I hate rushing through places. You miss a lot, you get tired, you don't really get a chance to fully know the place you are in, and you end up hitting up the "hot spots" which are invariably tourist filled. Last night I hung out with two Americans who spent a fair amount of time travelling through southern chile, specifically chiloe and northern patagonia. Their descriptions made me drool. If you look at map you'll understand why. The Chilean side of Patagonia is full of fjords, islands, mountains, and different varieties of forests. The Argentinian side is flat and pretty unvaried until you make it pretty far south. I decided that at the top of my "I don't want to have missed seeing this/doing this if I never come back here" was southern Patagonia, mainly torres del Paine and the perito moreno glacier in el calafate. But I have to go back to southern chile. I need to spend a week soaking up the verdant quiet of Patagonia. I need to kayak through the fjords and hike through the rainforest like parks of northern Patagonia. Consider this your invitation to start saving so you can come with me.
I was getting worried that Patagonia didn't like me. There was a storm on the southern, aka unpaved, portion of ruta 40 the night before I left bariloche. As our bus pulled into the tiny, nondescript, refreshingly untouristy town of perito moreno, where we were spending the night, we were informed that we might have to detour to ruta 3. The bus heading north from el chalten that day had detoured and they arrived in perito moreno at 6:30 in the morning rather than the scheduled 10pm. Sadly we detoured or, as we decided to call it, got an unexpected tour of half of argentina. Pull up map of Argentina. Find the town of bariloche. Follow the road that goes south until you hit a little town near the end called el chalten. That is what we were supposed to do. Now go back up to bariloche. Follow that road south until you hit perito moreno (it's where the road goes inland a little and then turns back towards chile) now from perito moreno follow the road that goes All The way to the Atlantic. Now follow the road all the way down the coast to rio gallegos. Now turn back inland towards chile. When you reach el calafate go north another 3 hours until you reach el chalten. That is what we did. 18 hours. In a bus without the comfy semi-cama seats long haul buses come equipped with. We arrived at 4:30am. Thankfully we made most of the "adventure" laughing about it, clapping when the obviously lost bus driver finally found the highway after driving around our lunch stop town for ten minutes, playing copious amounts of backgammon, and shrugging, saying "welcome to southern Argentina."
I was eager to explore El Chalten, the hiking capital of parque nacional Los glaciares and home to the amazing rock features Cerro torre and fitz roy. The area is notorious for shifting weather and clouds blocking the views it's famous for. There was sun when I hit the trail but it was long gone by the time I reached the Fitz Roy viewpoint. Fitz Roy was shrouded by grey clouds, but the blue of the glacier below it was still bright despite grey. I sat down to eat my sandwich and enjoy what I could see of the view. It started to rain. Half an hour later, my pants soaked, I turned around and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing games in the hostel.
When I woke up this morning it looked like it was cloudy but when I went outside it was crisp and clear with blue skies. I ended up doing the hike i'd planned for the day before, but in reverse. First I hiked up to the cerro torre viewpoint. The sun was still out and the views good. The clouds started rolling in but fitz Roy was still visible, though photography wise the wall of white behind it was uninspiring. Though the wind picked up for part of the hike it didn't rain, wasn't too cold, and at least I could actually see fitz roy!! The hile concluded with a local microbrew at a ceveceria and a delicious plate of ravioli. And the sun kept breaking through the clouds to momentarily dapple the hills around El Chalten with golden light. Patagonia doesn't hate me after all! Now I just need good weather in torres del Paine and for this cold I'm coming down with to go away and not get worse.
Final notes:
on my bus ride to El Calafate today we stopped at a hotel where butch Cassidy and the sundance kid hung out for a month after robbing a bank in rio gallegos Argentina.
I seem to have a knack for sitting on the wrong side of the bus as far as scenery watching is concerned.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Ideas vs plans and flying by the seat of your pants
If you talked to me a few weeks ago and asked me what my plans were I would have probably said something along the lines of "I´m heading south toward Patagonia." I would have admitted that I didn´t really have plans so to speak, just ideas. A few days ago I realized the stark difference between plans and ideas. My "plan" was to take the Navimag ferry to that goes from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. My "plan" was to go to the island of Chiloe. My "plan" was not to be like so many other travelers and completely skip over Middle Chile. These were all ideas, not plans, because they were just thoughts in my head and I had taken no actions to make them reality.
