man. His uncle is 68 years old and had two children with his first wife, but now he has a much younger wife with whom he had another two children, which are my brother Óskar’s age.

In Punta Arenas we went to Fuerte Bulnes which is yet another Spanish fort in Chile. There we stayed for a few hours and then went to his uncle’s home but before we did, we bought a full carcass of a lamb and cooked the legs of lamb Icelandic style, with spices, sauce and all the trimmings. A whopping total of 14 people were invited for dinner and everybody said this was the best lamb they had ever tasted.

In Punta Arenas we also went to see penguins! There, the penguins go up to 300m inland from the beach and watching them wobble walking is so funny, and the sound that they make is even funnier! I just regretted not having a video camera with me!!! The best thing about that place was that you could get really close to the penguins, just 1m away!

Aside from that, we didn’t do much else in Punta Arenas as the weather was grim. Like an Icelandic autumn, except there it was summer. During the spring there’s so much wind that it blows everything loose into the air, and people can’t walk outside because the wind blows them into the street, rips trees with their roots out of the ground and everything! And my boyfriend, who had never been to Punta Arenas before, thought the weather there would be better than in Iceland! HAHA! We also went to the beach where I picked up lots of pebbles in the most incredible colours!

On 27th January we had a flight back to Santiago, but we were almost too scared to get back on the plane. Before we left, I bought myself a super cute penguin teddy to remember Punta Arenas by, but I sadly forgot it in security at the airport. I’m such a loser!!

The flight went surprisingly well, but I felt awful because I wasn’t sat in a window seat and not being able to see outside. It makes me feel sick. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bus, car or a plane, I must be able to see out the window but I was placed in a middle seat and saw nothing until in Puerto Montt, which was a stopover, and I could change seats.

Now we have moved to Viña del Mar, which is the second most important tourist city of Chile where you can do just about anything. The beach is fantastic and almost no evidence of poverty. We will stay here the next 2 months and then go on a 1 month long trip to Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and northern Chile. We’ll be coming back to Iceland 1 month earlier than planned, because it is more economical for us. Then I can work for 3 ½ months before I go back to college to be able to pay for the college, and then I plan to buy a laptop which I can link up to the college network. Then at least I won’t forget the books at home and everything is organised and in order in the laptop and I can then also design websites whenever I feel like it.

Well, I need to stop this here. I hope I didn’t bore you terribly with this long letter…. I hope grandpa doesn’t make too much fun of my Icelandic. I don’t speak it too bad, given the circumstances!!

I’m sending you 2 photos of us where we are eating Curanto al Hoyo in Chiloe. The picture was taken by the Icelanders that we met there. The other photo is for mum and dad.

Send our regards to everybody back home!!

See you around 1st May!!

Þrúður

PS: Maybe let mum and dad read this letter too.