July 24th, 2011
I’m writing from a plane again. I did the Santiago – New York flight last night and right now I’m flying from New York JFK to Paris CDG…Then I will take a flight to Milan Linate, where I will be picked up by my mum and sister. When we arrive at Cremona it will have been about 30 hours since I left Santiago, possibly one of my longest trips yet… So I look and feel like shit right now haha
My connection in NY was 9 hours long so I left the airport and visited my friend Julius! It was a sneak peak to what the week in NY will be like when I go back in August. Basically, Julian is super chill and the week will have a good balance of chill and intensity, I think. My first impressions of NY?? I loved it! People are crazy and everyone has their own style, you won’t get bored observing people: how they behave, how they talk, how they’re dressed (I know because I misread Julian’s instructions, went the wrong direction, and spent more than an hour in the subway looking at people. There was this guy that looked Filipino or Hawaiian and he was naked except for a red speedo, pink Crocs, a transparent pareo, a Disney Princess bag, a Betty Book suitcase, and a Yankees cap). Women are really beautiful, and everyone was extremely helpful (three different people lent me their phones to call Julian, they helped me with the luggage, with directions, etc.) Definitely felt welcome those couple hours and I'm looking forward to going back!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Spicy Pepper Chronicles
July 23rd, 2011
THE SPICY PEPPER CHRONICLES
50 GB worth of work, 5 hotel rooms, 3 months and many great experiences later, my time in Chile has come to an end! The co-op work term really flew by, and I can’t believe how much things changed throughout the summer, how many things I learnt, how many new people I met, and how many places I visited.
There are many differences in forestry here and in BC. In Chile, forestry is all about intensively managed plantation forestry. Chile's forested land is highly concentrated in the hands of a few major companies, principally those connected with the paper industry. Second growth forests in BC are not strictly considered plantations (although they are), and they are less intensively managed: the plantations try to consider the ecology of the site in terms of choice of species and management. In Chile, it involves mainly two species (radiata pine and eucalyptus), and things like thinning, brushing and fertilizing, spacing, etc. are carried out. These trees grow FAST, so rotation periods are way shorter (14-20 years depending on the species. Nothing compared to the 80-200 years in BC). There is also no conversion of native forests anymore (in terms of the company I was working for), which is where big bucks come from in BC (100-year-old red cedar = $$$). The safety for outside contractors really impressed me as well – there have to be special designated vehicles that meet certain specifications (tools can’t go in the same vehicle, for example, they have to go in a box on top of the brand new van). I also worked for a different level in the hierarchy of the company, not at the forest operation level like I did in BC, so I also got to witness how the big-decision-making process worked and how changes slowly trickled down the veins of the company.
If you are reading this you probably have me on Facebook so that’s were the Chile album will be, it’ll be a pretty fat one...
THE SPICY PEPPER CHRONICLES
50 GB worth of work, 5 hotel rooms, 3 months and many great experiences later, my time in Chile has come to an end! The co-op work term really flew by, and I can’t believe how much things changed throughout the summer, how many things I learnt, how many new people I met, and how many places I visited.
There are many differences in forestry here and in BC. In Chile, forestry is all about intensively managed plantation forestry. Chile's forested land is highly concentrated in the hands of a few major companies, principally those connected with the paper industry. Second growth forests in BC are not strictly considered plantations (although they are), and they are less intensively managed: the plantations try to consider the ecology of the site in terms of choice of species and management. In Chile, it involves mainly two species (radiata pine and eucalyptus), and things like thinning, brushing and fertilizing, spacing, etc. are carried out. These trees grow FAST, so rotation periods are way shorter (14-20 years depending on the species. Nothing compared to the 80-200 years in BC). There is also no conversion of native forests anymore (in terms of the company I was working for), which is where big bucks come from in BC (100-year-old red cedar = $$$). The safety for outside contractors really impressed me as well – there have to be special designated vehicles that meet certain specifications (tools can’t go in the same vehicle, for example, they have to go in a box on top of the brand new van). I also worked for a different level in the hierarchy of the company, not at the forest operation level like I did in BC, so I also got to witness how the big-decision-making process worked and how changes slowly trickled down the veins of the company.
If you are reading this you probably have me on Facebook so that’s were the Chile album will be, it’ll be a pretty fat one...
Being a tourist in Chile
July 20th, 2011
Although I didn’t visit the southern part of the country, I was lucky enough to visit many other places. In the three months, I was in Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, San Pedro de Atacama, Constitiución, Chillán, Paine and Cobquecura. Most of the trips were work-related (for meetings, visits to the native conservation forests, and research projects like the Islote Lobería Cobquecura for sea lion monitoring).
SANTIAGO
I had a touristy week-end in Santiago, where I took the 18 000 pesos Turistik bus and travelled around the city. I visited Cerro El Caracol, where you take a cable car to the top and then enjoy the polluted view of the city. I also went to El Museo de La Moda, which houses clothing and paraphernalia from the 80s, and a street whose name I forget but all the fancy clothing stores are located here. And Los Dominicos, an expensive craft market for tourists with chicken running around the dusty streets. On the Turistik bus I continuously saw throughout the day a group of four ladies on their forties that tried to behave like Sex and The City.
VIÑA AND VALPO
I went to Viña and Valparaiso another one of my week-ends in Santiago and had an unsettling trip with a gory, low-budget film that was just repulsive. No one seemed to mind this terrible choice of film for a bus, but I had to ask them to turn it off and get rid of the sound of breaking bones and knives. It was a rainy day in Valpo and Viña, and at the bus central I signed up for a 15 000 pesos tour of the two places. We went to the house of Pablo Neruda, La Sebastiana, and I was impressed by the amazing view of the city and the port, the pastel colours of the houses, and the weird feeling of walking among ghosts. I met two Colombians on the tour, which also made it fun, and we had Telepizza (pronounces Telepisa, obviously) at Reñaca after having visited the place where the Viña del Mar International Song Festival takes place. I had never heard of this (should be ashamed), but they told me it's very famous and promising new talents perform here before becoming famous, like Shakira did.
