Today is election day. The city is empty because all the businesses are shut down, including my Starbucks. I was looking forward all morning to a cup of coffee and a cool corner in which I could write this blog post. No luck.
To substitute, I’m hiding in the only shady part of my patio with a cup of chocolate milk while the muggy 86F weather swarms around me.
Anyways, I’ve been back in Santiago for a couple of days after getting back from my Pirate Journey of the north of Chile and of Peru. Since it was a three-week thing and it was packed full of pirate action, I’m going to split up the posts, and for now, I’ll just tell you about what went down in Chile.
Amiga Brittany and I started our trip on a Saturday night with an overnight bus to Copiapó. That was one of our mistakes. Being the pirate journey, we had a list of cities we wanted to check out, but no real plans, just rough ideas and huge backpacks. The 12-hour bus ride to Copiapó was pretty mellow, although the crew left the heat blaring all night long and we were cooking in the cabin of the bus. Not the best. When we arrived the next morning we started walking to the Plaza de Las Armas, the center of town, to sit down and make our plan. It turns out that Copiapoopoo has nothing to do, at all. It has a few awesome national parks a few hours outside the city, but the $200-$300 tour price tag was a bit out of range. An hour later, we got on another bus heading west to Caldera, a small port/beach town, which ended up being a lot of fun.
In Caldera, we stayed at this ramshackle hostel which, despite its dirty outdoor kitchen, offered clean beds and hot showers. The first day we went to Bahía Inglesa, a white-sand beach a bit south of the city. Brit and I had nothing more than our music, a six-pack and a bottle of 20SPF sunscreen. After marveling in our brilliance at being able to get out of school so early and then be able to relax on a beach like this, we decided to go swimming…with all of our gear… out to these flat rocks where we ended up falling asleep while our beers cooled in the ocean while being tied up to a rock. We woke up a while later, burnt, but very content. We ended up watching the sunset that night while drinking wine straight out of boxes. It was classy. The next day we took a tour to Parque Nacional Pan de Azucar (National Park Sugar Bread) which is a super dry desert along the coast, which provides an amazing contrast between the makeup-colored mountains and the deep blues of the beach. The moist clouds coming in from the ocean don’t rain, but they provide enough moisture for diverse species of cactus that grow in the region, the reason for the park. Instead of going back to the ramshackle hostel, we camped on the far side of the bay on the beach with, not a tent, but a beach shelter… the girl who replaced Brittany’s tent after she lost it wasn’t the most intelligent. But it was really enjoyable to camp on the beach, even though our dinner and breakfast consisted of ham sandwiches (no cheese, just ham and bread) and cereal. CEREAL MONSTER!
From Caldera, we left to Antofogasta, juiced on the idea of going to the second-largest city in the country after seeing all the tourism posters in the Metro. The images of canyon hiking and lounging in clear rivers had us fooled. The city, at least the part we saw of it, wasn’t the greatest, it was actually put us off a little bit. But we did have a good time checking out the architecture and the port. That night we introduced ourselves (actually Brittany manned up and introduced us) to a tourist group of Australians and Europeans. We ended up going to a bar with them that night before heading out the next morning to San Pedro de Atacama. (On my trip back from Arica to Santiago, we passed again through Antofogasta and I have to admit that the southern part of the city is really nice and actually would have been pretty fun to visit.)
