ushuaia/el calafate

(note: the more interesting part of this post is the second half, "el calafate", if you don't feel like reading the blow-by-blow)

04.12.2009 ushuaia

at the "museo del presidio", all about the history of the penal colony that was started at ushuaia, we got our passports stamped again with dorky stamps. there was also a lot about the naval history of ushuaia, and lots of model boats. it was one of the more informative museums we have been to. then again, it was in argentina, who knows, maybe museums are better there...

the whole time i had been trying to figure out a way to get to the legendary cape horn, but the only way is a cruise ship that costs a few thousand dollars. we discovered that the glaciar trip we wanted to do in El Calafate did not include actually walking on the glaciar, just around it to the scenic outlooks, so we decided to spring for the more expensive "mini-trekking" instead. we booked our 5 am bus to el calafate and got an unpleasant surprise, it turned out that we would not arrive around 9 pm, as expected and discussed on the previous day, but not until 24:00. however, we had already booked and paid for the glaciar trekking for 7:45 the next morning, so we didn't have a choice, meaning we would be very tired on our glaciar walk.

after getting up at 4, we went to the bus station. the weather was really bad, very windy, cold and rainy. i tried to sleep in the bus as much as i could but that didn't really work. once again we took the ferry across the magellan strait, this time we were even luckier with seeing dolphins. we had to cross the argentine-chilean border twice, because there is no road out of argentine tierra del fuego without crossing the chilean part. we changed busses in Rio Grande, and had to catch a connecting bus in Rio Gallegos. i guess we were fast at the borders, because we were two hours early, meaning we spent 4 hours waiting in the bus station in rio gallegos. we didn't arrive in El Calafate until 1:00 am. of course there were no taxis at that hour, so we walked to our hostel and crashed.

06. 12. el calafate

we got up at 7, breakfast was a banana and a yoghurt drink. then we went to get our bus to the glaciar. first we drove around in the bus picking up people from their fancy hotels. i dozed through most of that. driving into the national park los glaciares offered some spectacular views, but i was too tired to keep my eyes open.

we had great luck with the weather, it was warm and sunny, during lunch we lay around in tank tops soaking up sun while the glaciar was a just a few hundred meters away.

according to what they told us, the glaciar is formed in the "campo de hielo sur" the third-largest expanse of ice in the world, after antarctica and the arctic. there are still parts of the campo de hielo sur which have never been seen by human eyes. there are strong winds travelling from west to east around the lower south part of the globe, where there is not much land, except patagonia, picking up moisture over the oceans. however, the wind gets stuck on the andean mountain chain, where it has to rise up in order to cross the mountains. all the precipitation is left in the campo de hielo sur, which has one of the highest rates of precipitation in the world. therefore the eastern side of the andes, the patagonian steppe, is very windy but quite dry as there is no precipitation left.

so the campo de hielo is like a giant bowl filling up with precipitation in the form of snow, which gets compacted and compacted until it is ice. when the bowl cannot hold anymore it spills out in the form of rivers of ice, glaciars. there are dozens of glaciars in the area. several of them end in lakes.

the perito moreno is one of the few glaciars that are not retreating, in fact it advances up to 60 meters a year. the glaciars can be quite fast, not like the ones in europe, which are essentially frozen in place. the glaciar here enters a warmer climate, the lake or the rock underneath is warmer than the glaciar, so it sort of slides on a film of water. we walked on the side part of the glaciar, where it is stuck up against the rock, and more stable due to the friction. the middle part, in the middle of the lake, is the faster-moving part.

the front face ends in the lake argentino, where it melts or breaks off, occasionally damming the two arms of the lake until the pressure gets too great and the damming part of the glaciar basically explodes. the ice wall rises about 80 meters above the lake, but of course, two-thirds of its mass is actually underwater!

every once in a while, pieces of the glaciar face break off with this awesome loud crunching sound and fall into the water, then bob back as icebergs.

here are the photos from the perito moreno glaciar:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#37

christmas

okay,

so i guess i will interrupt my account of our travels to talk about our christmas.