CHILLÁN
With Carolina I visited Quinchamali, a small town by Chillán that could be considered a street, characterized by their black pottery (turns black when fired with soot) with white decorations. The three-legged chanchito, a three-legged piggy bank, is pretty characteristic. Needless to say, I was fascinated! First of all I love pottery, and second of all they get the clay from their own backyards! This is a really ancient tradition and women have been doing this type of greda negra for generations, selling it on their front porches and going to crafts markets with their pottery. They have a special room in the house where they fire the pieces at different temperatures and with the various techniques to turn the bright red pieces a polished black colour. She also showed us a room piled up to the ceiling with clay pieces, I had never seen so many in my life. A box of stuff was 20 000, so I think it was a good deal, but the best part was the feeling of buying really authentic stuff. When we were looking at the fresh clay, I immediately thought of my soils class and my soils teacher back at UBC, as she always got mad when people called soil "dirt". Well, this soil was definitely NOT dirt!
Chillán was also very nice, with a spacious and well-organized market where I got nuts and dried figs. They have a famous mural in Escuela México of the Mexican muralista David Alfaro Siqueiros. I didn’t see that one, unfortunately, but did go see the González Camarena mural at the Casa del Arte of the Universidad de Concepción, Presencia de América Latina, which was quite gorgeous.
Although I didn’t visit the southern part of the country, I was lucky enough to visit many other places. In the three months, I was in Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, San Pedro de Atacama, Constitiución, Chillán, Paine and Cobquecura. Most of the trips were work-related (for meetings, visits to the native conservation forests, and research projects like the Islote Lobería Cobquecura for sea lion monitoring).
 |
| Pato punk en Paine. Here I visited a firend's friend, JC, who lived together with other nine people in a rented house and they led a pretty chill life revolving around things like permaculture |
I had a touristy week-end in Santiago, where I took the 18 000 pesos Turistik bus and travelled around the city. I visited Cerro El Caracol, where you take a cable car to the top and then enjoy the polluted view of the city. I also went to El Museo de La Moda, which houses clothing and paraphernalia from the 80s, and a street whose name I forget but all the fancy clothing stores are located here. And Los Dominicos, an expensive craft market for tourists with chicken running around the dusty streets. On the Turistik bus I continuously saw throughout the day a group of four ladies on their forties that tried to behave like Sex and The City.
 |
| Santiago City from Cerro El Caracol |
 |
| Metro Station in Santiago |
VIÑA AND VALPO
I went to Viña and Valparaiso another one of my week-ends in Santiago and had an unsettling trip with a gory, low-budget film that was just repulsive. No one seemed to mind this terrible choice of film for a bus, but I had to ask them to turn it off and get rid of the sound of breaking bones and knives. It was a rainy day in Valpo and Viña, and at the bus central I signed up for a 15 000 pesos tour of the two places. We went to the house of Pablo Neruda, La Sebastiana, and I was impressed by the amazing view of the city and the port, the pastel colours of the houses, and the weird feeling of walking among ghosts. I met two Colombians on the tour, which also made it fun, and we had Telepizza (pronounces Telepisa, obviously) at Reñaca after having visited the place where the Viña del Mar International Song Festival takes place. I had never heard of this (should be ashamed), but they told me it's very famous and promising new talents perform here before becoming famous, like Shakira did.
 | |
| Reñaca beach |
CHILLÁN
With Carolina I visited Quinchamali, a small town by Chillán that could be considered a street, characterized by their black pottery (turns black when fired with soot) with white decorations. The three-legged chanchito, a three-legged piggy bank, is pretty characteristic. Needless to say, I was fascinated! First of all I love pottery, and second of all they get the clay from their own backyards! This is a really ancient tradition and women have been doing this type of greda negra for generations, selling it on their front porches and going to crafts markets with their pottery. They have a special room in the house where they fire the pieces at different temperatures and with the various techniques to turn the bright red pieces a polished black colour. She also showed us a room piled up to the ceiling with clay pieces, I had never seen so many in my life. A box of stuff was 20 000, so I think it was a good deal, but the best part was the feeling of buying really authentic stuff. When we were looking at the fresh clay, I immediately thought of my soils class and my soils teacher back at UBC, as she always got mad when people called soil "dirt". Well, this soil was definitely NOT dirt!
Chillán was also very nice, with a spacious and well-organized market where I got nuts and dried figs. They have a famous mural in Escuela México of the Mexican muralista David Alfaro Siqueiros. I didn’t see that one, unfortunately, but did go see the González Camarena mural at the Casa del Arte of the Universidad de Concepción, Presencia de América Latina, which was quite gorgeous.
 |
| Greda negra de Quinchamali |
 |
| Presencia de América Latina at the Universidad de Concepción |
Last week in Santiago
July 20th, 2011
My last week in Santiago was a lot of fun! Everything about Santiago (where I worked, lived, people I hung out with) was very different to Concepción. Hehe for instance, I find that I was way more productive in my El Golf cubicle than in the office in Cocepción. I stayed working late many nights to finish the project, and Carolina visited Santiago one day. We went to the bar The Clinic and I had the best wine I’ve ever tried called borgoña (wine + sugar + strawberries, very yummy). With Carola things couldn’t have been better. We worked together really hard, and she’s an admirable person with a fantastic sense of humour so we got along just great!
Going to the desert alone = amazing last week in Santiago
This is because I met a bunch of people with which I hung out this week back in Santiago. With Tom, the French Sandboarder, and Paige, the Harvard Vancouverite, we had sushi, watched the Argentina-Uruguay football match, went to The Clinic (hmm do we see a pattern here), and then went dancing to a bar called Constitución. It was really fun and they didn’t know each other before this, I was the connecting point and I met both of them in San Pedro.
At the disco Constitución, we started in the centre, with a good amount of dancing space. As the night progressed we were surrounded and cornered by an army of kissing couples holding lit cigarettes while making out. We were encircled, with the couples surrounding us and pushing us around, dancing between us too. Some cigarette burns, annoyed looks and firm positioning later, we regained our territory.