San Pedro de Atacama is arguably THE tourist destination of Chile. The village exists solely to serve tourists who want to see the beauties of the desert. It’s totally worth going to see it, but it was weird seeing sooooo many European and North American tourists in one place, especially after having spent five months in Santiago where it isn’t like that at all. After checking in to our camp site, which was little more than an open lot with some trees and few barbeques, we went sand boarding! We rented mountain bikes and snowboards for about $10 and took off into the desert- a hand-drawn map led us to a huge dune where we repeatedly hiked up and then attempted to ride down. Brit had a few really solid runs. I did not. Awkwardly, we ran into the Australian tourist group again there at the dunes, but it ended up being a good time. Since I’m not the greatest of boarders, I took a break and hiked up this huge monster dune hill mountain to a mesa that had an awesome view of the dune and the valley (Valley of Death). That afternoon we took the Moon Valley tour which included a lot of geological spots like dried up river channels, caves, mines and salt formations. The tour ended with a sunset at the Moon Valley, which looks incredibly unearthly. That was Thanksgiving Day. To celebrate, Brit and I went out to dinner at a pizzeria. I had a “family” sized Hawaiian pizza. It wasn’t actually that big, because we both practically finished the pizzas without problem. In the morning we woke up at 3:30 for our 4a.m. tour of the Tatio Geysers. It’s important to be up that early while it’s still cold out so that you can still catch the dramatic steam coming up from the geysers. The tour also includes stops at some thermals which weren’t as warm as we were hoping, as well as a small town which only has four permanent residents. There we bought llama kabobs which ended up proving to Brit and I that llama is THE BEST TASTING MEAT EVER. That afternoon, after coming back, we met up with Brittany’s best friend Jackie, who I now know and who I recognize because she goes to Humboldt State (represent), and a few of our other friends (shout out) from Santiago for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, after our choripan BBQ, we had to roll out to get to Arica the next morning. Also very awkward, we met the Australians again on the bus to Arica.
When we got there, we got separated, and we followed the two girls from the USA from the Australian group to a surf hostel where we checked in. The tour group left from there immediately to Peru after deciding not to stay in the “dirty” city. We actually liked Arica a lot. It has a bunch of a really cool buildings and awesome beaches. We spent the day on the beach relaxing and swimming which was an awesome break from the relentless heat of San Pedro. In the morning we took our bus to Parque Nacional Lauca, our baby, our prized possession in the North of Chile. To get there we had to get on a bus headed to La Paz, Bolivia, and then we asked to get dropped off at Lago Chungará (Lake Chungará). We read that there was a park ranger station there with camp sites. We got off the bus with an amazing view of the lake the volcano, but a desolate set of buildings and a few camp sites with rock walls blocking the cold winds had me nervous and uncertain. At over 14,500ft. elevation and with the Bolivian winter bringing cold winds to the area, we were stranded in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting to any sort of familiar civilization. We set up our tent and camp site, hiked around, ate dinner, attempted to take rum shots, but ended up going to bed super early since we both had headaches from the altitude. The sunset that night, however, was the most beautiful and spectacular sunset I have ever witnessed. In contrast to that beautiful image, we slept horribly. The cold didn’t help, but I think the altitude affected us both more than we thought it would. We got up early grumpy and tired, but a nice German couple gave us a ride in the back of their truck to our next stop in the park, the town of Parinacota, named for the snow-capped volcano that towers over the area. We set up camp at one of the lagoons and then took a hike through the shallow hills and around the streams and lagoons that cover the area. The town has a only a few permanent residents, the town normally fills for religious and community celebrations while most people actually live in more populated and connected towns. The people we did see (a total of four or five) worked at little shops that sold tea and snacks and artesanía. We bought coca tea which is supposed to help with altitude adjustment. Later that evening, after a few rounds of cards and a solid nap, we walked bored through the town until we saw a few people walking down the road towards us, obviously tourists. They ended up being a German and two French girls who were all really cool. They were looking for the hostel that their tour book said would be open, but it definitely was closed. Since we were camping, we didn’t have that problem, but we did see (and read) that the ranger station for the national park has beds for visitors that they usually let out for free. Unfortunately for our European friends, the station was closed. Never ones to give up, we found a small window to one of the bathrooms that we could open. One of the French girls who is a climber shimmied into the window and opened up the front door for us, it was amazing. We spent the night huddled up on bunk beds playing cards and eating pita bread. It was actually a really good time. We got up really early to avoid encountering any park rangers or townies walking by. To get back to Arica, which is where we launched to Peru, we had to go out to the highway, a 2-mile hike uphill with our huge backpacks and at altitude. It took a long time and was very tiring. We tried hitchhiking to Arica, to save money and to get there faster, but nobody picked us up for two hours. At that point, a bus heading back from La Paz rolled by and we took it to Arica, despite the $15 price tag.
Check out photos of the North of Chile in these albums:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=167404&id=629949459&l=5821d5841a
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=167447&id=629949459&l=5f83c44c19
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=167515&id=629949459&l=9f9db8c95a
No comments:
Post a Comment