here in the hogar things have been quite hectic, with last-minute christmas preparations. me and steffi kept going to the mall to print out pictures as presents, and made two big collages. one for each casa, of all the girls that live in each house.

on the 18th, there was a big official christmas party with all these people from the church, and everyone had to get all dressed up and formal. the older girls all got their hair done as a present from a hairdresser from the church, so me and steffi also went to the hair salon and got funky styles.

everyone was wearing really fancy gala-type dresses, which me and steffi were not really in to, and also, we don't have any such clothes. we were just going to wear skirts. but the girls were all preoccupied about what we were going to wear....the hairdresser lent them a bunch of dresses so they gave us two of them.

the dress i was forced to wear is very, um......pretty.....but then see for yourself...

here are the rest of the pictures from the christmas party:

http://chile.marahtyler.com/#38.0

there were several choirs that sang songs along the lines of "hey it's christmas, jesus was born". then there were canapes which we had prepared and also cookies and cake baked by our culinary arts student who just graduated.

there was a second christmas party, more informal, without outsiders, on the 22nd. that's when there were some presents for the girls, sent by a church in La Serena, in the north. the other presents from other churches did not arrive in time. that's when we gave our photo presents to everyone.

all the employees of the hogar (i'm 2nd from right)

on the 23rd all the girls left to spend the weekend with their families, or with people from church.

on christmas eve we had our third christmas celebration, dinner with the director and her husband and child, with whom we now share an apartment. there was turkey breast and salads, and we watched their really cute kid, javiera, unwrap her presents.

she also gave us presents, as a nice gesture. a coffee mug and a towel set, hahaha. :D



p.s- jessica, the girl who kept flipping out, was kicked out of her school and sent back to the hogar. she kept having breakdowns, getting violent, and refused to eat for 3 days. her school is a boardig school for the deaf, and is supposed to be the center of her life. the hogar is only supposed to be supporting the school, she comes here only on the weekends. apparently, the school sees that differently now. which sucks, they are the ones with pyschologists who speak sign language, but they send her here where no one can understand her properly except tia gaby who signs as well.

anyway, she was assessed by a psychologist, who said her development and understanding is very poor and she should be treated like an autistic child, not like a deaf-mute child with otherwise normal development...

she is now on strong medication, taking three times the dose that josselin was on, who is 18. jessica is 11. on the medication now, she is very pleasant and agreeable.

a 12-hour bus ride to ushuaia. through scenic tierra del fuego landscapes, along lago fagnano and through the garibaldi pass. also we crossed the strait of magellan on a ferry, where we got to see black-and-white "skunk dolphins" jumping alongside.
upon arrival at our hostal we were immediately greeted with lame jokes by a cute argentine with dreadlocks...he recommended a bar, which turned out to be an irish pub, ugh. i ordered pizza and beer and steffi ordered squid rings and a guinness and THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY GUINNESS! that's what you get for going to an irish pub at "the end of the world". so she got a "beagle" which is a beer made in ushuaia.
the next day we took a bus to the tierra del fuego national park to take a walk. there was a tiny post office there, where we got our passports stamped with a dorky "fin del mundo" stamp with penguins on it, thus filling an entire page of my passport!
our hike was totally amazing, through lichen-covered, pre-historic looking trees, along a lake. also, at times it was really really muddy. it reminded me of "the never-ending story" where atreyu's horse gets sucked into the mud. the first half of the hike we had good weather, then it started hailing and then raining. it rained for quite a while and we got pretty wet, and it was all foggy over the lake, but then suddenly it cleared up and got sunny again.we saw a bunch of wildlife, including the patagonian goose "caiquen", and also a calafate plant. they say if you eat the berries, you will return to patagonia. unfortunately, we didn't find out until after our hike what the plant looks like. and it didn't have any berries anyway.

