CHILE (March 2-12)

 

Almost as soon as you drive over the Chilean border, the bumpy dirt road gives way to smooth blacktop.  We cleared customs on the outskirts of San Pedro.  We soon arrived in the center of town and found a really nice place to stay.  The town is very small and almost completely geared for tourists.  The roads are all dirt, and nearly every shop is a travel agent selling tours into the desert.  It was very dry, dusty and hot.  We pretty much just relaxed for the day, and  Mark, Lynne and Roel cooked a really yummy dinner.  Roel made some steaks, and we also had grilled vegetables on the BBQ as well as baked potatoes.

Just a cat hanging out in front of my room

 

 

The following day, we just relaxed again until the afternoon, when we took a tour to the driest place on earth, Valle de la Luna. 

This is the valley of the moon

   

We were first taken to a mirador, then to the Valley of Mars or the Valley of Death.  Here we walked for an hour through bizarre rock formations in a canyon.  Another part of the desert contains huge amounts of salt.  We were taken through a cavern where the walls glistened with salt that looked like quartz.  The highlight of the tour though, was the Valley of the Moon, where you hike up a sand dune to watch the rocks change color with the sunset.  We took some bottles of wine with us to better enjoy the experience.  The view was quite stunning.  Before it got dark, we hiked back down and returned to town.

A supposedly impeccable sunset here - Chilean wine in a plastic cup - Classy!

 

 

Before leaving San Pedro de Atacama the next day, we had an early farewell dinner with Roel, who was separating from the group and traveling to Argentina the following morning.  We then left for La Serena.  The bus ride was mostly along the coast and south, and took 18 hours.  The bus was actually very comfortable with roomy seats!  So we had a very enjoyable overnight ride down to La Serena.  We were met by someone from the hostel we were planning to stay at, and followed him back to Maria's Casa.  This turned out to be a great place.  The family that ran the place was very friendly and the place had a nice courtyard out back that all the rooms looked out onto.  We relaxed and also went to a supermarket to shop for some food.  On the way to the supermarket, there was a sign outside one of the houses that listed their special of the day, choclo de something (a corn based dish with vegetables, meat, raisins).  I of course ran in to take a look, and saw a woman with a bunch of other workers cooking in the kitchen.  It definitely wasn’t a restaurant, but just cooked food being sold out of the kitchen.  I bought some.  Then we continued on to the supermarket, and bought food and wine for the next couple of days.  When we finished shopping, we sat in a grassy area under a tree in the parking lot and made vegetable sandwiches.  Later, the four of us walked down to the beach, with a bottle of Chilean Red, to watch the sun set.

Sunset in La Serena - Dogs were playing with us - They were particularly infatuated with Mark

On the way back, we stopped in an unused lighthouse on the beach, which was now a funky (but very gay looking) bar.  The strange barman was serving us drinks with his leg perched up on the high bar (explaining to us that he used to be a dancer).  The other man was equally strange, and was from Sydney Australia.  On the way back, we met some locals and Ali decided to talk with them.  For some reason, when she had finished , she crossed the street to meet up with us and completely fell, injuring her hand.  None of us saw this, but she was pretty upset about the whole incident, especially being injured.  The next day we slept in, relaxed around the courtyard, and then headed into town to look around.  We also visited a Japanese garden and had a picnic lunch.

Japanese gardens, Ali with one of her typical faces!

 

We considered going to an Observatory later that night, but decided to save our money and play cards all night instead.  Lynne went to bed early, before we had started our game of hearts.  I was winning by a lot when Mark unexpectedly "Shot the Moon" to win.  It was impressive, and I wondered if he had meant to do it from the beginning or if it just fell into his lap.  I think he enjoyed that I didn’t realize what he was doing!

After 6 hours, we arrived in Viña del Mar.  We basically walked around and again watched the sun set, sitting on some rocks by the water.  We had some very mediocre Mexican food for dinner and headed back to our hotel completely knackered.  We all flopped in front of the television and fell asleep in front of the woeful movie, "Swordfish".  After sleeping in until midday, we didn't get out until 3 PM.  We caught the local passenger train out to Valparaiso for the evening,  getting off in the port area - we saw many ocean liners and, further out, navy ships.  

