Pablo Neruda and Atacama Desert
Trip Start
Jul 13, 2005
1
12
32
Trip End
Mar 02, 2006
San Pedro de Atacama,
Chile
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Once again coming to you from Vina del Mar, Chile! I hope that this letter finds you all happy healthy and busy! Things here are super great ( you will find me using 'super' more and more- its the number one adjective here) and its been a really really busy week and a half. So...hang on its a long one!
The week itself was pretty regular. Flute lessons went really well this weekend because i found some time to practice more than usual, and got some compliments! I also found out that my flute teacher is the daughter of my sexuality and ethics professor. Very strange but also shows just how small a town this place can be sometimes!
I continue to enjoy my art classes. Drawing was with the same nude model again, haha, we did similar drawing tecniques again. My stuff continues to be horrid. Painting went well, although this week we were only allowed to work with blue and reds (negating yellow) Interesting works resulted!
Wednesday we analyzed Alturas de Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda in class. It was pretty cool and i promised myself to bring the poems along when we visit macchu picchu in a few months and read them along the way and up top. Neruda to me really represents humanity well. Sometimes he writes stuff that really makes me wonder, and kind of bothers me, while other time his stuff is great! Sometimes he writes really great profound stuff, and then he writes stuff like 'ode to the socks'
At night we went to la piedra feliz for the first time in like a month to hear jazz again. Went with some chileans and some of the usual piedra feliz gringo crowd. In a side note, I got a wonderful email from Tom Evans, my jazz professor at Kalamazoo, letting me know that they had just purchased a new baritone saxophone. If you know me, you know that thats a big deal. Hopefully i will be playing a great insturment in the spring that doesnt require rubberbands to make it play well!
Thursday I had class really early, then we went to the LAN Chile airline office. Sarah, Jessa, and I bought tickets to Punta Arenas (consulting the maps--its the very tip of south america for nov 26 - dec 8) Im excited, we are gonna camp, and hang out there. Should be a spectacular time and i got a great deal on the flight through a student discount!
Immediately following this purchase we got in a van with a small group from the program and Cristian one of the assistants, and drove south to Isla Negra -one of Pablo Neruda's houses. We toured the house and found it to be somewhat similar to his others. He liked to collect lots of odds and ends and specifically the bow decorations from sail boats. The house overlooks the Pacific and he is buried there looking out to sea, quite the spot. After the tour we walked to the beach for a bit then went up to the town and found a little hole in the wall place to get some fried fish. Oh my goodness it was a great place! I ate a fish bigger than my plate, and the server was an awesome guy.
After class on Thursday night I immediately went to the bus station and hopped on a bus to Santiago. (yes, I had been lugging my pack around all day) In terminal Alameda I met up with the other travelers to San Pedro de Atacama (en el Norte Grande). Our group consisted of Me, Lauren Bloom, Becca McMurdie (i.e. the backpack S. America trio) and then their friends who are studying in Santiago Lauren and Christina. We boarded our Tur-Bus for the 24 hour journey to the driest place on earth. On the way we pass through lots and lots of dry, dry countryside and are afforded some views of el 'desierto florecido' (flowering desert) which is where an abnormal amount of precipitation causes hidden desert flower seeds to burst into bloom painting the desert in color. This phenomena is so rare (about once every 7-8 years and for only a few weeks) that many of the species of flowers and plants have yet to be discovered or studied. The part that we saw was mostly purple flowers, and tiny at that, but looking over long distances made it seem like the desert was covered in a purple carpet.
Becca made friends with the bus helper guy Pablo and he was real nice to us (the last hour leg of the trip we were the only ones on the bus) We arrived in San Pedro at 10 pm Friday, tired and nasty feeling but excited! The dryness in the air was intense!
San Pedro is an oasis town, very small in size situated in the Atacama dessert, the driest in the world. The town itself is a haven for backpackers and tourists looking to explore the desert. As such, there are tons of tour companies, souvenir shops, really cool restaurants, and really cool people from all over the place. We met up with some other K kids that had already been there for a day, Rachel and Jordan. We went out to eat at this really interesting place called Cafe Adobe. It had like an outdoor patio with a big bonfire in the middle and the waiters were really cool/ weird and the girls in the group had no trouble quickly making buddies with them and finding a way to go to their party later that night. I wasn't feeling so great and so I went to bed (as did a couple others - 24 hours on a bus can do that to ya).