The last night I went out with Andrea and her boyfriend Felipe to Gran Central, where we got a waiter that was socially awkward, he wouldn’t look at us in the eyes. I must say socially awkward people are exhausting.
The following day I ran around looking for exchange houses to get my chilean pesos from my salary changed into dollars. Of course I had waited for the last day to get presents, so I went to Santa Lucía market and bought alpaca sweaters and other presents. That day, I also heard about Amy Winehouse's death while I was eating rice and writing 22 postcards (yes, my hand did hurt after so much writing. And yes, they were all different.) I then spent my last few hours in Santiago packing my bags with my Spanish friends, Nuri and Xabi, which I met in San Pedro too! It was so great to form meaningful connections with really cool people :)
My last week in Santiago was a lot of fun! Everything about Santiago (where I worked, lived, people I hung out with) was very different to Concepción. Hehe for instance, I find that I was way more productive in my El Golf cubicle than in the office in Cocepción. I stayed working late many nights to finish the project, and Carolina visited Santiago one day. We went to the bar The Clinic and I had the best wine I’ve ever tried called borgoña (wine + sugar + strawberries, very yummy). With Carola things couldn’t have been better. We worked together really hard, and she’s an admirable person with a fantastic sense of humour so we got along just great!
Going to the desert alone = amazing last week in Santiago
This is because I met a bunch of people with which I hung out this week back in Santiago. With Tom, the French Sandboarder, and Paige, the Harvard Vancouverite, we had sushi, watched the Argentina-Uruguay football match, went to The Clinic (hmm do we see a pattern here), and then went dancing to a bar called Constitución. It was really fun and they didn’t know each other before this, I was the connecting point and I met both of them in San Pedro.
At the disco Constitución, we started in the centre, with a good amount of dancing space. As the night progressed we were surrounded and cornered by an army of kissing couples holding lit cigarettes while making out. We were encircled, with the couples surrounding us and pushing us around, dancing between us too. Some cigarette burns, annoyed looks and firm positioning later, we regained our territory.
The last night I went out with Andrea and her boyfriend Felipe to Gran Central, where we got a waiter that was socially awkward, he wouldn’t look at us in the eyes. I must say socially awkward people are exhausting.
The following day I ran around looking for exchange houses to get my chilean pesos from my salary changed into dollars. Of course I had waited for the last day to get presents, so I went to Santa Lucía market and bought alpaca sweaters and other presents. That day, I also heard about Amy Winehouse's death while I was eating rice and writing 22 postcards (yes, my hand did hurt after so much writing. And yes, they were all different.) I then spent my last few hours in Santiago packing my bags with my Spanish friends, Nuri and Xabi, which I met in San Pedro too! It was so great to form meaningful connections with really cool people :)
Chilean suitors - they're everywhere!
I had a couple funny incidents with Chilean guys. I had heard from co-workers that Chileans where supposed to be shy (at least compared to seductive Argentinean neighbors), but apparently not.
When I was in Conce for the first time and didn’t know anyone, I went to a classical music concert. Instead of sitting next to someone my age, I had to go sit next to this 45-year-old guy – we’ll call him Peter Pettigrew due to his uncanny resemblance – with whom I engaged in conversation. He was nice and worked for the same company I did and I guess he mistook my normal friendliness for something else because he started emailing the work email the following morning asking to meet up again. With really weird emails. And a lot of dot dot dots, like if he was sighing while writing about music and the coincidences in life… Hmmm. Well, after some carefully-crafted emails from my part and then ignoring his emails altogether Peter got the message and stopped.
After that, I was in Santiago eating at a restaurant, minding my own business without paying attention to anything but the food, when someone taps my shoulder. I turn and this short guy hands me a flower (a rose maybe?) made with a wrinkled and greasy paper napkin – it had leaves and everything! He also gave me a second wrinkled napkin with his email (one of those emails you wouldn’t use with your employer). I stood there with the two pieces of napkin in my hands and a stunned expression on my face of WTF, and he says “Un regalo para ti… a present” (so he thought I spoke English), and then left immediately, looking at the floor all the time. It was very brave of him to have done that, to be honest!!
From these two examples came tons of joke and other funny stories of the sort that happened to Carolina and me.
When I was in Conce for the first time and didn’t know anyone, I went to a classical music concert. Instead of sitting next to someone my age, I had to go sit next to this 45-year-old guy – we’ll call him Peter Pettigrew due to his uncanny resemblance – with whom I engaged in conversation. He was nice and worked for the same company I did and I guess he mistook my normal friendliness for something else because he started emailing the work email the following morning asking to meet up again. With really weird emails. And a lot of dot dot dots, like if he was sighing while writing about music and the coincidences in life… Hmmm. Well, after some carefully-crafted emails from my part and then ignoring his emails altogether Peter got the message and stopped.
After that, I was in Santiago eating at a restaurant, minding my own business without paying attention to anything but the food, when someone taps my shoulder. I turn and this short guy hands me a flower (a rose maybe?) made with a wrinkled and greasy paper napkin – it had leaves and everything! He also gave me a second wrinkled napkin with his email (one of those emails you wouldn’t use with your employer). I stood there with the two pieces of napkin in my hands and a stunned expression on my face of WTF, and he says “Un regalo para ti… a present” (so he thought I spoke English), and then left immediately, looking at the floor all the time. It was very brave of him to have done that, to be honest!!
From these two examples came tons of joke and other funny stories of the sort that happened to Carolina and me.
Cachai?? Sipo!
July 15th, 2011
My last month in Conce, as us locals refer to it (haha), was great!! I was staying at yet another apart hotel (Aurelio, which came after LaFayette, Germania, Dreams, and before Eurotel), going to some fun classes at the gym and meeting people. It’s so funny how networks and connections form, how friendships unravel thanks to mutual acquaintances and coincidences. The friends I made were usually friends of friends. Or I just met them randomly, like this one guy I met at a supermarket (he turned out to be a douche in the end). For example, Edgardo was Andrea’s acquaintance, which in turn was Valentina’s (my roomie in The Van) friend from a one-month camp in Brazil four years ago.