As I mentioned in a previous post I fell in love with the city of Santiago. My falling in love with the city and a few interaction that I had with people made me spontaneously apply for a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course in Buenos Aires. The course starts March 10 and lasts a month. Suddenly my ideas needed to actually become plans. My first step was completely skipping Middle Chile and taking an overnight bus from Valparaiso to Pucon in the Lakes District. The Lakes District looks a lot like the Pacific Northwest and Pucon reminded me of Lake Tahoe with a small version of a Colorado alpine tourist town attached to it. I wasn´t all that impressed. People go there to hike up the vocano, which wasn´t too stunning exept for the fact that it looks like it's puffing a cigar all day, go to thermal baths, or go white water rafting. To be perfectly honest none of these really interested me at the prices and with the crowds of tourists they came with. Realizing that I only had about 2.5 weeks before I had to be in Buenos Aires I decided to head straight to Patagonia. Problem, how to get there. That ferry I´d "planned" on taking? It only leaves once a week and it is booked up through the first week of March. There are other ferries, ferries that leave from the island I wanted to visit, which don´t go as far south. Patagonia is a very isolated, remote area without a huge deal of infrastructure. On the Chilean side the highway, which was mostly built in the 1980s, isn´t paved all the way and doesn´t go all the way south. Flights are expensive and booked up far in advance. I decided to head to Puerto Montt, a port city in Chile that is the Chilean gateway to Patagonia and wing it. Then I talked to an Israeli and my plans changed.
Israelis have infiltrated South America and they seem to have the travel circuit down. There must be some sort of information flow that goes from Israeli to Israeli. Why have Israelis infiltrated South America? Cause after 2 or 3 years in the army they need some down time! So they come and spend a year cruising through South America, doing lots of hiking and trekking. This Israeli went over the map with me and said "No, no, no. Don´t go to Puerto Montt. Go to Bariloche then go down Route 40." So in the morning I refunded my ticket to Puerto Montt, bought a ticket to Bariloche, and then ran back to the hostel to stuff some breakfast down my throat and grab my bag cause the bus left in half an hour.
The drive to Bariloche was beautiful, we crossed the Andes, saw tons of monkey puzzle trees, emerged flatter hills that reminded me of Southern Colorado, stopped in a darling little lakeside town, San Martin de los Andes, that was all chic and tourist facade where I hung out in a coffee shop playing cards with a 19 year old English kid on his first big trip, drove through some wonderfully beautifully lakes while the sun was setting. It was lovely. It took forever. I had a wonderful conversation with a young Argentinian border officer on the bus. I stressed a lot cause I had NO clue how I was gonna get to Patagonia, IF I had enough time to go to Patagonia, WHAT I was gonna do if I didn´t. I f*$/%ing plan other people´s vacations for a living!! And here I was, with my own completely unplanned, completely loose at the seams, and I was not comfortable with it. I hadn´t even known that I was going to Bariloche until that morning. I was going to arrive at 11:30pm and I didn´t know how to get from the bus terminal to the center of town. Thankfully I´d at least called some hostels and made myself a reservation while in San Martin.
Bariloche is in a GORGEOUS setting. There are multiple lakes around, stunning mountains, its verdant and green with the sparkle of blue water. The town itself is right on the shores of a lake. The town looks like it was imported from the Alps. There are a lot of chocolate shops. A lot of wooden buildings that would fit right in in Switzerland. Luckily I worked out my travel plans by 12:30 and could go out and enjoy the town, hike up to a viewpoint and then to a little lake beach with a German I ran into and follow it up with chocolate and coffee with an English woman.
The Patagonia plans, which still feel insane to me, are as follows. Tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. I will start a two day bus/road trip down Ruta 40, which is sort of like Argentina´s version of Route 66 as far as folklore goes only Ruta 40 isn´t paved and isn´t a dead road like Route 66. That whole lack of pavement means that it isn´t fully alive yet. This roadtrip ends in El Chalten, a small town near some awesome stuff. I will spend a day and a half here before heading to El Calafate, a town near an awesome glacier but uninteresting otherwise. From El Calafate I will head back into Chile to Torres del Paine National Park, the crown jewel of Patagonia. I will rent gear and hike in TDP for 5 days. I will then go back to El Calafate, take a 6 hour bus to a town called Rio Gallegos and fly to Buenos Aires. If all things go to plan I will have a day and a half to recover before I start my CELTA course.
I will then plan out the next two months of my trip a little bit better cause I don´t really like flying by the seat of my pants.
I hope you enjoyed your little window into Leah trying to make decisions. It´s a delightful universe to exist in.
Addendum: Things that are popular in Chile
1. Wearing brightly colored tights under jean shorts, preferably with some sort of designs on the pockets.
2. Fanny packs, only not worn around your waist but across your chest over one shoulder with the pack part safely resting on your stomach.
3. "Completos" - a hot dog (nasty ones) smothered with avocado, cheese, tomato, and other stuff
As I mentioned in a previous post I fell in love with the city of Santiago. My falling in love with the city and a few interaction that I had with people made me spontaneously apply for a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course in Buenos Aires. The course starts March 10 and lasts a month. Suddenly my ideas needed to actually become plans. My first step was completely skipping Middle Chile and taking an overnight bus from Valparaiso to Pucon in the Lakes District. The Lakes District looks a lot like the Pacific Northwest and Pucon reminded me of Lake Tahoe with a small version of a Colorado alpine tourist town attached to it. I wasn´t all that impressed. People go there to hike up the vocano, which wasn´t too stunning exept for the fact that it looks like it's puffing a cigar all day, go to thermal baths, or go white water rafting. To be perfectly honest none of these really interested me at the prices and with the crowds of tourists they came with. Realizing that I only had about 2.5 weeks before I had to be in Buenos Aires I decided to head straight to Patagonia. Problem, how to get there. That ferry I´d "planned" on taking? It only leaves once a week and it is booked up through the first week of March. There are other ferries, ferries that leave from the island I wanted to visit, which don´t go as far south. Patagonia is a very isolated, remote area without a huge deal of infrastructure. On the Chilean side the highway, which was mostly built in the 1980s, isn´t paved all the way and doesn´t go all the way south. Flights are expensive and booked up far in advance. I decided to head to Puerto Montt, a port city in Chile that is the Chilean gateway to Patagonia and wing it. Then I talked to an Israeli and my plans changed.
