Our last photos of 'the Beast', the awesome 4 Runner who had been our companion and 'home' for the past year. We did 36000 km in a year which is roughly from Amsterdam to Auckland and back. So yes, even though it's just a car saying goodbye felt a bit sad. We left it for the French couple that bought it to pick up and have already received their first traveling photos from gravel roads and white snowy mountain tops of the Andes. In our last few days in Santiago our thoughts were going back to how much we've seen and learned about the countries that we've visited and the people we have met, 'life enriching' captures it best.
Typical South America for us is now; casa de plasticos (shop with only plastic packaging - terrible!), tienda da limpieza (shop with only cleaning products) and the Congelados shop (shop with rows of deepfreezers, selling only frozen food). Toilet paper cannot go into the toilet only in the rubbish bin - in Argentina and Uruguay you also get the warning not to put mate tea leaves in the toilet :-). A Submarino is hot milk with a piece of pure chocolate et voila hot chocolate. A Terremoto is typical Chilean festive drink, too sweet for our taste but boy did we love the Pisco Sours in Chile and Peru and Carparinhas in Brazil!
Breakfast exists of eating lots of sweet cakes or toast with dulce de leche (caramalised cream). Lots of religious programmes and football on tv, every night. Uruguay has legalised marijuana - in Chile everyone smokes and you buy weed cake on the street. Tannat wine from Uruguay, Malbec from Argentina and Carmanere from Chile, beautiful! Forget about having good coffee in Chile, Argentina and Peru - for good coffee you have to be in Brazil, no mate to be seen, only coffee. The gap between poor and rich is staggering, visible in every country when you drive in or out of a town or village - shacks surrounded by rubbish. On election days no alcohol can be sold until the ballot boxes close (Peru, Argentina). High fences in front of each house, barb wire on the top and a dog behind the fence. If you ask why they say it's safe but we need it for prevention. The exception was Uruguay and the Dutch settlements in Brasil. Speed humps - gone over thousands of them! - they just love them. Since the police doesn't do much, putting up signage is useless and the only thing that works is physical measures and wow they are very steep (would not meet any NZ standard here and get 100 complaints on day one in Kapiti). People in every country we visited we great, 99 out of a 100 people are friendly and can be trusted if you treat them like you would want them to treat you - speak their language for starters :-).
Our goodbye dinner with our lovely new friend Coco (expat in Santiago working for H&M) who we met a year ago at the Dutch pub quiz. We had some good times together in Pichelemu and doing the cooking class. She took us to this awesome restaurant that had just amazing food, now we need to remember what it was we ate again....oh yes seared tuna with ....? uh
Our last couple of days we spent looking at all the stuff we would need to be packing into the same amount of bags as we arrived with a year ago, so I decided to bring two bags to the local salvation army store :-). The French couple was inheriting all the camping stuff etc. and our warm long socks which they have already thanked us for haha, the weather changed when we left. Santiago is brimming with street art everywhere, how cool are these benches.
Wandering the streets again we also saw a lot of benches with 'real' sleeping people on there - homeless people. Art representing sadness.
Don't really know why I ordered this but I did, and enjoyed it for lunch on our last day in Santiago. Just people watching in the streets around the Plaza des Armas.
Heading over to Bella Vista neighbourhood to meet with Leonie and Andre, lovely new friends that we are going to miss as well. Bella Vista is a very cool neigbourhood, very hip and happening just loaded with cafes, bars and eateries.
And great street art, just love it. Hope one day they'll get the hang of it in New Zealand.
Another reggea music bar, maybe with some Dutch roots as well :-)
Maestra vida - Master life!
On a perfectly hidden roof terras with beautiful views we spent a lovely afternoon with Andre and Leonie - we hope to welcome them one day here in Kapiti or maybe we'll catch up when they will be back in Valencia in Spain in about a year from now. Explorers and immigrants, just like us. So maybe it is a Dutch thing?!
End of the afternoon we headed back home to do the final pack and head to the airport. Hmm the blue suitcase was probably a few kgs too heavy, but no scale so that would have to wait until the airport. Good thing we did not bring the one extra small backpack to the salvation army. And yes, it weighed 29 kg, 6 too many. A quick repack in the extra backpack solved that problem and wrapped and all we were ready to go. In Auckland it went all pretty smooth so we were just within the time limits for catching our local flight to Wellington....and then we could relax and doze off.
Dick was awesome to pick us up from the airport and ferry us to Te Horo - it was a bit surreal recognising all the familiar bits driving home. Tired, but this familiar view from our deck made sure we felt at home straight away. Home sweet home.
First days were filled with early nights, unpacking suitcases and boxes to find 'stuff' and get that in order so we can find things again. A bit of car trouble with our two 23 year old cars that had to be WOF-ed again - not that smooth so we got stuck at home a couple of days without transport and had to pay up to get on the road again. By the end of the week we had at least the van back up and running and a week later Hans his good old Nissan was up for it again too. Bit of change after our very smooth and only 10 year old 'beast'.
The galloway that had roamed our paddocks for well over three years now had become quite big and was cleary hungry all the time over winter. Despite being fed lots of hay and watercress by our housesitters she pushed over the fence to get to the grass next door, breaking about 15 fencing poles. So that decided her fate pretty quickly.
Last week the home kill guy came (while I was not at home) and took her to the butchers. Always a bit sad.
And Hans had his work cut out for him, so he did about three days of digging out remaining bits of pole and putting new ones in. Very grateful for that hot tub in the evenings - soothing the back under the milky way.
As spring has sprung lots to be done and in the war against the very severe 'rabbit take over' Hans cut down bushes hiding large holes and while he was at it cleared up a bit of bush that we should have done a long time ago. So Thursday it was fire day - took him the whole day to burn everything, hot hot!
We decided to replicate our lessons learnt in the cooking class in Santiago to treat our friends to some good home made Chilean food plus pisco sours (of course). Started chopping veggies on Friday and early Saturday it was time to tackle frying the sopaipillas and making empanadas. A bit more stressful than during the cooking class as even though in the cooking class I had already adjusted the water in the dough recipe (as cups in Chile are not the same as cups in NZ) - it was still too much water and way too sticky. With the third batch I nailed it and the next three were smooth sailing.
Hans also got better at filling and folding the empanadas, so as the day progressed they were coming out looking very professional. All of them tasted good though! Here is Hans frying the sopaipillas (pumpking puree with flour) that you eat as a snack with pebre (tomatoes, onion and coriander). Very favourite street food in Santiago, they sell it everywhere. I am taking out the next batch of empanadas - how many should we make....? Too many as always :-) lucky some went home with our guests.
The sopaipillas.
First batch of empanadas, the less professional ones..
One of the later batches, see already looking very stylish with a C for camaron (shrimp).
And of course a very big bowl of Chilean cheviche, just beautiful and lemony.
Lovely catch up as always, some had not seen each other for a year so there was lots to talk about.
The Te Horo season was declared open - so bring on summer!
Hans even felt optimistic enough to start the fire bowl in the garden and a few joined him for a fire and whisky - before the All Blacks played their opening game against South Africa in the World Championships in Japan. It was quite a good game to watch, but Hans and Dick slept through the whole game thanks to Jim Beam. Good thing Maraya and Roger were still around to watch it with me.
So how does it feel to be home? Definitely like home and awesome to be able to hug everyone again but also a bit two fold; after a year of experiencing change every day, having new input every day - rural life in Kapiti feels very stand still - we will get used to it again no doubt and start enjoying the peace and quiet once work has started. Job hunting is underway so better enjoy freedom while we can :-)
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