The Atacama Desert

Delayed post about San Pedro de Atacama Chile

We took a flight from Santiago to Calama then an hour and a half bus to San Pedro. The first night we stayed in a hostel called Hostal Florida. In Jeffrey´s words, ¨the worst hostel I´ve ever stayed in.¨ Not quite my worst. Puntarenas, Costa Rica was pretty sketchy. But after the first night we moved to Hostal Rural, which was way better. We went sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte with a group of people. They gave me a 130 board that had Bear Mtn. Resort engraved in it. That was pretty crazy. We hiked up this huge sand dune and rode down SO easily. Actually, not so much. The sand is super sticky and you have to put ALL your weight on your back foot in order to go anywhere. Then once you´re going really fast its hard to turn or stop without eating crap. At least for me.... So I kept trying to hit this little jumpito on the bottom but i´d either go too fast and fall before I got to the jump or I wouldn´t be going fast enough and wouldn´t make it to the jump. It was super fun though. I´d definitely go again. It´s just a lot of hard work climbing back up the hill every time. After sandboarding we went to see the sunset in Valle de la Luna. We´re so used to literally watching the sun disappear behind the ocean, but in the desert, the sun casts these crazy colors on the mountains. Entonces, we looked east for the view. After the sunset, we walked through some caves. I dunno, not much to say about the caves. They were cool. Filled with salt. Actually, there was a part that reminded me of the pancake room in Malibu. It was nice meeting all the people in our group, talking, socializing. We had dinner with a dutch couple, two girls from germany, two girls from portland, and our tour guide. Definitely one of my favorite days/nights.

The second day in San Pedro we just relaxed in town. Did some laundry. Went on a run. That probably looked really weird. Two asians running around a small tourist town in the chilean desert. The last two days we did two tours. One to laguna cejar, a lake that is so salty you can float. The top layer of water is freezing cold but below that it´s warm. My whole body was basically warm, except I couldn´t feel my neck. Our other tour was to the Geysers del Tatio. Left at 4 am. It was SO cold. Colder than it is now in Patagonia. But thats good cuz then the geysers are more active. We ate llama. Tasted good, but super tough. Then we went to a natural hot spring, which was more lukewarm with spots of really cold and really hot. Jeff couldnt go in cuz hes allergic to sulfur. So I talked earthquakes with a canadian woman. Oh also, one of those days we rented bikes with some Aussies and rode out to Tulor, these old ruins dating back to like 400 B.C. But really, there were two huts that were probably replicated after what actually used to be there. You could see a little bit of the remains of the actual pueblo from that time. But yeah, it wasn´t as exciting as I hoped for it to be. We then rode our bikes to valle de la muerte and just scrambled around until the sunset. Note to self and others: mountain biking in the dark without a headlamp is not fun.

That pretty much wraps up San Pedro. We flew back to Santiago. Our flight got in at 1 am so we planned on just sleeping in the airport. Then when we got our bags we decided we might actually want to go to a hostel. But it was too late and there werent any buses going into the city. As we were walking back to the gates to find a place to sleep, two cops stopped us with drug dogs. Asked for our passports and if we had any drogas. I kept saying si. I dont know why. But obviously we didnt have any drugs so they let us go and we slept on the benches at gate 23b. We spent the day in Santiago. Went to the hostel we stayed at before and paid half price to shower and leave our bags there for the day. We took the metro to Las Condes, a trendy district in Santiago that seemed to be a financial district. Lots of suits. And English actually. We went to Cafe Melba for brunch and there seemed to be a lot of business lunches going on, with English being spoken between Chileans and non-Chileans. Our food was SO good. Well, at least mine was. Jeff wasn´t crazy about his. I had a veggie omelette and he had french toast. Best meal I´ve had. They also had giant white bowls filled with cafe latte. Also very delicious. Thumbs up for Cafe Melba.

13 hour bus ride to Puerto Montt--2 hour flight to Punta Arenas--3 hour bus ride to Puerto Natales. Patagonia!

La Costa

Valparaiso and Vina del Mar

It was pouring rain when we got into Valpo. Walked to the grocery store. Cooked at the hostel. Went to the movies haha. Saw Hangover 2, also known as Que Paso Ayer? 2. The next day in Valpo was nice and sunny. We walked down to Muelle Prat, pretty much the town´s big port. We went on a little bay cruise for 15.000 CLP. There are funiculars all around town. We rode up Ascension Artilleria. Lunch at Brighton Cafe. Shared el menu turist--chicken with mango curry. Delicioso.