Israelis have infiltrated South America and they seem to have the travel circuit down. There must be some sort of information flow that goes from Israeli to Israeli. Why have Israelis infiltrated South America? Cause after 2 or 3 years in the army they need some down time! So they come and spend a year cruising through South America, doing lots of hiking and trekking. This Israeli went over the map with me and said "No, no, no. Don´t go to Puerto Montt. Go to Bariloche then go down Route 40." So in the morning I refunded my ticket to Puerto Montt, bought a ticket to Bariloche, and then ran back to the hostel to stuff some breakfast down my throat and grab my bag cause the bus left in half an hour.
The drive to Bariloche was beautiful, we crossed the Andes, saw tons of monkey puzzle trees, emerged flatter hills that reminded me of Southern Colorado, stopped in a darling little lakeside town, San Martin de los Andes, that was all chic and tourist facade where I hung out in a coffee shop playing cards with a 19 year old English kid on his first big trip, drove through some wonderfully beautifully lakes while the sun was setting. It was lovely. It took forever. I had a wonderful conversation with a young Argentinian border officer on the bus. I stressed a lot cause I had NO clue how I was gonna get to Patagonia, IF I had enough time to go to Patagonia, WHAT I was gonna do if I didn´t. I f*$/%ing plan other people´s vacations for a living!! And here I was, with my own completely unplanned, completely loose at the seams, and I was not comfortable with it. I hadn´t even known that I was going to Bariloche until that morning. I was going to arrive at 11:30pm and I didn´t know how to get from the bus terminal to the center of town. Thankfully I´d at least called some hostels and made myself a reservation while in San Martin.
Bariloche is in a GORGEOUS setting. There are multiple lakes around, stunning mountains, its verdant and green with the sparkle of blue water. The town itself is right on the shores of a lake. The town looks like it was imported from the Alps. There are a lot of chocolate shops. A lot of wooden buildings that would fit right in in Switzerland. Luckily I worked out my travel plans by 12:30 and could go out and enjoy the town, hike up to a viewpoint and then to a little lake beach with a German I ran into and follow it up with chocolate and coffee with an English woman.
The Patagonia plans, which still feel insane to me, are as follows. Tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. I will start a two day bus/road trip down Ruta 40, which is sort of like Argentina´s version of Route 66 as far as folklore goes only Ruta 40 isn´t paved and isn´t a dead road like Route 66. That whole lack of pavement means that it isn´t fully alive yet. This roadtrip ends in El Chalten, a small town near some awesome stuff. I will spend a day and a half here before heading to El Calafate, a town near an awesome glacier but uninteresting otherwise. From El Calafate I will head back into Chile to Torres del Paine National Park, the crown jewel of Patagonia. I will rent gear and hike in TDP for 5 days. I will then go back to El Calafate, take a 6 hour bus to a town called Rio Gallegos and fly to Buenos Aires. If all things go to plan I will have a day and a half to recover before I start my CELTA course.
I will then plan out the next two months of my trip a little bit better cause I don´t really like flying by the seat of my pants.
I hope you enjoyed your little window into Leah trying to make decisions. It´s a delightful universe to exist in.
Addendum: Things that are popular in Chile
1. Wearing brightly colored tights under jean shorts, preferably with some sort of designs on the pockets.
2. Fanny packs, only not worn around your waist but across your chest over one shoulder with the pack part safely resting on your stomach.
3. "Completos" - a hot dog (nasty ones) smothered with avocado, cheese, tomato, and other stuff
Friday, February 18, 2011
A selection of photos! Finally!
Hey look! You get some photos! These are a selection of some photos from Chile, starting with my hike in Yerba Loca, outside of Santiago, and going back to Iquique. It has been so long since I put up pictures that it is impossible to really show my trip. Maybe if I have time later on I´ll put some more up on Facebook or some other photo sharing site. (I´m trying to move more and more away from using Facebook).
I have been in Valparaiso for a few days and I´m getting restless. Southern Chile is where all of the "good" stuff is and I feel as though it is taking me forever to get there and that I´m going to end up rushing once I´m there. Also, because my trip is so unplanned and things are busier in Southern Chile I am realizing that there are lots of things I wanted to do that I may not get to do (3 day "cruise" from Puerto Montt to Patagonia being one of them). My unplannedness is feeling very uncomfortable and I am really struggling to actually plan it all out while also exploring the places that I am. Ugh.
