Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

August 13, 2008

Ok, so these are not really FAQ’s, but they are FAQ’s in the survey at least. I thought that I would go through and start answering some of them, but if you haven’t participated yet, no fears! The survey is still open! Take it and you will be entered to win a set of beautiful Chile postcards! Oh, and you can tell me what you hate/love about this blog and how I can make it better, if that’s motivation for anyone.

Anyways, here are a few questions that were asked in the survey. Eventually I’m going to get through them all. Also, many of these were asked by multiple people so I may have reworded your question to combine it with other similar questions.

What do you eat every day? Tell me more about the food in Chile.
You’ll be disappointed to know that I eat fairly normal non-exotic cuisine. I often eat a sub from Subway, a no cheese pizza at Voraz, or mashed potatoes from La Mia Pappa for lunch. When I go out to eat I like Los Cuates, a Mexican restaurant, Wasabi, or sometimes Liguria, all of which are close and super convenient for me. Another favorite is Pinch of Pancho, which is more expensive but really delish. I also love Zanzibar, Santa Brasa. And then of course nothing tops Caramano where we had our wedding reception. They have the best Chilean food in town, by far!!! To the two people who requested food blogging, this is about as good as it’s going to get right here. Unfortunately I’m not much of a foodie. I love to eat, but it’s not a subject that gets me passionate. Katina has promised to do some great reviews on her blog though. And if what you’re interested in is learning about typical Chilean food, back in the day I did a couple of food posts over at Love to Travel Chile. Sorry I’m not more exciting in the edibles department.

When are you and your husband taking your trip around the world and will you keep posting? How much money do you need for your trip? Sorry, was that rude to ask?
We are leaving sometime between July of ’09 and December of ’09. Barring any financial disasters we should have the money in the bank by July. But we have always been planning to do the first leg of our trip in Chile. It would be a shame to leave after what will have been 4 years of living here without seeing more of this very beautiful and very diverse country. We would like to start out by doing the Carretera Austral a dedo (hitchhiking) and camping, and then head down to Torres del Paine before crossing over to Argentina. So in that case we’d need to wait until probably October for the weather to be nice enough. However, S.’s job sends him to short construction sites, usually between 3-8 months, so it will depend on whenever his construction site then ends. He gets bonuses at the end of each one that goes well so it would be silly not to stick around for that. We think we need about 60,000 total for us to travel for a year to a year and a half (mainly in the cheaper areas of the Americas and Asia and then a very short amount of time in Europe and the U.S.). We’ve currently saved a third of that and are on track to put away more than that before we leave. No, it wasn’t rude to ask, I don’t mind answering. Yes, of course I will keep posting here. The only difference is that this will be come Just Married Around the World Style. And, who knows, S. might even start his own blog too. Get excited for that! Last time we traveled he kept an online journal and it was hysterical.

What is life like outside Santiago?
Slower. Nicer people. A more isolated life. I also shouldn’t say that I know what life outside Santiago is like as I have only visited cities outside the capital, never lived in them. But those are my impressions in a nutshell.

Why did you name your girl dog Papito?
While she was following us home I was calling her puppy and S. thought I was saying Papi. The rest is history.

And a word about comments while we’re talking about survey responses. I don’t delete comments aside from two that I erased because they were promoting a blog that was trying to get people to commit bodily harm to another blogger. If you don’t see your comment on my site, assume that Blogger messed up. Go ahead and read back. I leave all comments, people who love me, people who hate me, people who tell me to leave Chile, people who say rude things about myself and my husband…they’re all there. I respect your right to have an opinion and voice it on this blog. I realize that by making my thoughts public I have opened myself up to all that comes with that so I repeat, I do not delete comments.

My other comment on comments is that for a few of you who said that commenting is intimidating because other commenters seem like they know me in real life, yes, some of them do. A lot of them don’t though, we just have a chummy relationship because we’ve been reading each other’s blogs for some time now! So if that’s your reason for not commenting, please, jump right in there! I love getting comments, I love the way the discussions on here get me thinking and I love feedback on this blog since I put a lot into writing it. I love to hear from people reading and to get their thoughts on whatever the Chile subject du jour is.

That’s all for today. As you can see I’m trying to take many of your suggestions to post more often and make each entry a little shorter. Trying being the operative word in that sentence.

So thanks to those of you who have taken the survey and if you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for???

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9 Comments

I just wanted to comment on how great I think it is that you all have set this goal to travel and have a specific plan on saving the money to reach it.

Traveling is a priority for us and we’ve always made sacrafices to make sure we can afford it. I have friends saying that it must be so nice to be able to travel.

Meanwhile they eat out 10x a week and buy more clothes than any person could possibly wear. It is all about setting goals, taking the steps to get there and sacraficing what is less important when it comes to spending money.

I look forward to your Around the World blog!