also at some point i had read something about there being lots of "canela" trees in the park, which would be cinnamon. i thought that was a bit weird, but hey, it's tierra del fuego and everything looked weird there. so every once in a while we saw these fallen or cut trees which looked like they could be cinnamon, so i was stopping and tasting them but we never tasted anything cinnamony. then later i was reading some info and discovered that i had misread and there are actually "canelO" trees, "winter's bark". no cinnamon trees in the park. so we were just eating bits of random trees...lol

at the visitor center there i had one of the worst meals of my life, i wanted a soup to warm up and on the soup menu they had "escabeche de pollo', which they translated as "chicken in vinegar". i thought "gee, that sounds interesting" and ordered it. it turned out to be 2 cold pieces of chicken with a few vinegary veggies on top, and SWIMMING in fat. i did not finish it.
in town we went out to dinner and had "centolla", king crab. back at the hostal the argentines plied us with red wine and convinced us to come out to the irish pub again. it was totally packed with tourists and there was no place to sit. and still no guinness.

here are the fotos of ushuaia and tierra del fuego national park, hope you like pictures of trees: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#36.0

punta arenas

so we set off for our 2 weeks of vacation, flying to punta arenas.
the hostel we picked out is cute and small, a run-down house with a bunch of bedrooms and a nice atmosphere. there are tents with people camping in the yard. in the kitchen there is a crazy old stove that provides heat for the whole house.
we walked to the shore, which is the strait of magellan, so that we could stick our hands in and take photos. we are a bit disappointed that we can't enter the port to look at the big ships.we book a boat to the penguin island, isla magdalena, for the next day. and we have already noticed that there are germans everywhere here!
in the evening they fire up the grill at the hostel and make anticuchos (shish kebab) but i go to bed early. at the hostel there is this crazy polish guy who is planning on kayaking by himself to ushaia, through the magellan strait. he plans to do the trip in 3 months. previously, he hiked alone in the torres del paine national park in winter, during which most of the park is closed because impassable. he also hiked across the campo de hielo del sur (the third-largest ice field in the world after the arctic and antarctica) on skis, parts of which have never been visited by humans before because there is no reason to go there. his tent and his food as well as he himself were blown away in 200 km winds, but he continued hiking without food for 3 more days.
there was also a 48-year-old american lady with a bike that folds up and comes apart and fits in its own suitcase. when you are using the bike, the suitcase becomes a trailer for your luggage.
the next morning we got a van at 6:50, to get a boat to the isla magdalena, the penguin reserve. there we walked around the island for an hour, taking pictures of thousands of penguins. back on the boat, we were served coffee with a shot of pisco, and then we went to Isla Marta, where we saw a bunch of sea lions and cormorants from afar. there were huge waves on the way back, the boat was slamming up and down and a few people got sick. it was like an amusement park ride.
here are the photos from punta arenas:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#34.0

and here are the photos from isla magdalena, way more fotos of penguins than are really necessary:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#35.0

once some american lived on the island for a year as a thesis project to do a complete census of the population and counted almost 200,000.

oh, and the internet at the hogar is broken. the transformer for the router burned out or something. i am sitting in the mall next to a giant plastic christmas tree. they are playing "winter wonderland" and people are walking around in tee shirts and sandals.

back in civilization..

after 2 days hiking in the national park torres del paine. too tired to write, only posting so that my mom knows that i haven´t died of swine flu..

punta arenas

flew to punta arenas today, beginning 2 weeks of vacation.

the timing is bad since apparently on friday the tia of the casa azul was fired. so the kids are without a tia, tia betty will be filling in for the next two weeks and then they will hire a new tia for the casa. the kids are kind of freaked out, some of the newer arrivals have never had tia betty as a casa tia before. and now we are leaving too, they were confused and thought we were going forever. so it´s too bad that we are leaving them now without a familiar tia. but i guess firing the tia wasn´t planned much in advance.

anyway. it is cold here. and really windy, 35 knots today. and the weather changes quickly. it hailed twice today, and drizzled. and in between it was really sunny.

we dipped our hands in the strait of magellan...and tomorrow we are going to see a penguin colony!!