Valparaiso is an important port city and 150 years ago it was the most important port city in South America. This means that it used to have a lot of money and all of these foreign dudes from England and France built themselves some huge fancy houses. These houses are all now a little ramshackle and weathered, but still beautiful. The house I am currently staying in has ceilings that are like 20 feet high. I don´t think I´m exaggerating. The best thing about the city is the art and the color. The houses are different shades of purple and blue and yellow and green and just lively and wonderful. And every other person here seems to be an artist either selling their goods on the street or in a little shop. The arty vibe actually reminds me of Portland a little.
Some notes on Chile: First of all Chileans speak Spanish as much as Americans speak English, which is to say they speak their own version of the language. They have so many words that no one else uses. Examples: pololo=novio/boyfriend, sipo=si, pues/yes, of course, chivay=intiendo/understand/got it, choclo=maiz/corn. Secondly I learned the hard way that the way an American rights a 7 equals a 1 here (someone elses Chilean cell phone number got 2,000 pesos of credit...). People talk about earthquakes ALL the time. Earthquakes are very common here and Chile is coming up on the 1 year anniversary of a the last large one (February 27, 2010). Earthquakes are more common as you move south I really think that someone has mentioned earthquakes to me every day since I made it to Santiago. Seeing the contrast between Chile and Central America has been really interesting. Similar to the United States Chile (and Argentina) bribed foreigners with free land to get them to come and settle the country. This means that much of Chile has European roots. Plus the country is much wealthier than Central America (and its northern neighbors). I had a really interesting conversation with my CS host and his girlfriend the other night about their travels in Europe. They said that they didn´t experience any racism but they have a friend who looks very indigenous who had problems with racism all over Europe and they know people who look indigenous, people with an education and good jobs, who were denied visas in Spain. They also spoke with frustration about the amount of paperwork they have to go through to get a visa to the United States, hinting that the USA makes them go through this much paperwork to make sure that they aren´t going to try and stay in the USA to work after arriving.
The photos:
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| This is the most amazing thing ever and I want one. It is a Chilean invention, it is a sleeping bag suit. I tried to buy one in Santiago but the two stores were closed. You can buy it on Amazon.com so I might just buy one once I get back to the states, though they are more expensive then. |
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| Felipe and my reaction upon "reaching" the glacier. The glacier is right above Felipe´s head. What you couldn´t figure that out on your own? |
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| Sunset, Yerba Loca, as seen from where we were camping |
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| Carlos´s aunt, mom, and cousin with Clarence |
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| Me eating my first sopaipilla |
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| Me and Carlos, my new Chilean best friend, in Valdivia de Paine |
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| Sopaipilla, uneaten |
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| Humberstone Nitrate plant (ghost town). Don´t you wanna live out here? |
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| Picture of tins that I really liked from Humberstone |
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| Humberstone, inside a building |
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| Iquique |
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| Llama! |
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| Lago Chungara in Parque Nacional Lauca. This is the highest freshwater, non-navigable lake. Lake Titicaca is a few meter lower but is navigable so it gets more press, much to some Chileans dismay |
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| Parque Nacional Lauca. The pink dots are flamingos. If you open the picture up bigger you can also see some llamas on the edge of the lake |
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| Parque Nacional Lauca |
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| Parque Nacional Lauca |
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| Patricio, the hostel llama in Putre, so cute! |
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| Patricio trying to eat Claudia´s camera |
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| Claudia & I in Parque Nacional Lauca |
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Travel Moments
I am completely in love with Santiago Chile. I am leaving today to go to Valparaiso, which is just an hour or two away, and I have not ruled out coming back to Santiago for a few days. The city is this amazing mix of South America, Europe, and North America. There was a lot of wealth in Chile around the turn of the century, mostly from mining in the north, and the wealthy of Santiago had a fascination with Europe, especially Paris. Thus there are all of these streets and buildings that are Europeanesque. The inside of the Central Market is wrought iron and florid, very Art Noveau. At the intersection of Paris and Londres (really, those are the names of the streets) the buildings are stone and the street is cobble stoned and tree lined. On top of all of these old beauty Santiago is fresh faced and modern. I am currently sitting in the National Library, a building that would fit in in Paris, but I am in a computer area that is enclosed by a very stylish, modern glass wall that goes up about 6 feet. This mix is everywhere in Santiago. There is culture and art. There are cafes and sushi restaurants and hip bar areas. There are cute little shops. There are people juggling for cars stopped at lights. Santiago is a major metropolitan area with a serious pollution problem but it is also green. There are parks everywhere! There are tree lined streets everywhere! But you are still in South America and that is evident as well. It's just a wonderful mix of everything and I am totally in love with it.
