Long way to go

The rest of my Santiago stay was quite lovely. I was back in exploratory mode, so the day after the museum of Pre-Colombian Art, I did a few more touristy things. My favorite was visiting Las Chascona, Pablo Neruda's house in Santiago that's designed to feel like a ship. I like the poetry of Neruda, and his house was equally interesting, full of 60's furniture and lots of little collections.

After that I went to the top of Cerro San Cristobal, a giant park on top of a mountain. I rode a cable car to the top that had a plaque in it stating that Pope John Paul II rode the same car some years ago. The view would have been nice, except that the city is so smoggy that I could barely see the mountains. The Cerro has a zoo on it as well, and from my hostel in the mornings I could hear the animals. However, most zoos depress me, so I didn't visit the one there.

I also explored the Providencia neighborhood a bit, both after the Cerro (strolling through parks, checking out shops), and later that night when I went out for drinks with some Germans. The Germans knew some Irish grils from the hostel; turns out they were booked on the same bus to Mendoza from Santiago as I, so the next day (yesterday), we shared a taxi to the bus station. Unfortunately it was raining, and the taxi took an hour to arrive; we got to the bus station ten minutes after our bus was scheduled to depart. But this is South America, nothing is on time, so our bus was late and thus everything was ok.

The ride from Santiago to Mendoza was absolutely spectacular. Any passage across mountains usually impresses me, but the Andes are just amazing. We crossed the border on a mountaintop reminiscent of the Himalayas. It was snowing, which made for a chilly wait at passport control, but I warmed up with some tea afterwards.

I didn't get to Mendoza until after dark; I dislike arriving in new places at night, I have no sense of where I am. It was a bit difficult to find my hostel, and the one ATM at the bus station wouldn't take my bank card. By the time I finally got to my hostel it was 10:30 and I was a bit grumpy, so I decided to just have some wine with a couple Australian sisters and go to bed. I had gone out the last three nights in a row in Santiago, so a night staying in sounded good.

Plus I am planning on going out tonight with a girl I met in Santiago who actually lived in Chicago for a little while. She came to Mendoza the day before I did, so we are going to meet up for dinner or drinks or something later.

Mendoza is a very pleasant city, known for being the top wine producing region of Argentina. I am taking a tour of a winery this afternoon, which should be nice. I am definitely sold on South American wines, and plan on drinking more of them when I get back to the States. Some of them are quite tasty, and relatively cheap.

It's kind of nice to be back in Argentina, feels more familiar. It's definitely the most developed of South American countries. I look forward to returning to Buenos Aires, which I do on Monday. Today I got to check my bank account for the first time since I left Argentina; I knew I was running low on money, but I didn't realize how close to empty I was. I had told myself I could spend everything in my checking account while down here, leaving a small amount in my savings account for when I return to New York, to live off of until I can find work. When I checked my balance today, I only had about two hundred dollars left, yikes.

So, I will be returning to the States a bit sooner than originally planned. It's not just because of money though: my grandmother broke her hip and isn't recovering from the operation. If I really wanted to I could stay another month down here, but then I would be in debt upon my return, and I want to be in the States in case something should happen to my grandma.

It's strange though, to think that this trip will end soon. Not just South America, but my year-long stint of not working, living in Berlin, everything. Time to go back to cold weather and jobs. At that thought...I will go outside and have a coffee at a cafe in the sun.

Posted by j3s at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a very long 24 hour bus ride, I arrived in Santiago yesterday afternoon smelling worse than I think I ever have. It felt great to check into my hostel, in the Bellavista neighborhood (very nice, lots of good restaurants and cute shops) and take a much-needed shower. All my showers in the Atacama desert were a thin trickle of cold water, so a real shower was quite luxurious.

After that I met some of the people staying in my room, and ended up going out to dinner with them. At the beginning of this trip I was much more shy, but I have gotten good at finding people that seem cool and asking them if they want to get dinner, check out a museum, go shopping, etc. It helps that when I first started travelling, there were multiple times when cool girls asked me if I wanted to do things with them. Come to think of it, I have met a lot of really amazing people, mostly women, while travelling.