Some things I took note of this last month:
- One of the best things I got from Chile was WWW.CUEVANA.TV. I truly feel like I found a treasure!! Caro my sister thought the same when I showed it to her. And I have no idea why people in Mexico or Canada do not know about this. It’s an incredible website where you basically download a plugin for your web browser and you’re good to go: you can have access to thousands of movies and TV series, all with great quality and no time limits. Could wasting time get any easier?
Also, I became obsessed with a movie, Mr Nobody. It's a mash-up of science fiction, parallel realities and futuristic drama, all with a fantastic soundtrack. Definitely in my Top 10.
- Going to a casino as a poor student CAN be fun if a) you have a lot of luck, b) know what you’re doing so that you get all your money back and leave with either the same amount or more money, or c) find a partner to spend all night walking and running around the casino while the other friends are having fun at the DJs concert which you couldn’t afford. The night we went there, Oliver (the cutest and most amazing guy in Chile) and I stayed roaming around the casino till 5ish am waiting for the others to come out. It’s impressive how some people were making big bucks playing with those machines (but we have no indication of how much money they had lost). When I’m 21 I’m going to Vegas with Talis!
- Pisco sour, the delicious drink I mentioned before, may contain egg whites! Ewww. This version of the recipe uses eggs for consistency, but after witnessing the preparation I felt I was drinking a protein shake…
- Plan ahead when you’re thinking of going to the beach. So yeah, I will be going to the beach in a week, and it’s too late to go on a diet NOW. So I will look like a cow in bikini
- Good-bye parties and gatherings are really wonderful. And writing good-bye notes and letters is something basic; I cannot leave a place without writing everyone a note. I had a couple good-bye events with different people, and at the office I had two. We had a hot chocolate and pastries good-bye breakfast, and we also went to dance to a Tex Mex restaurant called Tijuana. We had Mexican food and I must say dancing with my co-workers till 3 am was something we should have done more often.
My last month in Conce, as us locals refer to it (haha), was great!! I was staying at yet another apart hotel (Aurelio, which came after LaFayette, Germania, Dreams, and before Eurotel), going to some fun classes at the gym and meeting people. It’s so funny how networks and connections form, how friendships unravel thanks to mutual acquaintances and coincidences. The friends I made were usually friends of friends. Or I just met them randomly, like this one guy I met at a supermarket (he turned out to be a douche in the end). For example, Edgardo was Andrea’s acquaintance, which in turn was Valentina’s (my roomie in The Van) friend from a one-month camp in Brazil four years ago.
Some things I took note of this last month:
- One of the best things I got from Chile was WWW.CUEVANA.TV. I truly feel like I found a treasure!! Caro my sister thought the same when I showed it to her. And I have no idea why people in Mexico or Canada do not know about this. It’s an incredible website where you basically download a plugin for your web browser and you’re good to go: you can have access to thousands of movies and TV series, all with great quality and no time limits. Could wasting time get any easier?
Also, I became obsessed with a movie, Mr Nobody. It's a mash-up of science fiction, parallel realities and futuristic drama, all with a fantastic soundtrack. Definitely in my Top 10.
- Going to a casino as a poor student CAN be fun if a) you have a lot of luck, b) know what you’re doing so that you get all your money back and leave with either the same amount or more money, or c) find a partner to spend all night walking and running around the casino while the other friends are having fun at the DJs concert which you couldn’t afford. The night we went there, Oliver (the cutest and most amazing guy in Chile) and I stayed roaming around the casino till 5ish am waiting for the others to come out. It’s impressive how some people were making big bucks playing with those machines (but we have no indication of how much money they had lost). When I’m 21 I’m going to Vegas with Talis!
- Pisco sour, the delicious drink I mentioned before, may contain egg whites! Ewww. This version of the recipe uses eggs for consistency, but after witnessing the preparation I felt I was drinking a protein shake…
- Plan ahead when you’re thinking of going to the beach. So yeah, I will be going to the beach in a week, and it’s too late to go on a diet NOW. So I will look like a cow in bikini
- Good-bye parties and gatherings are really wonderful. And writing good-bye notes and letters is something basic; I cannot leave a place without writing everyone a note. I had a couple good-bye events with different people, and at the office I had two. We had a hot chocolate and pastries good-bye breakfast, and we also went to dance to a Tex Mex restaurant called Tijuana. We had Mexican food and I must say dancing with my co-workers till 3 am was something we should have done more often.
 |
| View of la desembocadura del Biobío, the widest river in Chile. I went with Carola the last week in Conce. |
Thursday, June 30, 2011
The San Pedro de Atacama Experience - The Four Day Edition Special!
[ADRIANITO: Volé de Santiago al aereopuerto de Calama, en donde fui recogida por una caravana de beduinos nómadas. Tenían el campamento cerca del aereopuerto, entre unas dunas rodeadas de palmeras. Como aquí en el Hemisferio Sur el sol está en el norte, nos resguardabamos del sol ardiente en la sombra del sur de la duna. Estaban abasteciendo las reservas de comida en la ciudad, pues salíamos esa misma tarde para El Oasis de Los Camellos, que se encontraba a 100 km de distancia. Iba a ser una larga travesía a pie. Me cambié de ropa en la tienda de las mujeres, y me asignaron una compañera por el fin de semana, Sahida, que tenía mi edad. Dejé todo lo que llevaba y me puse a ayudar a empacar las pertenencias de los que serían, por los próximos días, mi familia. Al final no salimos ese día, pues en el desierto se desató una tormenta de arena de las que no se veían en años. Pasamos una noche intranquila, y en la mañana pudimos apreciar los estragos que el viento había ocasionado en el campamento. Rishan, el padre de Sahida, nos pidió que atendieramos a los camellos. Fuimos a cepillarlos y a darles de comer, para que estuvieran presentables para el viaje hacia el oasis. Antes de comenzar la ruta fuimos a recoger unos cuantos cocos de los cocoteros para tener agua y comida para el camino. FIN]
I just came back from an awesome awesome week-end! I had monday 27th off for San Pedro y San Pablo and I asked for friday 24th, so I had a good amount of time to go to San Pedro de Atacama. AND I discovered how to create slideshows, which automatically put the copyright watermark on all the pictures. And some pictures are upside down. If you can't see the slideshows below just go to the very bottom of the page to access the albums.