I have been in the Santiago area for about a week. I first went to Buin and Valdivia de Paine, which are a suburb and little town outside of Santiago that you will probably never read about in a guidebook. There is nothing happening in Buin or Valdivia de Paine. I loved my time there. I went to see Carlos, the Chilean who had been staying with my CS host in Arica. My day with him was one of those beautiful travel moments where everything that happened was simple, untouristy, and delightful. Sometimes the best moments of travel can be as simple as having a hot shower, drying off with a big, soft, luxorious towel (after weeks of small, useful, but uncomfortable travel towelness) after a night bus ride, and a breakfast waiting for you after the shower. Carlos showed me around Buin and stuffed me full of food. I tried a Chileno, which is essentially two sort of crackeresque cookies filled with dulce de leche and covered with a sort of hard meringue, and sopaipillas, which is a bread kind of thing made out of pumpkin that tastes nothing like pumpkin. Then we went out to lunch with parents where I ate some sort of stew with a slab of beef on top. I cannot remember the name but it sounded like Shakakan but with an R somewhere in there. The best part of the trip was just sitting with his family, drinking coffee, eating bread and jam, and talking about the United States, earthquakes (a very common topic of conversation in Chile) and other natural disasters.
Over the weekend I went hiking with a group of CS folk from Santiago. There were 8 of us in total, 6 Chileans, one Peruvian, and me. We hiked about 40 kilometers in all. The first day was a little brutal. It was cloudy, windy, and cold. We lost the trail for a while and were scrambling through brush and mud. We eventually made it to camp, struggled to put tents in the howling wind, and eventually were all cozy inside one tent, sheltered from the wind. It was a great night, exactly like a night in a tent in the USA. We played games that were basically identical to the games one would play in the States, laughed a lot, and had a good time. The next day we hiked up to a glacier and were sorely disappointed. We had been told that it would take an hour to get there, it took closer to 3. We were at nearly 4,000 meters so every 5 steps we were out of breath and the day before we'd hiked 17 km and our legs were already tired. Then the glacier was tiny and we had been looking at it for the last 1.5 hours without even realizing it. Oh well, We had fun anyway!
Since then I've just been hanging out in Santiago, soaking up the ambience, walking around a lot, going to different sights and such. My first night here I went to a karoake bar with my CS host. It was pretty awesome, especially seeing people join in with the karoake singer to belt out these Chilean songs that I had never heard.
After Valparaiso I don't quite know where I am heading. South, that much I know, but I'm struggling to decide WHERE in the south. Southern Chile is where all of the good stuff is, all of the volcanoes and green and cool national parks. There is pretty much too much to see! Travelers (versus tourists) seek to find a delicate balance between seeing the highlights of a place and staying away from the places cluttered full of other foreigners with their backpacks and guidebooks. This is not an easy task. When you prepare for a trip usually the first thing that you do is buy a guidebook (or if you are Leah you go and check like 14 out from the library). For a traveler the guidebook serves as a reference. For the tourist it is a bible. Guidebooks are incredibly useful. They are also annoying and a pain in the ass. The guidebook takes vast enormous countries with a huge number of towns, cities, parks, hostels, restaurants, and activities and tries to narrow it down to the ones that are probably worth your time or easy for you to visit. This is great, but also means that everyone ends up at the same places. Its not that hard to stay away from the hostels and the restaurants written about in Lonely Planet (Couchsurfing makes this way easier!) but deciding what places a guidebook talks about to go to...therein lise my current issue. I suppose that ultimately it doesn't matter. After all, Buin isn't in a guidebook and I loved my time there much more than my days in Valle Elqui, which all the guidebooks rave about.
**I promise that my next post will have pictures! Really. I swear**
I have been in the Santiago area for about a week. I first went to Buin and Valdivia de Paine, which are a suburb and little town outside of Santiago that you will probably never read about in a guidebook. There is nothing happening in Buin or Valdivia de Paine. I loved my time there. I went to see Carlos, the Chilean who had been staying with my CS host in Arica. My day with him was one of those beautiful travel moments where everything that happened was simple, untouristy, and delightful. Sometimes the best moments of travel can be as simple as having a hot shower, drying off with a big, soft, luxorious towel (after weeks of small, useful, but uncomfortable travel towelness) after a night bus ride, and a breakfast waiting for you after the shower. Carlos showed me around Buin and stuffed me full of food. I tried a Chileno, which is essentially two sort of crackeresque cookies filled with dulce de leche and covered with a sort of hard meringue, and sopaipillas, which is a bread kind of thing made out of pumpkin that tastes nothing like pumpkin. Then we went out to lunch with parents where I ate some sort of stew with a slab of beef on top. I cannot remember the name but it sounded like Shakakan but with an R somewhere in there. The best part of the trip was just sitting with his family, drinking coffee, eating bread and jam, and talking about the United States, earthquakes (a very common topic of conversation in Chile) and other natural disasters.