I've also gotten over a lot of my tourist hangups. For example, I used to hate looking at maps in public, or taking silly touristy pictures, but now I have no shame when it comes to those things. Makes life a lot easier, and sometimes more fun.

Today I went to the Museum of Pre-Colombian Art, in the city center. The collection isn't huge but it's really nice, I'm glad I checked it out. I also saw some really beautiful gardens on one of the hills; from the top of it I could see a lot of the city, though it was rather smoggy, since Santiago is in a basin between mountains of the Andes.

After I got back from lunch in the main plaza with a couple people, there was some drama at the otherwise tranquil hostel: two people, including a girl in my room, had money and other things (iPods, cameras) stolen. I felt really bad for them, and I'm going to make some pisco sours with the girl in my room in a few minutes to cheer her up. It just sucks, though so far my hostel experiences have been much better than I expected.

None of my things were taken, as all of my important stuff was locked up in a locker, but it's been a good reminder to be careful. After a couple months travelling you start to get a little careless, but now I am back on my guard. I guess I am always very aware of where my bag is and who is around it, though now even more so. I just hate to get paranoid. Thusfar the only money I have lost was a hundred dollars when a money changing place short-changed me, and a few dollars here and there on the long way around town in a taxi. I guess I expected some bad things to happen while I was travelling, and I know I am not home yet, but (knock on wood) so far so good.

Posted by j3s at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday I was feeling too tired to ride a bike around the desert by myself; I just wasn't feeling that hardcore. Instead, I booked a half day group tour out to the Valley of the Moon (different than the Valley of the Moon I saw near La Paz, Bolivia), for about ten dollars.

I realized that ever since I spent two weeks per summer visiting my grandmother at the grand canyon as a child, I have been a big fan of erosion. Thus, I really enjoyed the intense canyons and rock formations of the Valle de la Luna. There were also giant sand dunes, upon which people were sandboarding (like snowboarding, but on sand), which was cool to watch but looked absolutely horrible to do, personally. I got to be in the Valley for sunset too, which was lovely. The rocks kind of glowed, and it reminded me of the color Uluru (Ayer's Rock) in Australia glowed at sunrise, though not as red.

After sunset I came back to my hostel and hung out with some other people staying there. So far all of the Chileans I have met have been incredibly friendly and helpful. If they see I am alone, they invite me to dinner or drinks with them, which is really nice. Four different groups invited me to go out last night, but I was feeling a bit tired and ended up just going to bed by midnight. That decision was based a lot on the fact that I have a 24-hour bus ride in front of me, beginning this afternoon, and I can't sleep that well on overnight buses.

I am looking forward to the ride though; the landscape in the Atacama desert is so beautiful, I love just staring out the window. I got a window seat for this ride, and my mp3 player is fully charged. I am almost done with one of my books, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography Living to Tell the Tale, but I love it so much I don't think I'll trade it for another at a book exchange. It's been really interesting to read about his early development as a writer, kind of inspiring to me.

So I am prepared for my long bus ride; more than anything I think I am just ready to be back in a big city. I have really enjoyed the desert and the small towns, but I am kind of an urban person, and am craving cities again. There are a lot of other interesting, cheap daytrips from here in San Pedro that I could stay here and take, but they're all to geysers, desert lagoons, and salt flats, which I saw plenty of in Bolivia. Plus I am really almost out of money, so I am starting to think about heading back to Buenos Aires to catch a flight to New York, and Santiago is right in that direction.

Posted by j3s at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After three relaxing days in Iquique I headed to San Pedro de Atacama with Niyat, the German girl I met at my hostel. San Pedro is a small village in the Atacama desert (the entire town had a power outage for an hour right after I arrived), known as a backpacker mecca; in other words, kind of touristy. It's really lovely land though, with lots of options to go biking, trekking, sandboarding, etc.

