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.

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.

Saleswoman at Condor Point

Where we ate lunch

There is only pedestrian and mule access in the canyon

I am currently in Valle del Elqui, Chile which is about 7 hours north of Santiago. Tomorrow night I think that I will head to Santiago where I, hopefully, will meet up with a friend who was also an exchange student in Australia (whom I have not seen for 10 years) and my friend Carlos who I met in Arica. When I arrived back in Arica after visiting Parque Nacional Lauca I called Pato, my CS host, to see if he was home. I thought that I heard him say "I won't be home until 8:30 but Carlos is at the house waiting for you." I figured I had heard wrong, sometimes my spanish is really bad over the phone cause Carlos was supposed to fly home on Monday and it was Wednesday! So I went to the internet cafe, wrote a blog post, and then decided to head to Pato's and hope that there were couchsurfers there (Pato had said he was having some Canadians come after we left). So I stroll up to his apartment at the same moment that a cab full of not just Canadians but Canadians who had stayed at the same hostel as me in Arequipa pull up and exclaim "No way! Are you the American who is staying here tonight!?" If that wasn't coincidence enough 4 days later I arrive in La Serena, over 20 hours away from Arica, at 8:30 am and walk out of the bus terminal while these exact same Canadians call out my name. They were headed into the terminal to spend the day in Valle Elqui. And Carlos missed his flight and was still in Arica, which sucks for him but was great for me cause I got to hang out with him another night.

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!