Over the weekend I went hiking with a group of CS folk from Santiago. There were 8 of us in total, 6 Chileans, one Peruvian, and me. We hiked about 40 kilometers in all. The first day was a little brutal. It was cloudy, windy, and cold. We lost the trail for a while and were scrambling through brush and mud. We eventually made it to camp, struggled to put tents in the howling wind, and eventually were all cozy inside one tent, sheltered from the wind. It was a great night, exactly like a night in a tent in the USA. We played games that were basically identical to the games one would play in the States, laughed a lot, and had a good time. The next day we hiked up to a glacier and were sorely disappointed. We had been told that it would take an hour to get there, it took closer to 3. We were at nearly 4,000 meters so every 5 steps we were out of breath and the day before we'd hiked 17 km and our legs were already tired. Then the glacier was tiny and we had been looking at it for the last 1.5 hours without even realizing it. Oh well, We had fun anyway!
Since then I've just been hanging out in Santiago, soaking up the ambience, walking around a lot, going to different sights and such. My first night here I went to a karoake bar with my CS host. It was pretty awesome, especially seeing people join in with the karoake singer to belt out these Chilean songs that I had never heard.
After Valparaiso I don't quite know where I am heading. South, that much I know, but I'm struggling to decide WHERE in the south. Southern Chile is where all of the good stuff is, all of the volcanoes and green and cool national parks. There is pretty much too much to see! Travelers (versus tourists) seek to find a delicate balance between seeing the highlights of a place and staying away from the places cluttered full of other foreigners with their backpacks and guidebooks. This is not an easy task. When you prepare for a trip usually the first thing that you do is buy a guidebook (or if you are Leah you go and check like 14 out from the library). For a traveler the guidebook serves as a reference. For the tourist it is a bible. Guidebooks are incredibly useful. They are also annoying and a pain in the ass. The guidebook takes vast enormous countries with a huge number of towns, cities, parks, hostels, restaurants, and activities and tries to narrow it down to the ones that are probably worth your time or easy for you to visit. This is great, but also means that everyone ends up at the same places. Its not that hard to stay away from the hostels and the restaurants written about in Lonely Planet (Couchsurfing makes this way easier!) but deciding what places a guidebook talks about to go to...therein lise my current issue. I suppose that ultimately it doesn't matter. After all, Buin isn't in a guidebook and I loved my time there much more than my days in Valle Elqui, which all the guidebooks rave about.
**I promise that my next post will have pictures! Really. I swear**
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The French and the Canadians (not be confused with French Canadians)
You were going to get photos, finally, but it took me like 1/2 an hour to upload these photos from my trip to Colca Canyon in Peru, so this is all you get.
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| The pass from Arequipa to Colca, we woke up at about 6:30 or 7am to our guide telling us we could get out and take pictures. I had no idea we were going to see snow. It was COLD. There were people in flip flops. |
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| Saleswoman at Condor Point |
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| Where we ate lunch |
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| There is only pedestrian and mule access in the canyon |
From Arica I went to Iquique which is on the coast about 6 hours south of Arica. Iquique is on the edge of the Atacama, the driest desert in the world, and was just a small fishing village until nitrate mining started up in the desert nearby. iquique was a transportation hub and where most of the boss men live so it lived a nice wealthy life for a number of years. Vestiges of its wealth can be seen in these beautiful old Georgian buildings, especially on a pedestrian esplanade that is complete with a wooden boardwalk. It reminded me a little bit of New Orleans (sans mardi gras beads and partying) and I could just imagine women dolled up in their turn of the century dresses sashaying down the walk with men draped over their arms. I pretty much went to Iquique to visit an abandonded nitrate mining town, Humberstone. It was an interesting stop, but not as interesting as I had hoped. It became an Unesco World Heritage Site a few years ago, which is great for its preservation but unfortunatetly for me this meant that nearly all of the buildings had been swept clean of artifacts for preservation so in walking around Humberstone you are mostly just walking around the shells of slowly disentregrating buildings. A lot of the machinery still exists though and it was crazy to be in this intensely deserted place and imagine that people actually lived there. There was some oral history stuff that I, complete history nerd that I am, devoured. I caught a ride back to Iquique with two Chilean girls and two Argentinian boys, my first South American hitchhiking foray.
I spent my afternoon in Iquique on the beach with a French guy speaking only Spanish. He, however, is not the french in the title. After Iquique I took an 18 hour bus ride to La Serena, which happens to be one of the capitals of Chilean vacations. I do not think that there are any Chileans left in Santiago. They are all on vacation. At least a quarter of them are in La Serena. I met no one in La Serena who was from La Serena except for the people in tour agencies and restaurants. There are only people from Santiago in La Serena (hell, I had to go down tiny side streets just to find someone who actually lives in the tiny town of Pisco del Elqui, they're all from santiago here too). This means that the hostels were all booked up. So I had another one of those beautiful traveler moments at 9am on the streets of La Serena. Pierre (who is probably my father's age) and Sarah (a few years old than me) had bumped into each other on the street, both looking for lodging, a few minutes before I bumped into them. Both Pierre and I had had the same guy offer us an apartment, which was completely out of our range as solo travelers, but not as a trio. So for barely more than the price of dorm room in a hostel I got to have my own room in a nice new apartment building and gained two travel buddies for two days. Lovely!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
From the beach to the mountains.