~from one of the ones that doesn’t know you in person, but loves reading about your experiences~

Comment by Lori - Blondie in Brazil — August 14, 2008 @ 6:09 am

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Kyle,
Great travelling plan….
I backpacked across most of LA and parts of LA/Canada for 6 months in 1996 and spend app.6864000 pesos chilenos covering everything; flights Europe-LA/USA forth and back, plus some flights on the way (Buenos Aires – La Paz, Lima – Quito, Quito – Panama, Panama – Los Angles, Seattle – Des Moines) accommodation (really dirt cheap hostel – bring your own sleeping back and hawaiannas for the communal showers and you will be fine) also we stayed with relatives and friends of friends, which is also very nice because you feel less like a tourist. Food-wise we mostly ate what the local eats and set menus with occasionally nice dinners. We did have some organised tours and trips; a highly and an expensive one was the Galapagos – It is amazing! (and expensive but worth it)
If I may give an advice; I would perhaps consider splitting up the trip – To travel 1 to 1Â½ year is a long time and at a stage you feel rootless and unable to take in more new and exciting experiences. It may prove to be a good investment in the sense that you save experiences for a period where you are ready for them …Therefore, consider if travelling 6 to 9 months and then coming home for Â½-1 year working and having a normal life before taking another round of travelling for 6-9 months could be an option for you!
Good luck and let me know if you need some suggestions on where to go!
Love Caroline

Comment by Anonymous — August 14, 2008 @ 8:13 am

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don’t even try to leave without seeing Torres del Paine!!

btw, have u considered visiting Chiloe??

Comment by j4ur14 — August 14, 2008 @ 9:44 am

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60,000? That sounds like a lot of cash for a backpacking trip, especially if you are only spending a short time in Europe and the US!! Next question… how did you get this figure and are you buying a RTW flight ticket?

Comment by kumichan83 — August 14, 2008 @ 10:32 am

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Totally agreed Lori! So many people talk and moan and groan that they can’t travel, but really anyone can do it if they make it a priority.

I think someday we’ll probably cross paths

Hi Caroline! Thanks for the great advice. We are planning on traveling in a very similar style to what you described. We backpacked a little bit in Costa Rica and had no problems…I’d say we’re both pretty good at “roughing it” in crappy hostels!

We are sort of planning on doing what you say about resting before continuing to travel. I am going to keep some of my blogging jobs. And when we hit a town or a country that we really love we’ll probably stay longer, for a month or two (visas permitting) instead of just passing through. I can work anywhere I have internet and S. will have to see if he can find something to keep himself busy too, but we have thought about the fact that there is too much of a good thing even when it comes to travel. Another option we’ve both been talking about a lot is spending 6 months in Australia, as gringos don’t need work visas there too and we’ve heard it’s fairly easy for Chileans to get visas. We’re both really curious about that country and considering it as a possible long term living option sometime in the future.

And of course we would love tips on what are must sees that you recommend!

J4, I know, we are for sure going to make it to Torres one way or another. I can’t wait! I am very interested in Chiloe. My husband has been there and says it’s not very exciting, but really, I’m looking forward to photographing it more than anything else. I don’t expect it to have a bumping nightlife.

Kumichan, well I have been following a lot of people blogging about their round the world trips and the general figure for backpackers traveling for a year is about 20-25,000 for an individual traveler. I would LOVE for us to spend more money, but we are figuring it’s better to be safe than sorry so 60k is the figure we’re shooting for right now. that’s not to say that if we save up 55k we won’t just leave anyways And plus, like I said, I’m keeping a few blogging jobs when we go. I probably won’t bring in much money, but it will still be a small extra source of income.

We are probably not going to get a round the world trip ticket, because while they are a little bit cheaper, they are also pretty limiting. For example, on most that we’ve looked into, you set your route and dates and then once you buy it, the route isn’t flexible and you can only move the dates out between 30-60 days. There may be options out there that are more flexible but we have yet to find any. I also hate to fly and would prefer to travel by bus and train if at all possible in most places. We have all the time in the world, so why not? That way we’ll get to see more of the countries we’re traveling in too.

Wow. I am long winded today.

Comment by Mamacita Chilena — August 14, 2008 @ 10:44 am

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I also love your traveling plan!
We are trying to do something similar for our son… The plan is to save many until he is a teenager (around 16) and then give him for christmas or birthday a travel across Europe, not only France, Spain or Italy, but also Polonia, Grecia, Bulgaria, and so on…
I like your blog as it is, with long and short entries… i donÂ´t care, i like it
Ps.(now I understand why the name “papito”…)

Comment by Irantzu — August 15, 2008 @ 8:24 am

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I appreciate how responsive you are to comments.

I would love if you could write about your travel plan in detail, as in where you will go, what you will do, and why you decided on taking this trip in the first place. My traveling days are over for a while and I am a trip planning nerd who would like to vicariously live through others’ traveling experiences. I love to hear about trip plans!

Comment by kumichan83 — August 15, 2008 @ 11:10 am

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Irantzu, what an amazing gift to your son! He is lucky to have parents that encourage travel!

Kathleen, I’ll do a whole post on that sometime soon. We’re finally starting to get to the stage where we need to start planning so it’d be worth writing about. Before it was just a dream and the need to save up a whole boatload of money, but now that we have some of the money and a budget keeping us on track, we’re starting to enter the stage where we plan to make it a reality! I’d love to hear any of your thoughts on where to go and what do you in places you have traveled/lived in.

Comment by Mamacita Chilena — August 15, 2008 @ 2:08 pm

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Sure thing! When you post your travel plans, I can comment on all the stuff I know about that I think is worth it. I am the kind of traveler who generally spends a lot of time in one place so I know a lot about a few good places. When my daughter is old enough, we want to take a RTW trip too… or at least through all of Latin America. Maybe for her quiceanera. I fear how much flight prices will be at that time though.

Comment by kumichan83 — August 15, 2008 @ 3:30 pm

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