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
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