DAY 1: Departure day
I flew from Concepción to Santiago at 11pm, got there an hour later. And then waited seven hours in the airport for my morning flight. Yep, SEVEN hours... I couldn't even sleep, it was too cold and there was this commercial going on and on on TV, I wanted to smash all of the televisions with a rock or something... My ticket for Conce-Santiago-Calama and back was 157.000 pesos. I could have saved tons by taking the night bus to Santiago, which would have been smarter cause I would have been able to sleep.
DAY 2: Arrival day
My flight left Santiago at 7am and we got to Calama at 9am. I had ordered an airport transfer to San Pedro, so a bunch of people from different flights were put in a van. We drove for an hour and a half. The scenery was beautiful. Most of the ride was barren land, with not a single plant or animal visible in the distance. Mountains had sharp edges which contrasted with the soft pastel colours. We crossed the Salar de Atacama, the third largest in the world (the first two are Oyuni in Bolivia and Salt Lake in th US). I sat next to a girl who turned out to be from Vancouver so we became friends and we talked all the way. The van dropped all the passengers off at the different hostels. It turns out every single house in San Pedro is either a hostel, a tourist agency, or a craft shop.
My hostel, El Anexo (La Casa de Esteban) was a couple mintues away by foot from the main plaza, which was great because you felt surrounded by nature and a bit less of a tourist. The road outside was a dirt road, and you had to cross a wooden gate that brought you to a dirt walkway surrounded by trees and hammocks, and the trail led you to the hostel.
In the slideshow you can see bits and pieces of the hostel. It was so pretty! The whole hostel was made with adobe, and the roof was made with some kind of hay. So after walking the dirt road, you got to the entrance of the main patio, the hang-out spot. Everyone always gathered here, either around the fire of the oven at night or around the rock table to enjoy the sun during the day. The adobe oven was where this french guy made french baguette every morning starting at 4 am. The reception was a roof connected to the kitchen. Under the roof there was a large wood table and a smaller table with speakers that were always playing chill music and a laptop we could use for internet. The main building had an internal patio faced by all the doors, which were all different colours. We had two shared bathrooms too, and they were always clean. I was supposed to get a double room with shared bathroom for 16.000 a night, but then I became friends with this really nice girl that was living at the hostel indefinitely so we decided to share, which was a great experience. I miss having a roommate! I know because it felt awesome when we introduced to each other's friends "This is my roommate"! So in summary, I payed 8.000 pesos for each night.
After leaving my stuff, I went with Paige (that's the girl that goes to Harvard I met on the transfer bus) to explore San Pedro and to register for an afternoon tour. We had a delicious meal at an adobe restaurant called Las Estacas (everything is made with adobe) for 6.000 which is not super cheap but not that expensive compared to some restaurants in Santiago. So we didn't feel that ripped off. Tours were on average 10.000 pesos each (some, like Valle de la Luna, were 7.000 and some were 15.000) We took a tour that included the following:
LAGUNA CEJAR - this is a lagoon five km south of San Pedro, formed by the accumulation of precipitated salts in an old saline lake. This type of high elevation wetland is known as a bofedal. Two lagoons, Cejar and Piedras, were surrounded by an amazing view of the Andes and especially the Licancabur, Lascar and Corona volcanoes. The lagoons' edges had sharp salt crystals on their shores, so we were not supposed to walk there barefoot. But we did. And we swam in Laguna Cejar. The water was the bluest BLUE because of the lithium in it (apparently), but the coolest thing however was the fact that the salt concentrations were so high that you could float effortlessly. It was amazing to be floating in a vertical position without needing to move your feet. The other really weird thing was that the top of the water was freezing, but the bottom was very warm with hot currents, so our legs and feet were doing great. Isn't it supposed to be the other way round?
OJOS DEL SALADO - these are two artificial holes in the ground created when someone was looking for oil. The cool thing here is the reflection, which is so clear it's like a mirror. Everyone was taking pictures of the reflections from across the opposite side. You could also jump in the water, but everyone was too cold from the salty lagoon.
LAGUNA TEBINQUINCHE - This was a huge lake which was very shallow, so you could walk to the middle of it barefoot and the water would only cover your feet. The bottom of the lagoon was pure salt. And the shores had a combination of salt and hard soil shaped like starfish. I felt what I can assume walking on starfish feels like! We watched the sunset here, with the volcanoes and the pink sky, and then we drank pisco sour, which is only the best drink I've every tried!
We went back to San Pedro and we had dinner with Paige's friends.
DAY 3: Being a tourist day
In the morning I had to wake up at 6 am to go on the tour for Laguna Chaxa. We drove through Tambio, were some llamas were crossing the street. Here there are four so-called 'American camels' : the llama and alpaca are domestic, and the vicuña and guanaco are wild. We saw the llamas eating tamarugo trees, which were apparently brought from India.
TOCONAO - Here I got a hat that made me look even more like a tourist. This town has 500 people living in it and most of them work in lithium mining. Here there is a lithium mine that produces 60% of the world's lithium, imagine that! What is lithium used for? Medicines, batteries, TV, tons of things. Houses were not built with adobe, but with volcanic licarite.
LAGUNA CHAXA - were the falmingos are! We walked through the Salar the Atacama to get to the Lagoon. There are no plants and very few mammals, like a tiny mouse you can see sometimes. But the conditions are right for there to be tons of unicellular algae and microscopic invertebrates, which are the flamingos' food! It was crazy walking through this desert of salt. The flamingos were kind of far and I wished I had a pair of binoculars with me. But we learnt many cool facts! For examples, flamingos live 25 years and they have a baby every year. Also, they are pink because the shrimp they eat is pink. And when they are young they have tons of partners, but then when they get older they stay with their partner for life.