View Larger Map

jessica

on sunday night Jessica (11) also threw a huge tantrum. she was here in the office building watching tv in the dining room, which is actually completely forbidden....but everyone makes exceptions for her. she is the deaf/mute girl and its impossible to control her anyway, she basically does what she wants. since she goes to a boarding school during the week, she is only here on the weekends and somehow there is no way to punish her for not doing what she is supposed to. Her center of life is supposed to be her boarding school, and the hogar is just supposed to be a help to the school, but that has been changing, her center of life is the hogar now. partly because her sister is now here, i guess. also, because we've been taking sign courses, she can communicate better with the tias, she is a little bit less of an outsider.

anyway, at 9 pm Tia Flor came to turn off the tv and send her to bed, but she freaked out and locked herself into the Sala de Estudio. So Tia Flor had to get the keys from the director to unlock the room. Jessica then escaped and went outside, where she then wandered around in the pouring rain and tried to test whether she fits through the bars of the fence to escape.

It took 3 people to forceably drag her into the building, then she was kicking and screaming on the floor. She can't talk, but she can make sounds, when she crys she makes a weird moaning/howling sound. They couldn't really move her, so they just held her down on the floor, hoping that she would get tired out and calm down. After about half an hour I didn't hear her anymore, so I guess they had taken her back to the house.
But a few minute later, she was out front again, this time only in her socks, standing in the rain. Then she took off her socks and was running around barefoot. They called an ambulance and got 2 paramedics to take her inside again. They said that her symptoms were typical of a nervous breakdown and took her to the hospital. There they said that it's possible that she has schizophrenia, but didn't want to give her any drugs because of her age. In any case, they need to get her checked out, they have found a neurologist who speaks sign language. Obviously,, her treatment is going to be expensive and the Hogar will have to pay for it. Which is really bad timing because at the moment the Hogar is going through a financial crisis...more on that later.

Last week she was in such a good mood and really well behaved. She had just won a gold medal in some Special Olympics in Santiago, in running, and was super nice to everyone. Generally though, she is badly behaved. You can't yell at her because she can't hear, and if she wants to ignore you she just looks away, then you can't communicate with her at all anymore.

--------------------------
I recently fixed my email group after I had unknowingly broken it. So if you did not receive an email about this post, but wish that you had, send an email to the following address and you will be subscribed to my group:
marahinchile-subscribe[at]yahoogroups.com
replace the [at] with @ !

tantrums

Sometimes I have to do things that I don’t like. For example, a couple weeks ago the Tia was gone, accompanying Ceci to the hospital. I was trying to get all the younger ones bathed. I asked Camila (7) several times to get ready for her shower, but while I was looking for her towel, she put her pajamas on instead. I gave her a chance to take off her pajamas, but she wouldn’t do it, so I had to do it for her. Then she started crying, which eventually turned into a full-on flipout session as I pulled her up the stairs to the bathroom. She was refusing to get in the shower and even once she was in she kept shrieking and fighting with me and flailing her arms around. Carolina had to help me, holding her arms down so that I could shower her and wash her hair. Forceably showering crying little girls is not something I had in mind when I came here.

It happens every once in a while, sometimes she starts crying uncontrollably for really no reason at all and doesn’t calm down for a long time, sometimes hours. Usually at some point she starts screaming for her mother, which is so horrible to hear because her mother is never going to be there for her. Sometimes the older girls yell at her, "Shutup, stupid! Your mom is not here!" Something is going on with her, they were going to take her to a psychologist, but it’s gotten a lot better recently.

The other girls say that Linda (7) also has her tantrums, where she gets violent and starts scratching the tias. I have never seen her in that state though, so I guess she has gotten better as well.