You know what its like when you get together with friends you went to high school or college with? Or maybe with old roommates? You re-hash stories from the old days. One of you will start off telling a story from the past and everyone else joins in, the collective memory rebuilding the emotions and events of the past. Sometimes the story doesn´t even need to be finished before everyone is laughing or tying that event to another event about the same people involved. When you travel alone you don´t end up with that collective memory. The people that you shared experiences with aren´t tied to you in anyway except for via your travels and as I sit here to try and share some of those experiences with you I know that, without that collective memory, there is always going to be something missing from my retelling of these experiences. I feel this especially keenly right now as Claudia and I parted ways about 6 hours ago, her to head towards Bolivia and the last three weeks of her travels, me back to Arica and then toward the south of Chile.
I have no idea how to describe our last 48 hours in Arica. We had talked about going out our second night in Arica and with the arrival of 3 of couchsurfers staying with Pato it seemed like a great idea. The excursion ended up being a test of how well we had adjusted to latin time. Answer: not all that well. At about 10:30 or 11pm one of Pato´s policeman friends, Mauricio, showed up with his little Honda Civic. Us five couchsurf girls, Carlos, Pato, and Mauricio all piled in. Yes, that would be 8 people in one Honda Civic and, yes, two of those people were policeman. After stopped at a convenient store for mixers and cigarettes we headed to a rocky shoreline just outside of the center to "previa," the chilean word for pre-game. While we were there the other 2 couch surfers who were supposed to be staying at Pato's (Yes, that would´ve been 7 of us staying in one tiny 2 bedroom apartment if they hadn´t stayed at Mauricio´s instead) called to stay that they had arrived. So at about 12:30 or 1 we girls and Carlos were dropped off at the beach to continue the previa while Pato and Mauricio went to take the other two couchsurfers to Mauricio´s. By about 2:30 or 3am I was ready to go to bed, as was Claudia. In the United States we would´ve been heading home from dancing by that hour and here we hadn´t even made it to the club. I thought that I had made our tiredness and readiness for bed clear but then the car rolled up to the discoteque, not Pato´s house. So we went inside to try and dance to music spun by the most awful DJ I´ve ever heard and after maybe 1/2 an hour gave up and went and got pizza at the restaurant attached to the club. The guys were waiting in the car for us when we finished and seemed genuily surprised that at 4am we wanted to go back to the apartment.
The next day Pato borrowed a Subaru from someone, picked up the two couchsurg girls from Mauricio´s and took all of us on a tour of the city. There were 7 girls packed into the car, Carlos perched on a giant speaker in the trunk, and Pato driving. The best parts of the day were when the car ran out of gas halfway up a hill and we all piled out and just chilled on the side of the road while we waited for a friend to bring gas and lunch. For lunch Pato took us to what we eventually established was the policeman clubhouse. It was this beautiful 19th century building with old dark wood, impossibly tall doors, and colonial period furniture. The policeman (at least I think they were policeman, we just called them the chicos) cooked us the most amazing meal that I have eaten since leaving the United States. There were tons of vegetables and an amazing fillet of fish. But perhaps the most amazing part of it was just the hospitality of it. They wined and dined us and didn´t charge us a dime. Then the girls piled back into the Subaru, with a new driver (one of the cooks) while all of the other chicos took a taxi to meet us at the beach. In true latin time it was 6:30pm when we arrived for our "afternoon at the beach." Later that evening the chicos cooked us sausage and meat at Pato´s place.
The next morning Claudia and I took an early bus to Putre, which is up in the mountains at 3,500 meters, about 3 hours from Arica. It is a beautiful little Andean town that we both loved instantly. We stayed at an adorable hostel with a very kind owner, 2 week old baby kittens, and a pet llama named Patricio. The altitude made me very tired and light headed so we spent our first day pretty much just relaxing and lounging. We went out to eat at an adorable restaurant that specialized in Aymara food (we both ordered Alpaca with mixed vegetables). The people sitting next to us, not knowing that Claudia spoke German, called us poor girls and said it was probably the only hot meal we had all day when I asked for a to-go box (we´d each only eaten half of our food). I really wanted to stay something to them but Claudia didn´t want to. Sigh. Missed opporunity to embarass someone :) The next day we went on a tour of Parque Nacional Lauca which is GORGEOUS. The ground is lush and green and there are little streams of water running through bofedal, a green grasslike tuft that is surprisingly coarse, while in the background rise snow capped peaks. Add to that some flamingos in lakes, vicuñas and llamas grazing, subtract the freeway running through it connecting Chile to Bolivia and you have a wonderful day. We went as high as 4,500 meters and it was insane how slow I had to walk to not have my heart pounding through my chest. We were all exhausted after the trip and went to bed ridiculously early. It was a little crazy going from the beach, where I got a little sunburned, to the mountains in the course of one day. It was wickedly cold in Putre most of the time that we were there. I went to bed the first night wearing long underwear, yoga pants, socks, a shortsleeved shirt, a long sleeved shirt, and my fleece. I didn´t even take my bra off cause that would´ve involved removing at least one layer for 1 minute and that just seemed like too much. This morning it was sunny, gorgeous and warm. The rain clouds started to roll in around the time my bus to Arica left. Tomorrow I head to Iquique, 4 hours down the coast, where I am planning on exploring the ruins of an old mining town, Humberstone. I will probably buy a chord to connect my camera to the computer there so you can all see photos.