SOCAIRE - a very depressing little town where the most interesting thing was the church. But everything looked abandoned and under construction. Later that day I was trying to remember which town Socaire was, and Nuri my friend from Spain was like "mmm that town where you took off your pants". She meant where I changed from my jeans to shorts, because it was too hot. But that's the most memorable thing, the town where I took off my pants...
A super magical thing happened here too! So there is this point in the highway where "the Earth's magnetic field is reversed" and magnetic objects are moved uphill. So we were driving down a slope, the driver stopped the van, turned off the motor, and slowly but surely the van started rolling UPHILL! And it started gaining speed and up we went. I have no idea how that happened. The magnetic field thing sounds like bullshit so it must have been an optical illusion, where we were really going downhill but it looked like uphill?? I was amazed.
Later that day:
VALLEY OF DEATH: This place is like being in a live geography classroom! Miss David would love it! You could see the enormous mineral sculptures formed by wind and rain all around you. The geological origin comes from an emerged lake, where old layers of sediment and rock where pushed and folded by the movement of the Earth's crust, lifting the Andes Mountain Range. You could see a huge part of the Salar de Atacama (Atacama Salt Plains) from here, amazing white brilliance made up of salt hills, gypsum and clay. The tour guide got us out of the van, collected everyone's cameras, and lined us up in a good spot which apparently everyone wanted, and he systematically took pictures of us. He was a photo machine. This place is called Valle de la Muerte because one of the following (every tour guide told a different story) a) nothing grows here, b) someone died here, c) this french guy Gustavo La Paige wanted to say Valle de MARTE but thanks to his french pronunciation the meaning got lost in translation, or d) cattle died here when people were crossing to Argentina.
VALLEY OF THE MOON: To get here we stopped at the Salt Caves. The guy that was taking us was so clumsy he tripped with his own feet. He was like, "Ok, so we're going inside the cave now. It's dark, so we will divide the flashlights and you follow someone with a light. We will cross an area where we will need to crawl to get through. Follow me, be VERY careful with your head and back.. Ok, let's go!" and he would turn and smack his face against a rock he hadn't seen.
After watching him fall and stuff, we went to a huge sand dune which we climbed in order to see the sunset from here. Then, more pisco sour!
That night I had a great time with these two French couples and a Spanish couple I met on the tours! We went to have dinner and a couple of drinks, and I was impressed by how well I could communicate in French. I had absolutely no problem speaking and I understood everything, even when they were speaking super fast. I really want to continue with that language now!!
DAY 4: The busiest day
GEYSERS EL TATIO: The geysers had been closed for a couple days because the road was blocked with snow. But on Sunday they finally opened! I woke up at 3am to go see them. They picked me up at 4am and we got there at 6am. Ok, so the geysers were my favourite thing!!! I had never seen geothermal activity like that. It was a huge field with water vapour everywhere. And it's only like that in the morning. As the day becomes warmer, the activity stops. It was not that cold but my hands were FREEZING because I was taking pictures. For breakfast we had bread, coffee and hard boiled eggs, cooked in a geyser in a plastic bag! We also went to some hot springs were we could swim if we wanted to. Of course I wanted to. So the brave ones took off their clothes and jumped in the warm water, which is heated thanks to magmatic activity in the Earth's crust. There were parts where boiling water came out of the sand, so you had to be careful. I burnt my foot because I got too close to a boiling point. But it felt so good to be in that water! I thought it would be like an Indian bath with everyone stuck in the hot springs, but most people didn't feel like swimming.
GENERAL SIGHTSEEING: We crossed so many different landscapes that day. We saw vicuña, which apparently produce 350 grams of wool every three years, which is why a vicuña sweater costs like tons of money. People used to kill them before, but now CONAF goes after them, puts them to sleep, shears them and gives the wool to the locals. Another thing we saw from the bus were huge dark spots in the middle of the desert. It turns out vicuñas poop in the same spot all the time, something that has to do with finding their way back. So they have bathrooms! We also went to a lake and saw tons of birds. There's the Tagua, which walks really awkwardly and that's were the Chilean expression for when you're drunk "caminar como Tagua" comes from.
MACHUCA: A town formed by less than twenty houses. No more than ten people live here at any given time. People stop here to a) go to the bathroom, b) have a look at the church, and c) try llama meat. This one is the most popular. Hordes of tourists were lined up to try brochetas y empanadas de llama. It felt weird invading this lost little town in the middle of nowhere, not knowing anything about those eight people that live there. The houses had wooden crosses on the roofs, a sign of religious syncretism.
CACTUS VALLEY: A valley filled with Equinopsis atacamensis cacti. They were HUGE! They can live like 300 years and they can be up to 12 metres tall. The ones we saw were like 8 metres tall. I didn't go all the way to the cacti because I stayed with Patricio the tour guide putting conical shaped rocks on top of other rocks. He called it verticalidad geologica. So we would get any rock with an elongated shape and a sharp tip, and balance it perfectly on top of any large boulder. It was just amazing. He would put one on top of the other too! Another thing that was like magic. VALE: Man is that weird, or what?!!?
SANDBOARD: In the afternoon I went sandboarding! It was so much fun. The only problem was that, unlike snowboard, you had to walk up the dune and there was no lift. The instructor sucked, he was like, "Yeah so you can do it however feels good for you..." Hmm thanks. They made videos of us, but I didn't go pick mine up because I left the following day.
STAR TOUR: At night I went with some other French friends to the see the stars. The stars in the desert are just amazing, in case you didn't know. We were driven to the middle of the desert to an observatory this French astronomer started eight years ago. We were taught about the constellations, and the astronomers would point at the sky with green laser that would reach all the way up! We then looked into telescopes to look at Saturn and specific stars. Really fun. We then had hot chocolare (well, ours was warm because we stayed out too much looking through the telescope). There's this awesome iPhone app that shows you the constellations when you point your phone to the sky. You should get it, it's called Pocket Universe.