I like Vina more than Valpo. We went and bought our plane tickets to Calama so we could go to San Pedro de Atacama (desert in the north). We weren´t planning on going but Pucon´s snow season hasnt started yet so we´ll hit the desert first. Went on a run along the beach and took a couple buses to Concon where we could watch the sunset from the sand dunes. We missed our stop and had to run back and find out how to go to the dunes, but we pretty much failed. Back to the hostel. Food. Ab RipperX. Sleep.

Day of Rest

Today is Sunday. Everything is closed. Santiago is pretty much shut down. We wanted to walk up Santa Lucia for a view of the Andes, but it was closed. I needed an outlet converter, but the electronic store was closed. I was hungry, but the restaurants were closed. Ok, there were a few things open, and we did end up having a good day. We walked through Plaza de Armas before we moved hostels to Hostal Forestal, right by Parque Forestal and the metro stop Baquedano. For lunch, we headed to Bellavista, a really cute barrio with a plaza of restaurants and cafes. Jeff´s friend recommended a restaurant called Galindo. We split a cazuela, which is this deeeeelicious soup with beef, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and rice. YUM. This is also where we learned not to order water to drink because they bring you a fancy pants glass bottle of water that costs like 4 bucks. No gracias.


Next stop was Cerro San Cristobal where we can walk off that cazuela. We winded around this hill with gorgeous views of the city and the Andes in the background. What an awesome location for a metropolis. Jeff and I had a huge argument on the way up. He made the statement, ¨You need to visit a specific country in order for your argument about that country to be valid.¨ My LSAT-trained mind made me question his statement so I restated the statement to him over and over again. So you think you need to go to a country in order for your argument about it to be true? Reading about it or learnin about it in school couldn´t be enough in some instances? We went back and forth until we finally agreed that your argument can be valid even if you havent been to that country but going there may supplement your beliefs/knowledge about that place. Sticky debate. We also went into why we travel and whether or not people should or need to travel. Actually when we got to the top of the hill and saw the amazing view, we met Patricia Kelly, a former business professor at UW. She somehow brought up the fact that if you go to certain places in Africa and ask them about whats going on, they won´t tell you the truth about what is actually going on. So back to our argument...you could even go to a country and come back and speak about what you learned there but it could still be completey invalid beause the people there didn´t divulge the true realities of the country.



Tonight we ate at Doggi´s. Basically their fast food joint. We split a hot dog completo, a hot dog with tomatoes and guacamole. Oh, and in Chile, they call avocados palta, not aguacate. The hot dog was terrible. So we went to a panaderia for some dulces. Since we got back to the hostel, we´ve been planning out more of our trip. Also met some guys from Minneapolis. Buenas noches from Santiago.

The People You Meet

Friday morning I headed straight for the airport to check on the status of my bag. SUCCESS!!! I found out my bag was arriving on the flight! The day was already starting out great, then I went into the little shop outide the airport. This is where I met Benito. He was selling jewelry and things and asked me if I was from California. I was so surprised. How did he know? He said something like he could feel me through his mind or something like that. At least, that´s how I translated his Spanish. He told me his name meant fuego as he hovered his hands over my hand and pressed his palm to my forehead. Interesting man. What´s really cool though....he collected shells for the Smithsonian and one of the shell species names is named after him. We then talked about the end of the world. It was an interesting and engaging yet confusing conversation, you kno, with the language barrier and everything.


As we left the shop, Enrique and his friend approached us. He asked us where in CA we are from because his son lives in Long Beach. We spoke for a few minutes and as we were about to say bye, he invited us over for lunch. We put our bikes in his truck bed, got into his backseat and let him show us where he lives so that we could meet him there a few hours later. And yeah, the thought of us getting kidnapped crossed my mind, but deep down I knew he was just being friendly. Oh man, was he that and more. I love traveling and seeing the amazing kindness and generosity from people you´ve just met. Enrique invited us into his home, the one which he called ¨muy sencilla¨. There was ceviche on the table. My first reaction...YUCK. I hate raw fish. But I had to eat it. It wasn´t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I think if I was my brother or someone else who really likes raw fish, this would´ve been the best I ever had. Not only did he give us ceviche, but also fresh limeade (delicious), avocados from his tree at his OTHER house in town (even more delicious), and a stuffed eggplant type dish with rice. He hardly spoke any Engish but the conversations went well and the company alone was refreshing. Enrique had to suddenly leave for work so he fed the leftovers to his chickens and we quickly exchanged contact information. While doing so, we learned that he was the former governor of the island. Wow. And also that he was adopted and later taken care of by a french priest. What a crazy life. It was absolutely wonderful crossing paths with Enrique, and I hope Jeff and I can treat his son to a meal back in CA.


