After a day ride in a bus from Via del Mar, I am now in Concepcin, one of the other great cities of Chile. It really is nothing like Santiago, which truly is a great city. It is small, quiet, and very South American in its styling. Finding A Home Arriving in the bus station, I followed the advice of a local and climbed aboard the first bus going in a certain direction. Sure enough, it led me to town, and the driver directed me to the main Plaza which is the centre point for every Spanish originated town. Without a guidebook such as Lonely Planet to show me where the cheap accommodation was, I had to guess. At first I asked people, but when they all turned out to be wrong, and led me many blocks from the centre of town, I started to simply look around for myself. Only when I had almost exhausted all of my options and was ready to return to the only hotel I knew about, at $40 AUD per night ($16,000 pesos), did I discover my new home. I actually discovered another hotel and thought I would check their prices, when I saw a sign saying daily rooms across the road. My New Home This place was not the prettiest location one could want, but it was on the mall and close to the Plaza. The old building with a tiny sign showing its years was my first clue that this may be closer to my preferred price range. Then the two pale blue doors covered in wire mesh and locked shut also pointed to a cheaper bed than the all glass hotel across the road. After buzzing and being let in, I followed the tired old wooden staircase to the top, noticing that lights were being turned on as I climbed. It appeared to be a family affair, as a pretty young girl was sitting on a sofa playing with her mobile phone, and a younger girl still, which I presume was her sister, was standing around watching. The man of the place, which was probably their father, signed me in and showed me to my room. The room, a double, cost $6000 pesos which is on par with most places in this country, and was clean and comfortable. I could ask for nothing more, as to me this was perfect. I settled my gear and headed out to explore this new place. It seems right that the appraisal we got from virtually everyone about this place is that it is very much simply a city. I have found no real purpose in being here, although on a Sunday with everything shut it is hard to know for sure. I also suspect the ocean and port to be nearby but have yet to discover them also. Followed By A Stranger Tonight I went for a walk around the town part and discovered that there was a man following me. I passed him going one way in a street several blocks back and then by accident, stopped to think in the street. Who should walk past but this man. I thought that was strange, as was the way he looked at me, and then kept looking back over his shoulder to see if I had moved on yet. He kept walking however, so I figured that it was just a weird coincidence. Especially because when I first saw him, he was walking away from where I was now standing. I then walked over to the plaza, suspecting that there was an eatery on the other side. Well, there was, but it was closed. When I stopped to go back again from where I had come, who had appeared again walking only a short way behind me, but on a different path in the plaza... but the same guy. Again, he would have had to turn around completely to return to this place as it was the opposite direction to where he was walking. The way he looked at me again told me that something was not so right. Taking off in the opposite direction yet again, I stop and talk with some gentlemen whom I had asked advice from before. They wondered why I was not following their directions and I told them what was happening. Interestingly, I was not greatly worried or concerned about the whole affair, as I knew my God would protect me, but I was now aware of the presence of this guy lurking around. I also told the guys I was looking for a good place to eat and they gave me a great place that I stopped at on my way home. After stopping in the cyber, only 1/2 block from home, and writing this, I returned to my place without any problems. Shower Problems I wake at 10am, glad to have had the wooden shutters and thick curtains. The shower proves tricky, with only the hot water tap working and a gas water heater. The problem is that if you turn that tap on too hard the gas heater fires up and cooks the water. Result, boiling hot water. Now if you turn the tap down again the gas heater turns off and you get no heating at all. Result, freezing cold water. So juggling between washing myself and turning the tap up and down and dodging the boiling and freezing streams of water, I managed to shower by taking advantage of the few seconds of reasonable temperature water that inevitably came between the other two extremes. Shopping In The City I love looking at things, and electronics are the things that I look at the most. Just as girls know a good price for a blouse when they see one, so I also know a good price for electronics when I see it. And when I went looking through the shops, I found a great price. It is ironic that I had just been chatting to my brother about telephones and cameras and stuff. My "dream" phone actually exists, but it is always the most expensive, crazy priced phone out there. If there is a phone more expensive with more features, then that