The next morning we got up and roamed the streets looking to see what was around and what we could do for entertainment! We ended up chartering a bunch of tours as a package to see the area around San Pedro for a small chunk of change. Normally I am wary of the whole organized tour thing, but this is a dessert we are talking about, and you really can't get there without renting a jeep and knowing your way around the desert, or taking a tour ... or at least that's how I justified it!
We met up with some guys that a few people in the group met the night before and rented bikes to go out to the Incan ruins that were nearby overlooking the oasis. My bike had some issues but we made it to the ruins without much of a problem. We climbed up them getting detailed info from the Chileans, who knew tons about the area, not to mention they were just cool company. The Incans had built the fort to protect the area from attack and it was rather typical looking, with the terrace on the hill, but this wasn't a community for living, it was for defense so not quite like Machu Picchu or something, but really cool. The view was also pretty neat of the Andes from the top. To give us energy and help with altitude sickness we all chewed on Coca leaves.....hmm I don't think I noticed any effects, but maybe that's the point. Anyway ancient remedies are always fun (and in this case illegal in the US!)
For a quick lunch we went to a cheap hole in the wall outside the more touristy area to where Leo (a Chilean DJ) had a friend who was a cook. We all had Humitos which is like a corn dish cooked in a corn husk. It was good and cheap. We had to be back to the tour office for a tour that started at 3. We were runnin' on Chilean time, and found out the hard way that this tour was running on American time. The part of the group who wasn't doing the biking were already at the office and waiting, but the guide decided they were leaving. Rachel called us and told us to run to the office. As we were running the bus was pulling away, but luckily they stopped so we were able to barely make it!
We went first to a view of Valle de la Luna. (Valley of the Moon) It was so weird. Hard to believe we were still on earth. Absolutely zero life, and the landscape was incredible (hopefully I'll have my pictures up soon) At the view another tour van was there and in that group were some friends from Valpo that I forgot were coming to San Pedro, and so it was a bit shocking to run into them in this place!
The tour continued with a walk down the old road from Calama to San Pedro that descended down through Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) It had this name because animals in the caravans would die in this part. It too was a weird landscape that could have been mars. The wind coming through the pass was absolutely incredible, and it was whipping sand around so hard that it really stung and I had to be careful with my contacts. There were huge sand dunes that we climbed halfway, and we generally had a fun walk in this crazy place. Continuing we got to the salt caverns, which was a cave carved out of the salt by an underground stream that used to run through the valley. Interesting enough, this place used to get a lot more water many, many years ago, so there are signs of water erosion in the area, but there has never been recorded precipitation in some parts of the desert. The salt caves were cool, and it was handy that I brought along my flashlight. We also stopped and listened to the sound that temperature changes make on all the salt crystals, kind of a popping sound, strange.
Finally, as sunset approached we went to the great sand dune to watch the sunset, it was work to climb it to get to a good spot to view the sunset. As the sun disappeared we were treated to a show of colors. The Andes were glowing red, then the sky and the few clouds went many a shade of yellow, orange, red, and purple. It was a full day, and at night we cooked ourselves food in the hostel (it had a kitchen) We ran into my friends from Valpo again, and ended up walking out into the desert to look at the stars with them. The night sky may have been the clearest I have ever seen it. There is just zero moisture in the sky to mess with the stars, and a couple of the girls saw their first shooting stars. Good times!
We went to bed not too late, as we had to deal with the time change and the fact that we had a tour starting at 8 the next morning (after the time change 7am .... in a side note Chile is now 2 hours ahead of Eastern Time) The tour van was pretty late getting to our hostel so some of us went hunting for the van, but found out it was just late. So clearly the schedule was playing games with us! The tour turned out to be great though, we went to the Salar de Atacama, a huge salt lake (2nd largest in S. America) and saw flamencos and other birds out in the middle of the most inhospitable looking place. The salt and other minerals come from the Andes and then as the water gets to the Salar it becomes trapped between mountain ranges and dries up. It's eerie.
Later in the day we took the van up much higher in the Andes to the Altiplano to see some lakes formed by rainwater trapped rainwater and snowmelt. They were really beautiful and extremely high up (4,100 meters) We hung out there amongst the snow and got really tired up having to climb up out of the lake basin (at altitude!)