I just came back from an awesome awesome week-end! I had monday 27th off for San Pedro y San Pablo and I asked for friday 24th, so I had a good amount of time to go to San Pedro de Atacama. AND I discovered how to create slideshows, which automatically put the copyright watermark on all the pictures. And some pictures are upside down. If you can't see the slideshows below just go to the very bottom of the page to access the albums.
DAY 1: Departure day
I flew from Concepción to Santiago at 11pm, got there an hour later. And then waited seven hours in the airport for my morning flight. Yep, SEVEN hours... I couldn't even sleep, it was too cold and there was this commercial going on and on on TV, I wanted to smash all of the televisions with a rock or something... My ticket for Conce-Santiago-Calama and back was 157.000 pesos. I could have saved tons by taking the night bus to Santiago, which would have been smarter cause I would have been able to sleep.
DAY 2: Arrival day
My flight left Santiago at 7am and we got to Calama at 9am. I had ordered an airport transfer to San Pedro, so a bunch of people from different flights were put in a van. We drove for an hour and a half. The scenery was beautiful. Most of the ride was barren land, with not a single plant or animal visible in the distance. Mountains had sharp edges which contrasted with the soft pastel colours. We crossed the Salar de Atacama, the third largest in the world (the first two are Oyuni in Bolivia and Salt Lake in th US). I sat next to a girl who turned out to be from Vancouver so we became friends and we talked all the way. The van dropped all the passengers off at the different hostels. It turns out every single house in San Pedro is either a hostel, a tourist agency, or a craft shop.
My hostel, El Anexo (La Casa de Esteban) was a couple mintues away by foot from the main plaza, which was great because you felt surrounded by nature and a bit less of a tourist. The road outside was a dirt road, and you had to cross a wooden gate that brought you to a dirt walkway surrounded by trees and hammocks, and the trail led you to the hostel.
In the slideshow you can see bits and pieces of the hostel. It was so pretty! The whole hostel was made with adobe, and the roof was made with some kind of hay. So after walking the dirt road, you got to the entrance of the main patio, the hang-out spot. Everyone always gathered here, either around the fire of the oven at night or around the rock table to enjoy the sun during the day. The adobe oven was where this french guy made french baguette every morning starting at 4 am. The reception was a roof connected to the kitchen. Under the roof there was a large wood table and a smaller table with speakers that were always playing chill music and a laptop we could use for internet. The main building had an internal patio faced by all the doors, which were all different colours. We had two shared bathrooms too, and they were always clean. I was supposed to get a double room with shared bathroom for 16.000 a night, but then I became friends with this really nice girl that was living at the hostel indefinitely so we decided to share, which was a great experience. I miss having a roommate! I know because it felt awesome when we introduced to each other's friends "This is my roommate"! So in summary, I payed 8.000 pesos for each night.
After leaving my stuff, I went with Paige (that's the girl that goes to Harvard I met on the transfer bus) to explore San Pedro and to register for an afternoon tour. We had a delicious meal at an adobe restaurant called Las Estacas (everything is made with adobe) for 6.000 which is not super cheap but not that expensive compared to some restaurants in Santiago. So we didn't feel that ripped off. Tours were on average 10.000 pesos each (some, like Valle de la Luna, were 7.000 and some were 15.000) We took a tour that included the following:
LAGUNA CEJAR - this is a lagoon five km south of San Pedro, formed by the accumulation of precipitated salts in an old saline lake. This type of high elevation wetland is known as a bofedal. Two lagoons, Cejar and Piedras, were surrounded by an amazing view of the Andes and especially the Licancabur, Lascar and Corona volcanoes. The lagoons' edges had sharp salt crystals on their shores, so we were not supposed to walk there barefoot. But we did. And we swam in Laguna Cejar. The water was the bluest BLUE because of the lithium in it (apparently), but the coolest thing however was the fact that the salt concentrations were so high that you could float effortlessly. It was amazing to be floating in a vertical position without needing to move your feet. The other really weird thing was that the top of the water was freezing, but the bottom was very warm with hot currents, so our legs and feet were doing great. Isn't it supposed to be the other way round?
OJOS DEL SALADO - these are two artificial holes in the ground created when someone was looking for oil. The cool thing here is the reflection, which is so clear it's like a mirror. Everyone was taking pictures of the reflections from across the opposite side. You could also jump in the water, but everyone was too cold from the salty lagoon.
LAGUNA TEBINQUINCHE - This was a huge lake which was very shallow, so you could walk to the middle of it barefoot and the water would only cover your feet. The bottom of the lagoon was pure salt. And the shores had a combination of salt and hard soil shaped like starfish. I felt what I can assume walking on starfish feels like! We watched the sunset here, with the volcanoes and the pink sky, and then we drank pisco sour, which is only the best drink I've every tried!
We went back to San Pedro and we had dinner with Paige's friends.
DAY 3: Being a tourist day
In the morning I had to wake up at 6 am to go on the tour for Laguna Chaxa. We drove through Tambio, were some llamas were crossing the street. Here there are four so-called 'American camels' : the llama and alpaca are domestic, and the vicuña and guanaco are wild. We saw the llamas eating tamarugo trees, which were apparently brought from India.
TOCONAO - Here I got a hat that made me look even more like a tourist. This town has 500 people living in it and most of them work in lithium mining. Here there is a lithium mine that produces 60% of the world's lithium, imagine that! What is lithium used for? Medicines, batteries, TV, tons of things. Houses were not built with adobe, but with volcanic licarite.
LAGUNA CHAXA - were the falmingos are! We walked through the Salar the Atacama to get to the Lagoon. There are no plants and very few mammals, like a tiny mouse you can see sometimes. But the conditions are right for there to be tons of unicellular algae and microscopic invertebrates, which are the flamingos' food! It was crazy walking through this desert of salt. The flamingos were kind of far and I wished I had a pair of binoculars with me. But we learnt many cool facts! For examples, flamingos live 25 years and they have a baby every year. Also, they are pink because the shrimp they eat is pink. And when they are young they have tons of partners, but then when they get older they stay with their partner for life.
