Thursday, July 21st
9:30 a.m. And so begins the trip. I took a bus from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama. 24 hour trip. Surprisingly, not as bad as you may think.
Friday, July 22nd
I arrived in SP around 9am. The town was completely dead. I found my hostel, dropped off my stuff, and walked around the town- that didn't take me long. SP is pretty small - centered around the Plaza de Armas (like every other Chilean town). There are a couple main streets. The streets are lined with tourist agencies and restaurants. It is definitely a tourist town. The lazy town finally came alive around noon or 1- many people, well, tourists (mostly European), in the street. Jami and Amy arrived around 1 from Antofagasta.
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| streets of San Pedro |
Around 3:30, Amy and I left to take a tour of Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and the surrounding areas. We stayed and watched the sunset over the mountains- gorgeous. We arrived back around 7:30...and went to bed pretty early. As hot as it is during the day, it gets pretty cold in the desert at night.
Saturday, July 23rd
Jami and I had a lazy morning. In the afternoon, we walked around some more and went to all the little souvenir/tourist stores. We set up our tours for the last two days of our stay in SP, made some dinner, and went to bed pretty early because.....
Sunday, July 24th
We got up at 3:30 am (yes, really) to leave for a tour at 4 am to go to the Geysers of Tatio. So we got up and were waiting outside of the hostel with some others to be picked up by our tour agency. Everyone else was picked up except us....Jami and I were pretty livid- Why hadn't they picked us up yet? So at 5am (after an hour of waiting), we decided to go back to bed. Not 10 or 15 minutes after getting back into bed, did I hear a van stop in front of our hostel and then a few seconds later a man (our tour guide) was calling our names. The van had some mechanical problems, thus being late picking us up. So we hopped out of bed and went on our way. The bumpy and curvy bus ride was about and hour and half/two hours up into the mountains to the geysers. We were up about 4,300 meters (about 14,100 feet) and it was prettyyyy cold (-8 degrees Celsius...about 18 degrees). Our tour guide said that day it was like a heat wave because the previous few days it had gotten down to -22 degrees Celsius (about -8 degrees Fahrenheit...eek). We walked around a bit to see the geysers...some big and some small with the water boiling and a lot of steam coming out. We ate breakfast outside (with the milk for the coffee heated up by a geyser) and went not too far away to a natural terma (thermal pool). I stuck in my feet and hands- which was good because the feeling in my toes came back. After the terma, we started our descent down the mountains- we stopped at a little pueblo called Machuca. The church was build in 1750 and apparently only 7 natives live there. It's become quite a little tourist attraction (somewhat unfortunately). They were selling food (with empanadas with llama meat in them!). We also stopped in Cactus Valley and at a river. Overall, pretty gorgeous and worth waking up so early.
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| Tatio geysers |
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| Vicuña |
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| town of Machuca |
Monday, July 25th
In the morning, we just relaxed, walked around a bit, and layed out in the sun for a while. Around 3pm, I left to go to Laguna Cejar and other surrounding areas while Jami went to Valle de la Luna. It was a bumpy ride there but well worth it. The lake is out in the middle of the desert and formed from the bottom up. The laguna has a very high salt content, so you float effortlessly in it. I went in (even though the water was really cold) and floated around for a little bit. After that lake, we drove a little further to what is called Los Ojos del Salar which are two holes next to each other with salt water (hence the name). We went to another lake to watch the sunset and drink a pisco sour. The sunset was absolutely gorgeous of course and the ride back was great for stargazing.
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| Laguna Cejar |
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| floating |
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| Los Ojos del Salar |
Tuesday, July 26th
Tuesday was just a traveling day. We went to Calama first, waited around for a while and then we were on our way to Iquique. The day can be described in the following words: bread and cheese, dead iPod, bad cookies, chunky vomit, dog eating it, late bus, and an annoying sound on the bus.
We eventually make it to our hostel in Iquique around 11pm (best hostel I've ever stayed in), and I was happy to fall asleep listeing and smelling the ocean.
Wednesday, July 27th
We got up early, took advantage of the free breakfast, hot showers and internet at the hostel and walked to and around the downtown area and the main plaza, Plaza Prat. We went to a museum called El Museo Regional. There was a lot of artifacts from the indigenous tribes in the area, the oldest mummies every found (dating from 5000-3000 B.C.), and things from when the salitreras were thriving (in the 19th century). Pretty cool. We went to Mall Zofri- a huge mall that is duty free. It has everything you could imagine (literally everything). We spent a few hours wandering around the maze. We were pretty beat, so the rest of the night was spent relaxing with a glass of wine.
Iquique is a really cool city, located on the coast pretty close to the Peruvian border. The architecture is awesome- a lot of buildings are wooden and were built in the 1800s when the city was a major port. The beaches are also gorgeous.
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| El Museo Regional |
Thursday, July 28th
We started our day early again. We went to the center and caught a van that was headed to Pica so we could to to Humberstone. Humberstone is a ghost town about 30 miles east of Iquique. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was a thriving nitrate town. In the old houses, artifacts from that time period are displayed. You can go into the church, the school, the theater, markets, etc. with the original items still remaining. I had never seen anything like it. Pictures will do better than words.
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| liquor store |
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| church |
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| pool |
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| theatre |
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| shoes |
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| school |
After returning, I walked around the center and along the beach again. Jami and I watched the sunset on the beach. And then we were on to the next leg of our trip....
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| El Teatro Municipal |
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| El Torre Reloj |
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| Playa Cavancha |
Friday, July 29th
We took an overnight bus to Copiapó. Copiapó was interesting....the day can be described with the following events:
1. The bus stopping and us getting out for our luggage to be checked.
2. Carabineros only talking to us on the bus....asking where we are from and why we're here.
3. Gypsies and their children.
4. A gypsy reading my palm and telling me that I am angry and jealous.
5. The museum we wanted to go to "closed indefinitely."
6. Jami almost getting real coffee.
7. Man singing next to us on the bench.
8. Watching 1o year olds skateboard.
9. Man coming up to us originally to talk about Jesus, then talked about other stuff for 20 minutes and then asked us out for a beer.
10. Church was closed- tried to break in.
11. Random chess tournament.
12. Empanada place- under construction.
13. Cute Chinese woman.
14. Weirest mall I've ever seen.
15. Empanada place found.
Saturday, July 30th
We left early from Copiapó and arrived in La Serena in the late afternoon. the dueña of the hostel, Maria, was the sweetest old lady. We told her we are from the United Sates and she raved about the U.S. being her favorite country. She told us her father worked in San Francisco in the early 60s. Her dad told her to always be grateful to Americans she met because it was because of her dad's work in the U.S. that she had clothes, toys, etc. Her first doll was even from the U.S. :)
Sunday, July 31st
When the motivation finally came to out of bed, I explored the twon and went to the beach. La Serena, from what I could tell, is a pretty middle class city. Nice areas, cool architecture- a very pretty town.
Monday, August 1st
Early in the morning we went to a nearby town, Vicuña in the Valle de Elqui. We went to a museum of Gabriela Mistral, a Chilean poet, diplomat and educator who was the first Latin American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Vicuña. After we went to the Capel factory (a brand of my new favorite alcohol- pisco). We didn't have time to take a tour, but still enjoyed it nonetheless. We got back to La Serena, got our things ready to go, went to the bus station only to find out that all the buses going to Santiago had been delayed due to snow further North. So we waited 8 hours for the next available bus....and finally arrived back home to Santiago early the next morning.
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| Capel factory |
Overall, a wonderful trip. I love getting to know the country I'm living in!
