This is a post about some ordinary day to day stuff that is different in Chile….

In Santiago and various other towns that we came through in middle Chile, we often could smell raw sewerage when walking on the streets. It never gets pleasant, but you sort of get used to it. So when we were driving down the Pan-American Highway (Ruta 5) and stopped at one of the luxurious Copec fuel stations, we didn’t give it much thought when we smelled sewerage. We wanted to have lunch on the lush green lawns and picked a spot where the sewerage smell was less potent, no problem! So we are lying in the grass, sandwich in hand, cold Nesquick in reach, sunny and all good, or so we thought… Then one of the fuel station employees came over and told us we couldn’t eat there. At first we didn’t understand, but then he explained that the reason the grass was so lush and green was because they watered it with the sewerage from the public toilets. End of lunch! Now who waters lawns with raw sewerage!?!? While we are on the toilet subject… In Chile it is almost never allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet as the plumbing can’t deal with that. Instead there is a little bin next to the toilet where you can put your used toilet paper in, common decency is to fold it in a nice way to keep it visibly appealing for the next visitor. Surprisingly it doesn’t all smell too bad. Toilet paper is quite often not provided, so we are always hauling a stash with us. There are also almost no public toilets, just like in NL.

One of the differences with my Central America experiences is that here there are good supermarkets, we visit often. Chile is not known for its cuisine and we mostly prefer to cook ourselves (also financially a bit more sustainable). It’s very interesting to see what you can and what you can’t get. It is impossible to get fresh milk, not a single shop sells this. It’s all long life milk, which for us works quite nicely as it is easier to keep in the car. Furthermore it looks like the shops really only sell fruit and veggies that are in season, which is better for the environment. It does get off set by the crazy amount of packaging though, when we camp we fill up a whole plastic bag of rubbish a day! Today I bought one onion and I didn’t want a bag, but the ‘weigh lady’ who weighs some (but not all, very confusing sometimes) fresh stuffs will put everything in plastic bags. Lots of single packaging as well, it is not possible to buy a big yoghurt, only singles etc. Surprisingly it is possible to get some Thai food, there is also lots of pasta. Rice is a side, not something that gets eaten a lot with sauce. I miss curries.

Dogs. Julia and I really like dogs. But not poodles. Poodles in Chile are evil. They drive around in cars on laps of people and bark (or gnarl) at everything that moves from the safety of the lap, evil little diva’s they are. My heavy boots are waiting to get acquainted 😉  All other dogs are really fine and there are many of them. Some street dogs and some dogs that people leave out during the day when they go to work, so they roam the streets as well. There are beautiful and smart dogs out there. What is less nice though is that at night they bark non stop for hours on end, both street dogs and pets do this and no one tells them off. This is one of the reasons we have found sleeping in Chile a struggle. There is a whole different tolerance to noise at night here. People live a lot later as well, we have been woken up on various occasions by people checking in in the middle of the night, which is not a problem and tv’s and radio’s go loud and late. Then of course there are the ibissen who ‘scream’ in the night and the farmers who come out to shoot their shotguns at them at 2am while you are camping in their paddock which is slight worrying.