May 17th, 2009
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We arrived at the bus terminal in La Serena. Tom wanted to do some camping and over breakfast I found a hostel who’s description mentioned that if one asked nicely they may let you camp out on their lawn. Tom decided to follow me along to check it out, especially since it was only a few blocks from the bus terminal.
As soon as we walked in we felt right at home, even though at this point we had yet to meet Maria. One of her sons showed us around. They didn’t have room for camping at the moment but the price was just right that Tom decided to stay and share a room, plus there was free WiFi, a luxury that we had not had for a while. So after being on a night bus we putzed around the net for a few hours before heading out to wander around town. The town was pretty nice but there was not much going on, especially it being the off season. We found a place to have lunch. I had a Churazco Gigante, it wasn’t that big, and Tom had a Churazco Normal and a Completo, which is a hot dog in a giant bun with tomatoes, palta (avacado), ketchup, and mayo. Pretty tasty…sometimes.
We wondered around some more for a little bit, and went back to the hostel, where we finally got to meet Maria. Maria, has to be the nicest women in the world. She will go completly out of her way to help you out. We asked about getting clothe washed and she told us that she would do it for us, but that she doesn’t have a dryer and that our clothe may not dry in the current weather, so she told us where to go and get a great deal. So we did that and also stopped at the Jumbo, which for those that live in Oregon is basically the Chilean version of Fred Meyer. We bought food for dinner and headed back to the hostel. It seemed like everyone there that night had the same idea. We had to wait for the kitchen, but it was great to hang out with the other guests and eat our dinner’s together. We all felt so much at home there. After dinner a few of us shared a few bottles of wine with one of Maria’s sons until the wee hours. We discussed varying topics from local affairs, to music, to politics, and philosophy. It was a lot of fun.
Tom and I had an agreement that whoever made the meal the other one would do the dishes, so the next morning after I made breakfast I nudged Tom to go do the dishes because I noticed Maria starting to clean and I didn’t want her to clean our dishes. Sure enough when Tom went in to do the dishes she basically kicked him out of the kitchen, telling him to get lost. He refused and she elbowed him out. It was hysterical.
We left that afternoon for Piso Elqui.
chile, south americca 09, travel
May 15th, 2009
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We arrived in Antafogasta in early evening, and found the cheapest hostel mentioned in my guidebook. We got pretty much what we paid for. Saggy beds and worn out vintage furniture that if someone tried selling them in the states as vintage they could probably make a couple of hundred bucks for each piece.
We walked around for a little while, but we were both exhauseted from the night before. We had some really bad pizza and headed to bed early.
The next morning we tried to leave our bags at the hostel, but they wouldn’t watch them. The bus company that we were traveling with later that day wouldn’t watch them either because it was Sunday. We ended up going to their competitor and giving them some money to watch our bags. We then walked around most of the day and found a nice beach where we had empanadas and were accosted by some drunk Chiliean dude.
There was not much else there to write home about, even though it is Chile’s second largest city. I guess just coming from San Pedro de Atacama might have impacted our reaction a little. That evening we took a bus to La Serena.
antafogasta, chile, south americca 09, travel
May 14th, 2009
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I arrived in Calama at 5am. The bus terminal wasn´t open yet and it was freaking cold. I had to wait an hour before the terminal would open. I opened my pack and put on warmer clothe. I then noticed a man drinking coffee and aksed him where he got it from. He told me it was around the corner. So around the corner I went and got myself a coffee. Went back to the terminal and waited for it to open. Around 6 someone showed up and opened the terminal. I went in and bought my ticket for San Pedro de Atacama, just two more hours of waiting. I was so glad that one of the guys I was hagning out with the night before had given me abook, so I just sat there and read ¨Chart Throb¨ for two hours. Kind of silly novel, but entertaining.
I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, and right away I liked it better than Iquique. It was a pretty small town with dirt roads and tons of restaurants. Kind of touristy town, but it felt better to me. While leaving the terminal I started walking through town with a French couple, who were also looking for a hostel. We came across a place that was serving breakfast so we stopped in. I had a delicious ham and cheese omlette, and then we went on our seperate ways.
I found a pretty cheap hostel with clean rooms and a courtyard with hammocks to hangout in. I threw my pack in the room and then decided to just walk around town which didn´t take long since it was so small. I signed up for a sunset tour of the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) and headed back to the hostel for a nap on one of the hammocks. The Valley of the Luna was pretty. We hiked throught this valley of huge salt crystals that looked like rocks, but one could hear them popping. Pretty cool. We then climbed a dune to watch the sunset. The sunset was pretty nice, but the really pretty thing was the way the Andes changed colors as the sun set. Absolutely goregous.