Unfortunately, I am feeling a little burned out on the tour options, and am forgoing the salt lake trip that I considered last week. I will probably rent a bike this afternoon and ride out into the Valley de la Luna, but that may be the extent of my desert exploration. I'm back in some altitude (2700 meters), and it's getting to me a little; plus I think after the last few weeks I am ready for a big city. So I have a 20-hour bus ride that leaves Monday evening for Santiago. As this town is aimed for tourists, everything is rather expensive, though there are some lovely restaurants.

Speaking of food, I am staying at a hostel that doesn't include breakfast. I don't mind though; most South American breakfasts I have experienced are instant coffee and white bread with butter, jam and dulce de leche. I am so tired of white bread. This morning I slept through breakfast though, I was a bit sleepy from last night, when I met some people from my hostel and we went to sit in a field and look at stars while drinking cerveza and pisco under an old tree. Conversation as entirely in Spanish, and Chileans talk very quickly and swallow their words, so I didn't get everything that was said but it was still a lot of fun.

Posted by j3s at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ahh, Iquique. It's the perfect place for me to come after Bolivia, a vacation from my vacation. I feel like I came here to breathe. It's a sea level beach town, so all my altitude problems are gone. Plus I did so much running around checking out areas of interest in Bolivia that it's nice to just get to a relaxing place and chill for a few days.

For a minute I wasn't sure if I would make it out of La Paz as scheduled. When I got back from Lake Titicaca, the city was swarming with soldiers, and the air had a crazy energy to it. The night before I left there was a massive demonstration in the Plaza de San Fernando. Some miners were protesting a government tax hike on their wages, from five percent to forty. They were setting off dynamite in the streets, and people were everywhere, it was intense. Because I was staying a block from where the president works, the street my hostel was on was totally blocked off by the military. The next morning I wondered if I would get to the airport at all; sometimes when Bolivians protest they just close down roads in and out of town, to and from the airport. However, everything was clear, and I caught my flight on time into Iquique, Chile.

I'm not really a beach person, but immediately after checking into my hostel, which is right across the street from the beach, I headed over to lay in the sand and play in the waves. Unfortunately I didn't apply sunblock evenly, and though I was only out for 90 minutes, I got burned pretty badly in random patches.

I lucked out on the hostel situation: this is a good one, where everyone is eager to meet people. Plus, there are three girls in my room that are really fun, I have been hanging out with them for the last two or three days: two Chilean sisters from Santiago, and an Ethiopian girl who grew up in Germany. It's been fun talking to her, makes me miss Berlin quite a bit. We are travelling together to San Pedro de Atacama on Saturday morning, so that will be nice.

One of the Chilean sisters, Dani, has been surfing for five years; Iquique is a bit of a surf mecca, and the hostel is run by and populated with surfers. Yesterday evening before sunset she took me out and tried to teach me how to surf, something I have never done before. It was fun, difficult, mostly just paddling around. I almost caught a decent wave (not really, I never stood up), and got knocked around a bit. After a while one of the surfers who works at the hostel came out and gave us a a nice basic lesson, for which I bought him some beer later. I had fun trying to surf, and maybe if I put a lot of time and energy into it I could become decent someday, but I don't really care enough to make the effort, I think I prefer to just play in the waves, sans board.

After the ocean session we celebrated the birthday of another girl in my room with a feast of guacamole that I made (with amazing avocados), bread, cheese, and chicken spread, lots of wine. Chilean wine so far is pretty cheap and not too bad, though I enjoyed Argentinian wine a little more. Then post-digestion we piled in a van and went out dancing at a club, raggaetone for hours until I was ready for sleep.

Today I might go see some cave drawings outside of town, but I will probably just continue to relax, maybe hit the beach again once the sun is less strong, and then a BBQ tonight. Iquique is in a desert, so it's really hot. The city of about a hundred thousand has the ocean on one side and a mountain that looks like a giant sand dune on the other. I spent most of this morning sitting on a rooftop deck, watching a single wave break across the entire distance of the beach. It really is a wonderful place to catch my breath.

Posted by j3s at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)