The area around the port town is really run down, but there are some pretty amazing houses on the hills overlooking the town.  The further you walk away from the town, the more things change, and we saw many majestic old buildings and modern shops.  We walked around for a while before heading up some steep hills to a funky area that was supposed to have a cool vegetarian restaurant/bar.  The bar section was still there, but pretty much all they were serving was cheese sandwiches.  We left and eventually ate in an awful Chinese restaurant (even the vegetarian dishes had little pieces of meat in them).  We then searched for a cool bar, eventually settling on one that had a high cover charge (but included a few drinks) and live music.  A group of old guys comprised a tango band, which alternated with an acoustic guitar and bongo drums duo that was great.  We left Valparaiso at about 3:30 AM and returned, by a little local minibus, to our hostel in Viña del Mar.

 

The following morning, Lynne and Mark cooked breakfast, and we were now off to Santiago.  Arriving in Santiago, we found Casa Roja in Barrio Brazil (the cool university area).  There were only dorm beds available, so I decided to find another place to stay for Ali and myself.  Later on, Ali and I went to an advertised anti-war demonstration near the museum.  We didn’t know whether it was supposed to be a big deal or not.  The taxi ride took a while and after we got dropped off, we couldn’t see anything going on.  There were many people practicing juggling.  It seemed odd, but as we continued to walk, food vendors appeared as well as people selling shirts, bandanas, posters, etc.  Tons of Che Guevara items were being sold as well.  For some reason, I had never heard of Che before coming to Latin America.  Should I have?  I bought some yummy snacks and, eventually, we came to the real demonstration.  It was a big party scene, with lots of drinking and smoking going on.  Tons of people were just sitting on the grass and chilling out.  There were bands playing popular live music, with everybody singing along.  We stayed for at least an hour, until it was almost over, and then went to dinner, even though we were both pretty tired.

March against Chilean support of UN resolution, followed by dinner with ceviche and too much food

 

The following morning, we met Lynne and Mark at their hostel.  They told us of a conversation they had with an Australian guy who was staying at their hostel and had lived in Columbia for two years.  It was not until his last three months that he became aware of anything bad about the country.  His most alarming story was how early one Sunday morning he was heading to the local phone booth to call his parents, and an attractive young girl stopped him in the street with a questionnaire.  He could not stop because he had to make a phone call before a certain time to obtain the cheap rate, but said he would talk to her afterwards.  He had walked no more than 30 meters down the road when a motorcyclist opened fire with a semi-automatic on two guys near the girl.  She was killed instantly as was one of the guys, and the second guy died in the hospital.  The Australian, lucky to be alive, hid under a car on the side of the road.  As far as he knew, it was a drug killing.  The girl had been in the city for two days, after leaving her country town to start a new life in the big city.  Anyway, we eventually caught the metro out to Cerro San Cristobal, with a big statue of St. Mary on a hill overlooking the city.

Waiting until the funicular opens at 1 PM. I drink the fruit (peach or apricot) flavored drink with corn in it, Overlooking Santiago

 

We had a picnic lunch, and then strolled down through the city until dining at a groovy veggie restaurant in the area of Providencia.  Finally, we caught the metro back and had a couple of bottles of wine at Casa Roja.

Mark and Lynne - helping me finish up this final roll of film, One last face from Lynne - Ya happy now?

 

The next day, we again met up at Casa Roja.  We took the metro to a spot to begin our walking tour of Santiago.  We must have walked for about six hours.

There were a couple of high hills overlooking the city.  We also went to visit Cerro Santa Lucia, with some grassy banks and old buildings, and a cobblestone road.  We visited the Museo de Bellas Artes, which was quite impressive, but more than half of it was closed.  We then looked at a couple of recommended restaurants.  The first one that we went to did not have one vegetarian item on the menu.  When we asked them if they could make something vegetarian (which would have been easy, as evidenced by some of the items on their menu), they said no.  They were not too friendly, so we did not try to convince them.  We walked around before settling on Vacas Gordas ("Fat Cows").  Most of the food was tasty, but Mark’s gnocchi was “the worst” gnocchi he ever had.  Afterwards, we all returned to the Japanese garden in the patio of our hotel to drink more Chilean wine and generally celebrate our last night together.  I stayed up until past 3 and then had to wake up at 4:30 the next morning to catch a taxi to the airport.  Goodbyes usually suck, especially when you know there’s a chance that you will never see the people again, so I made mine brief and quickly headed off to the airport.  Although I hadn’t experienced too much trouble getting change in Chile, I did in the rest of Latin America.  So, when I arrived at the airport, as the taxi fee was a fixed price of $9,  I gave the driver $10 and he didn’t have change.  The counter was barely open and I was there in plenty of time for my three flights back to NY, from Santiago to Lima, Lima to San Jose, and then finally to NY.  My dad picked me up from the airport.