The next day I didn´t do much of anything, just kind of bummed around town and the hostel. It was great. I just love do nothing days. The next morning I was picked up at 4 am for a sunrise visit to see some geysers and take a dip in some thermal baths. The geysers were pretty cool, but they were not as big as I was hoping. It was also freezing that morning. I have not felt my toes be so cold in a very long time. It was there and then that I pretty much decided to not go down to Pategonia this trip. Its going to be too cold to enjoy and I don´t have the right gear with me. The thermal baths were not hot. At all. Only one little corner where the hot water was trickling out of was warm. It was kind of funny we were all huddeld in that one corner.
I arrived back at the hostel around noon and my friend Tom was there having breakfast with some other guys that he had met earlier. That night we all went to an astronomy tour, that was simply amazing. It was done by a French man and his wife. They are very passionate about what they do and enjoy sharing their love of the stars with others. They were also very entertaining, and hospitable. They served us host chocolate, which was amazing. He also took pictures of the moon with our cameras through one of the telescopes. Really cool. If you are ever in San Pedro de Atacama I highly recommend this tour.
The next day the four of us went out to the salt flats to swim in one of the salt lakes. The lake was so salty that it was impossible to sink, and it was a little of a challenge to keep one´s feet below you. They just wanted to float. It was pretty fun.
In San Pedro de Atacama it is illegal to have live music and/or dance after dark, but that doesn´t stop the locals. We heard about this ¨illegal¨bar that had both. It was a lot of fun. The music was Andean music and really good. We had orderd food and stacked our plates when we were done. One of the waiters came by, and told us that we couldn´t do that. It had to look like we were eating if the police came in. We so wanted the police to come in and see what would happen. They never did. We ended up being invited to a house of one of the locals, where we drank, danced, and sang some more. I believe it was around 6am when we finally headed back to the hostel. What a great night.
The next morning Tom and I headed out of town to Antofagasta on an afternoon bus.
chile, san pedro de atacama, south americca 09, travel
May 12th, 2009
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I left Cuzco on Saturday at 2pm and arrived in Tacna around 9 in the morning. Took a collectivio, with four other guys that were on the same bus, across the border to Arica, Chile. There was a Chilean, a Dutchmen, and another American. A funny thing happened to us two American’s as we were leaving Peru. The guard wanted to do a “thorough check” for some reason. I got a little nervous when he brought me into a separate room that had an examination table with stirrups. What the hell I thought? But he just ended up padding me down and went through my day pack. Meanwhile my big pack, which had all the drugs (just kidding mom) was still in the collectivio. I didn’t mention that. He was intrigued by my money belt. He asked me what it was, like he had never seen one before. So I showed him and everything was good. Entering Chile was no sweat. Apparently the Peruvians don’t want their drugs leaving the country.
The collectivio dropped us off at the terminal and just like taxi drivers world wide he tried to rip us off. We had agreed on a price before we left Peru, and by the time we got to Chile it had gone up. We refused and payed what we had originally agreed upon. The four of us then had breakfast. At this point we had been traveling for close to 19 hours on a night bus with no real food. During breakfast I discovered that I was not the only one that didn’t know where he was going, includig the Chilean. We all just crossed the border and figured that we would figure it out once we got there.
I had heard that Iquique was nicer than Arica, so I decided to take the next bus out. While the others went on their own way.
I was a little surprised when I got off the bus and there were no taxi drivers hounding me. Usually when a gringo gets off a bus in South America he gets hit by either a barrage of taxi drivers, or “agents” from hostals, or both. Not here. I also noticed that the city was kind of dirty. I chalked that up to just the neighborhood that the terminal was located in. I was soon to find out that I was wrong. It took me about ten minutes to figure out that all the taxis in this town are collectivios, meaning that they take more than one passenger at a time. I kept waiting for an empty one. Once I figured that out, it took me another ten minutes to find one that was going to the area where my hostal was.
The hostal was actually kind of nice for being a Hostel International. Usually the HI hostals are kind of crappy. It turned out that there really isn’t much to do in Iquique so at night most of the residents were just hanging out at the hostel and drinking. Not a bad choice for me. I decided that night that I would move on the next day, and take a night bus to San Pero de Atacamas.
The next day I got up, had breakfast and headed out to the bus agencies to find a bus. I then spent the day walking around the city and the beach. Oh I forgot to mention that Iquique is an up and coming beach town, with the keywords being, “up and coming”. While walking around I ran into Tom, who I had done a couple of hikes with in Huaraz, Peru. So we just hung out the rest of the day, had some beers, dinner and then I went off to catch my bus.
chile iquique, south americca 09, travel