SOCAIRE - a very depressing little town where the most interesting thing was the church. But everything looked abandoned and under construction. Later that day I was trying to remember which town Socaire was, and Nuri my friend from Spain was like "mmm that town where you took off your pants". She meant where I changed from my jeans to shorts, because it was too hot. But that's the most memorable thing, the town where I took off my pants...
A super magical thing happened here too! So there is this point in the highway where "the Earth's magnetic field is reversed" and magnetic objects are moved uphill. So we were driving down a slope, the driver stopped the van, turned off the motor, and slowly but surely the van started rolling UPHILL! And it started gaining speed and up we went. I have no idea how that happened. The magnetic field thing sounds like bullshit so it must have been an optical illusion, where we were really going downhill but it looked like uphill?? I was amazed.
Later that day:
VALLEY OF DEATH: This place is like being in a live geography classroom! Miss David would love it! You could see the enormous mineral sculptures formed by wind and rain all around you. The geological origin comes from an emerged lake, where old layers of sediment and rock where pushed and folded by the movement of the Earth's crust, lifting the Andes Mountain Range. You could see a huge part of the Salar de Atacama (Atacama Salt Plains) from here, amazing white brilliance made up of salt hills, gypsum and clay. The tour guide got us out of the van, collected everyone's cameras, and lined us up in a good spot which apparently everyone wanted, and he systematically took pictures of us. He was a photo machine. This place is called Valle de la Muerte because one of the following (every tour guide told a different story) a) nothing grows here, b) someone died here, c) this french guy Gustavo La Paige wanted to say Valle de MARTE but thanks to his french pronunciation the meaning got lost in translation, or d) cattle died here when people were crossing to Argentina.
VALLEY OF THE MOON: To get here we stopped at the Salt Caves. The guy that was taking us was so clumsy he tripped with his own feet. He was like, "Ok, so we're going inside the cave now. It's dark, so we will divide the flashlights and you follow someone with a light. We will cross an area where we will need to crawl to get through. Follow me, be VERY careful with your head and back.. Ok, let's go!" and he would turn and smack his face against a rock he hadn't seen.
After watching him fall and stuff, we went to a huge sand dune which we climbed in order to see the sunset from here. Then, more pisco sour!
That night I had a great time with these two French couples and a Spanish couple I met on the tours! We went to have dinner and a couple of drinks, and I was impressed by how well I could communicate in French. I had absolutely no problem speaking and I understood everything, even when they were speaking super fast. I really want to continue with that language now!!
DAY 4: The busiest day
GEYSERS EL TATIO: The geysers had been closed for a couple days because the road was blocked with snow. But on Sunday they finally opened! I woke up at 3am to go see them. They picked me up at 4am and we got there at 6am. Ok, so the geysers were my favourite thing!!! I had never seen geothermal activity like that. It was a huge field with water vapour everywhere. And it's only like that in the morning. As the day becomes warmer, the activity stops. It was not that cold but my hands were FREEZING because I was taking pictures. For breakfast we had bread, coffee and hard boiled eggs, cooked in a geyser in a plastic bag! We also went to some hot springs were we could swim if we wanted to. Of course I wanted to. So the brave ones took off their clothes and jumped in the warm water, which is heated thanks to magmatic activity in the Earth's crust. There were parts where boiling water came out of the sand, so you had to be careful. I burnt my foot because I got too close to a boiling point. But it felt so good to be in that water! I thought it would be like an Indian bath with everyone stuck in the hot springs, but most people didn't feel like swimming.
GENERAL SIGHTSEEING: We crossed so many different landscapes that day. We saw vicuña, which apparently produce 350 grams of wool every three years, which is why a vicuña sweater costs like tons of money. People used to kill them before, but now CONAF goes after them, puts them to sleep, shears them and gives the wool to the locals. Another thing we saw from the bus were huge dark spots in the middle of the desert. It turns out vicuñas poop in the same spot all the time, something that has to do with finding their way back. So they have bathrooms! We also went to a lake and saw tons of birds. There's the Tagua, which walks really awkwardly and that's were the Chilean expression for when you're drunk "caminar como Tagua" comes from.
MACHUCA: A town formed by less than twenty houses. No more than ten people live here at any given time. People stop here to a) go to the bathroom, b) have a look at the church, and c) try llama meat. This one is the most popular. Hordes of tourists were lined up to try brochetas y empanadas de llama. It felt weird invading this lost little town in the middle of nowhere, not knowing anything about those eight people that live there. The houses had wooden crosses on the roofs, a sign of religious syncretism.
CACTUS VALLEY: A valley filled with Equinopsis atacamensis cacti. They were HUGE! They can live like 300 years and they can be up to 12 metres tall. The ones we saw were like 8 metres tall. I didn't go all the way to the cacti because I stayed with Patricio the tour guide putting conical shaped rocks on top of other rocks. He called it verticalidad geologica. So we would get any rock with an elongated shape and a sharp tip, and balance it perfectly on top of any large boulder. It was just amazing. He would put one on top of the other too! Another thing that was like magic. VALE: Man is that weird, or what?!!?
SANDBOARD: In the afternoon I went sandboarding! It was so much fun. The only problem was that, unlike snowboard, you had to walk up the dune and there was no lift. The instructor sucked, he was like, "Yeah so you can do it however feels good for you..." Hmm thanks. They made videos of us, but I didn't go pick mine up because I left the following day.
STAR TOUR: At night I went with some other French friends to the see the stars. The stars in the desert are just amazing, in case you didn't know. We were driven to the middle of the desert to an observatory this French astronomer started eight years ago. We were taught about the constellations, and the astronomers would point at the sky with green laser that would reach all the way up! We then looked into telescopes to look at Saturn and specific stars. Really fun. We then had hot chocolare (well, ours was warm because we stayed out too much looking through the telescope). There's this awesome iPhone app that shows you the constellations when you point your phone to the sky. You should get it, it's called Pocket Universe.
 |
| El Anexo (La Casa de Esteban) |
 |
| DAY 2 |
 |
| DAY 3 |
 |
| DAY 4 |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)