automatically becomes my dream phone. So this time, I went with my needs. Actually, there really are no needs in a telephone other than that it can make and receive calls. I have that already. So I guess it was my wants. But in any case, I found a phone that was just way too cool and way too cheap to pass up. A Sony-Ericsson T637 was selling for almost 1/4 of the price that it was in Argentina. Now I will bore you with the details, but let me just say that this phone was the one that I first decided would be useful for me before I started finding out that telephones can have MP3 players and movie cameras and Televisions and other cool features in them too. So I went back to the original and grabbed this one. Sightless City After putting my new purchase away, I returned to the tourist office to ask about the sights to see in this city. The results were quite disappointing, which is probably why she was trying to encourage me to visit some of the other places in this province: So with little to recommend the place, I still took off down the street and wandered from park to park. There were only three that I found, and all were nice in their own green way. Since we were near the river, I wandered over to that too, discovering the poor section of town in the process, and found a large wide river with loads of bridges streaming across it. My climb up the hill was nice, and the views were not terrible, but as advised, I could not see all of the city at once. After I returned back to the main plaza my time of tourism was over. I had seen the touristic side of this city. The Terrible Two Return I spent the next few hours waiting for Chris to turn up after his bus ride here from Via del Mar. Wandering from my room to the Internet to check for emails, to the plaza and back again, I was surprised to find the lad walking back out of our new accommodation. He had finally arrived. We then head off in search of a great place to eat. The first place was too full and the second place served great drinks but nothing else. So after enjoying their drinks we return to the first place for a table. It was a semi-American type of restaurant and we had a semi-English speaking waiter. Throughout our meal he practised his English on us and asked for tips on how to say things better. By now it had already become quite late, and Chris returned to the room to sleep. I take the opportunity to write this in the local cyber instead. In the morning we leave here in a bus to Pcon at 10:15am from the bus station - the only bus that leaves for Pcon. Why Pcon? Because it is one of the most recommended places to visit in Chile. The Problem Phone In the morning I wake up to discover that my new telephone does not actually work. The on-off button is broken. I get ready early and race off to the shop only to discover that the shop only opens at 10am. Wow, that is too tight to make it to the bus. I then race over town and find another phone place but they simply tell me to return to the place I bought it from. I have a problem. Not wanting to miss the bus just to exchange my phone, I found the staff entrance to the department store and started looking for a sympathetic face. I was running out of time as it was already 9:50am, but it was not too hard to find one, as this was Chile, the land of helpful people. Soon enough a man took interest in my case and invited me into the store. There was a lot of discussions at first and then authority was granted to this man to start the process with me of changing over the phone. When I reached the section for phones, the ladies there wanted to check that I had not used any credit on the phone before they changed it over. It was now 10:02 and I was getting desperate. Finally, after much pleading and really looking like I was in the hurry that I was actually in, some action appeared behind the desk and they raced through the process of exchange. It took longer than expected and I raced out of there just after 10:08am. There was five minutes to catch the bus. Catch That Bus Now the bus station was a good five or ten minutes from the centre of town, so I had a definite problem on my hands. As I started racing out the door, all of the public started flowing into the place. Chris was one of them, and when he saw me he did a double-turn and we headed out looking desperately for a taxi. We found one waiting in the street, where we opened the back door and threw our packs straight in and then jumped in ourselves and yelled at the taxi driver to GO GO GO. Only after he started driving that we explained how we had very little time to make it for our bus. At hearing this, he then drove a lot faster, overtaking the slower cars and generally being very sympathetic towards our needs. It was comforting although our time was slipping away fast. It was 10:17am when we finally reached the bus terminal, and we leaped out of the cab and took off inside. Just as we did, I saw a bus taking off. It was the only one of the company we were with, so it had to be our bus. Oh no. We run back outside and down to the exit road, waving and yelling madly at the bus driver to stop. He does, and then informs me that this is not our bus. Ooops. I thank him, trying to hide my embarassment, and we return to the terminal where we wait another five minutes for our late bus to arrive. But we made it, and were now on our way to Pucon.