Until then...Ciao
I have no idea how to describe our last 48 hours in Arica. We had talked about going out our second night in Arica and with the arrival of 3 of couchsurfers staying with Pato it seemed like a great idea. The excursion ended up being a test of how well we had adjusted to latin time. Answer: not all that well. At about 10:30 or 11pm one of Pato´s policeman friends, Mauricio, showed up with his little Honda Civic. Us five couchsurf girls, Carlos, Pato, and Mauricio all piled in. Yes, that would be 8 people in one Honda Civic and, yes, two of those people were policeman. After stopped at a convenient store for mixers and cigarettes we headed to a rocky shoreline just outside of the center to "previa," the chilean word for pre-game. While we were there the other 2 couch surfers who were supposed to be staying at Pato's (Yes, that would´ve been 7 of us staying in one tiny 2 bedroom apartment if they hadn´t stayed at Mauricio´s instead) called to stay that they had arrived. So at about 12:30 or 1 we girls and Carlos were dropped off at the beach to continue the previa while Pato and Mauricio went to take the other two couchsurfers to Mauricio´s. By about 2:30 or 3am I was ready to go to bed, as was Claudia. In the United States we would´ve been heading home from dancing by that hour and here we hadn´t even made it to the club. I thought that I had made our tiredness and readiness for bed clear but then the car rolled up to the discoteque, not Pato´s house. So we went inside to try and dance to music spun by the most awful DJ I´ve ever heard and after maybe 1/2 an hour gave up and went and got pizza at the restaurant attached to the club. The guys were waiting in the car for us when we finished and seemed genuily surprised that at 4am we wanted to go back to the apartment.
The next day Pato borrowed a Subaru from someone, picked up the two couchsurg girls from Mauricio´s and took all of us on a tour of the city. There were 7 girls packed into the car, Carlos perched on a giant speaker in the trunk, and Pato driving. The best parts of the day were when the car ran out of gas halfway up a hill and we all piled out and just chilled on the side of the road while we waited for a friend to bring gas and lunch. For lunch Pato took us to what we eventually established was the policeman clubhouse. It was this beautiful 19th century building with old dark wood, impossibly tall doors, and colonial period furniture. The policeman (at least I think they were policeman, we just called them the chicos) cooked us the most amazing meal that I have eaten since leaving the United States. There were tons of vegetables and an amazing fillet of fish. But perhaps the most amazing part of it was just the hospitality of it. They wined and dined us and didn´t charge us a dime. Then the girls piled back into the Subaru, with a new driver (one of the cooks) while all of the other chicos took a taxi to meet us at the beach. In true latin time it was 6:30pm when we arrived for our "afternoon at the beach." Later that evening the chicos cooked us sausage and meat at Pato´s place.
The next morning Claudia and I took an early bus to Putre, which is up in the mountains at 3,500 meters, about 3 hours from Arica. It is a beautiful little Andean town that we both loved instantly. We stayed at an adorable hostel with a very kind owner, 2 week old baby kittens, and a pet llama named Patricio. The altitude made me very tired and light headed so we spent our first day pretty much just relaxing and lounging. We went out to eat at an adorable restaurant that specialized in Aymara food (we both ordered Alpaca with mixed vegetables). The people sitting next to us, not knowing that Claudia spoke German, called us poor girls and said it was probably the only hot meal we had all day when I asked for a to-go box (we´d each only eaten half of our food). I really wanted to stay something to them but Claudia didn´t want to. Sigh. Missed opporunity to embarass someone :) The next day we went on a tour of Parque Nacional Lauca which is GORGEOUS. The ground is lush and green and there are little streams of water running through bofedal, a green grasslike tuft that is surprisingly coarse, while in the background rise snow capped peaks. Add to that some flamingos in lakes, vicuñas and llamas grazing, subtract the freeway running through it connecting Chile to Bolivia and you have a wonderful day. We went as high as 4,500 meters and it was insane how slow I had to walk to not have my heart pounding through my chest. We were all exhausted after the trip and went to bed ridiculously early. It was a little crazy going from the beach, where I got a little sunburned, to the mountains in the course of one day. It was wickedly cold in Putre most of the time that we were there. I went to bed the first night wearing long underwear, yoga pants, socks, a shortsleeved shirt, a long sleeved shirt, and my fleece. I didn´t even take my bra off cause that would´ve involved removing at least one layer for 1 minute and that just seemed like too much. This morning it was sunny, gorgeous and warm. The rain clouds started to roll in around the time my bus to Arica left. Tomorrow I head to Iquique, 4 hours down the coast, where I am planning on exploring the ruins of an old mining town, Humberstone. I will probably buy a chord to connect my camera to the computer there so you can all see photos.
Until then...Ciao
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