After a few snowballs, and a long van ride we stopped for a delicious lunch in a remote Altiplano village and then continued on and stopped in another oasis town, which had a deep canyon and a network of canals in the village. There was so much green, it didn't seem possible we were still in the middle of the Atacama. We returned to San Pedro in the evening and walked around a little after we invited our tour guide to dinner at the hostel. We watched another spectacular sunset from a little ways outside of the town and relaxed a little. We made spaghetti and garlic bread for our guests and us, (though I wasn't able to help out that much since we had about 7 willing helpers, haha) The food turned out really yummy and Sergio, our tour guide, seemed to enjoy himself, and he brought some delicious wine.
The next morning we were scheduled to go see the geysers of el Tatio leaving at 4 in the morning. Christina and I decided we weren't going to go to sleep at all, so we went to Cafe Adobe and found our waiter friends while we had a drink and chatted. After the restaurant closed we followed the Chileans to a house party just outside of San Pedro where there was dancing and people watching and a good time was had. We left in time to go catch the bus to el Tatio (which also was like an hour late because they messed up our hotel location to pick us up) The drive was like 2.5 hours over the roughest desert road ever, and I was happy when we got there without blowing a tire or anything. We arrived cranky and cold!
The temperature at the geysers was -5 degrees centigrade and windy (I don't feel like looking up the exact conversion and wind-chill). The geysers are not the type we were expecting (we were thinking more like old faithful) These were mostly steam geysers and there were over 40 of them in this area steaming away in the early morning (the sun had yet to rise) As the sun rose the landscape changed, it got warmer, and our moods thawed. We were served a small breakfast and enjoyed watching the geyser show (even if we did comment several times that they just looked like steam from the streets of a city back home in the states).
After a while we went over to the hot springs heated by the geothermal activity. San Pedro is located in the area of the earth with the highest concentration of volcanoes- of which only a few are active (and only one was actually steaming.) Sergio had also told us a mythic story about some of the volcanoes surrounding San Pedro and their love triangle! There was also remnants of a geothermal electric project at el Tatio from the Allende years which got my interest!
The girls had brought their bathing suits, but I didn't bring mine to San Pedro, so I just used my boxers. The water was so warm compared to the cold air and it was really relaxing to hang out in the pool. However, when we had to get out after about a half an hour, it was freezing cold, and it kind of took my breath away until I got dry and redressed. Overall though the swim was refreshing and it was my first time with a hot spring experience.
On the long van ride back we stopped along the way to see vicuņas (rare member of the llama family) and a small village before getting back to San Pedro. After taking showers at the hostel, we went to the museum of Atacamenan culture. (supposedly one of the best museums in S. America) They had some really interesting stuff, including some incredibly well preserved mummies, and the history of the Incan conquest and then the Spanish conquest. After the museum we went shopping, ok well the girls went shopping and I walked along with them, haha.
We had a lunch at a hole in the wall place, but it turned out to be pretty good. We then got our stuff and went to where we got off the bus to catch it back to Santiago and watch the sunset in the process. Luckily though we were talking to a local and he asked us what we were doing and when we responded that we were going back to Santiago, he told us that the bus was leaving from the other side of the city (the bus was scheduled to leave at 7:30 and it was 7:30) We half ran with our packs and everything and we able to make the bus, which was leaving on Chilean time.
The next 24 hours passed slowly (although I slept like a baby on the bus ...its going to be my new strategy to not sleep the night before a long bus ride!) There was a nice Chilean family sitting across from us, with a really cute little girl that wanted to borrow Becca's ipod the whole way, and was fascinated by our English and stuff. We finally arrived back into Santiago (in rush hour, we became cranky sitting in Santiago not far from the station after 23 hours on the open road) I bid goodbye to the Santiago kids and boarded a bus for Viņa. My family was happy to see me and excited to hear a few preliminary stories before I show them my pictures and tell them more. I took a well deserved shower and unpacked before starting to think about the rest of the week. Good to be back home, away from home, away from home, away from home? It's too confusing to even think about these days!
I hope that you have stuck through this email, it's hard to express all the exciting things we did and saw into this simple email. We'll just have to catch up in person to really express the experiences! I hope that you are all doing well back in moist areas of the world (It feels good on the skin to have moisture in the air here as well, and have the ocean breeze again!) Write me emails if you have time and I will as always try to respond quickly! My pictures should be added in the next few days hopefully, so check back when you can! (pictures are worth a thousand words right?)
Ok take care everyone, I miss you lots and good luck to all around the world!!
Abrazos,