The rest of yesterday was great as well. We returned the bikes and rented out an ATV instead, knowing we wanted to get to the opposite side of the island this morning for the sunrise and we didn´t want to bike any more miles. We took the ATV to the trailhead of a hike to Rano Kau, a crater pretty close to Camping Mihinoa. We hiked up, checked out this massive crater, and stopped by Orongo but it was closed. At Orongo, we did get to see a tiny museum that explained a ritual between tribe chiefs. They would swim out to the rocks where the bird tangata manu laid its eggs. The chief to bring back the first egg won. I got a sticker of the tangata manu for my nalgene :) When we got back to our ATV, it wouldn´t start. Jeff figured out a little trick and we got it going but then it broke down. Not embarrassing or anything, especially when two Irish girls we had met before passed by asking us what happened or when a local and his family pulled up and just stared at us for 10 minutes. After pushing it a while, a nice man helped us and got it to start. The little stinker gave us troubles in the morning too when we left at 5 am to catch the sunrise on the east side. Broke down abou 5 times before Jeff started driving and it ran perfectly fine the rest of the way. I guess I just wasn´t driving it right. Sunrise was cool. Then we went to Playa Anakena...more moai. Then on the plane we got to fly back to Santiago. Iorana, Rapa Nui. It´s been real.

Easter Island Days 1 and 2

Our flight schedule: LAX to Houston to Bogota to Santiago to Easter Island. Somewhere between LAX and Bogota my backpack was lost. I found out in Bogota, but had no time to report anything until I got to Easter Island. I had this huge weight sitting on my shoulders, but when we touched down on that airport runway, I was so happy, I was almost to tears. After over 25 hour of traveling, we had finally arrived. I had maybe 4 articles of clothing that would have to last me until Friday when the next flight came in from Santiago (if my bag could even find its way onto that flight).

Enough about my lost baggage though--we´re in paradise. Marta, whose family owns Camping Mihinoa, greeted us with leis. Her husband then gave us a ride to the campgrounds, a grass field overlooking the west side of the island. I felt so excited to be here, it was surreal. FINALLY, after all that anticipation. So we took a 10 minute walk into town (Hanga Roa) and rented two mountain bikes for the next 48 hours. It cost each of us around $32, pretty expensive eh? I thought it would be a good idea to head north, but my directional instincts must be clouded because we were actually biking south and east. We ended up at Vaihu, an ahu (platform) of fallen moai. The moai are all over the island, most have fallen, but some have been restored to their upright positions, like the ones we saw later on. After biking the 6 miles back we decided to grab some coffee in town. We paid $18 for two coffees and a brownie, which was more like a chocolate lava cake. But still, $18? Que ridiculo. Needless to say, the island is pretty expensive. Good thing we brought a ton of food to last us three days...top ramen, beef jerky, and mud buddies to name a few :) Anyway, there ends day 1.


Day 2: Jeff and Brit=Archeologists (and avid mountain bikers) We biked a total of 25 miles, which felt more like 100. Riding along the southern coast is incredible though. The water is an icy blue and the rocks are...scary actually. They look sharp and jagged and mean. But pretty. They´re like Regina George from Mean Girls. We stopped at a bunch of ahus to check out the moai then ended up at Ahu Tongariki, 15 standing moai. Jeff and I took pictures of each other in as many yoga poses and gymnastics tricks as we could think of. The ride back wasn´t as bad, maybe cuz we didn´t have the head wind against us. Back at camp we had dinner, talked to some campmates. Dana is from Boulder, and he used to work on a cruise ship. So cool. I think that would be a great job for Jeff. Sylvana is Peruvian but she lived in Japan for 13 years. Sach, a chileno who has been on Easter Island for 2 months, took us out dancing. We tried piscola, a chilean liquor called Pisco with coke. I think it tastes kind of like whiskey. The bar was really cool! It alternated between dj/dancing and live band/male polynesian dancers. HOT. Twas fun. I love dancing.