Maria (9) has been acting weird lately, refusing to do her work in study hall. It’s as though she flips a switch. For no reason, she refuses to do anything, goes completely stiff, we can’t even move her because she grabs on to tables and chairs and refuses to let go. If we try to carry her out of the room she starts a crying fit and throws herself on the floor and makes a scene.

new post

Recently I decided to get out my summer shoes….pulled them out from the bottom of my closet and they were completely moldy. Nothing else in my closet is moldy, and I didn’t notice at all cuz the light down there is not too good. But there was no evidence of mold on the walls or anything. And my backpack was not moldy at all. Just the leather of my shoes. It was really gross and I've never seen anything like it. The photos don't do it justice.
It is pretty irritating, since it means I have to buy shoes now. The orange moccasins are irreplaceable and were a brand-new going-away present. The sandals I bought cheap in Pakistan. The Birkenstock were the best and most comfy, practical summer shoes, and expensive, but at least I can get them again back in Berlin. I don’t mind having to replace them so much because now I can buy them in the color that I actually wanted. :D





------------------------------------

We went to the theater to see some of our girls perform. All the special education schools of Temuco were present, each school had a short piece on stage. Three of our girls are in special ed, Jessica, who goes to the deaf/mute school, and Catalina and Cynthia. Jessica wasn’t performing, but Catalina and Cynthia were in a short “Flintstones” dance. Here are some photos:

Catalina is standing behind the wheelchair, she was "Betty" from the Flintstones. Cynthia is the white bird in the middle.

Cynthia and Catalina after the performance. They are both 13 years old. Cynthia has a growth problem, she is very small for her age. They don't know much about her condition, apparently her aunt had the same thing and died in her 30's.

my photo site is currently full, so i am not uploading fotos right now, i have to rent more webspace.

hogar

here are a few fotos from recent life in the hogar.

Once we went out to the grassy area by the mall to fly kites…the kites wouldn’t fly, probably because the building was blocking all the wind, but at least the kids had fun anyway, and got some much-needed exercise:

kites

There is an old ping-pong table which we got out of storage and bought some paddles for.

Also the Hogar had a big bazaar to get rid of some of the old clothes.

The other day we had a wellness afternoon where we invited some of the older girls up to our apartment and made peelings and masks with them, and cocktails from fruit juice.

I also posted some pictures out around town in Temuco, so you can get an idea of what it's like.

http://chile.marahtyler.com/#33.0

spendenstand

aktueller spendenstand ist 1489,46 Euro.

this means i'm only 310,54 Euro away from the goal of 1800,00!! if you would like to donate, see the sidebar for options, or send me an email.

and now i am going to plug my friends' photo pages again.

borko in south america: http://kontraband.tumblr.com/

and phil, in nepal: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philinjordan

seminar

i put the fotos from our seminar in santiago/viña del mar/valparaiso online:

http://chile.marahtyler.com/#28.0

and, remember that you can subscribe to my blog:

Send an email to the following address and you will be subscribed to my yahoo email group. You will receive an email when I update my blog: the email includes the entire post, pictures as well. So make sure you have enough space in your inbox.

marahinchile-subscribe[at]yahoogroups.com

replace the [at] with @ !

san martin

i´m in san martin de los andes in argentina for the weekend, renewing my visa.



View Untitled in a larger map

dieciochero

Chile's independance day celebration is September 18th, and it's a huge deal here.

we celebrated with a barbecue and games for the kids. also, there is a lot of cueca dancing going on, chile's national dance.

we were told that everyone had to dress up, so we made this huge effort to find outfits. and felt really stupid wearing them. and it turned out that only the little kids were wearing the dresses, none of the older girls dressed up....

photos at: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#30.0

the end

Breakfast for me is eggs and cheesy toast. I buy a Cosmo for the bus ride, and Steffi gets a newspaper. Yay, finally we are on a Chilean bus once again. Pure luxury! The trip to Santiago takes about 24 hours.

At the airport, we check in and chill in a café, drinking coffee and eating cheesecake. Eventually, it’s time for us to get moving, so we ask for the check. This takes about 20 minutes however, and now we’re really in a hurry to catch our flight. We stand in line for security. I am totally out of it after out bus ride, and not really paying attention. Steffi isn’t either, apparently. I don’t realize that we are in the wrong line until I finally make it to the window after about 15 minutes. The lady takes my passport, looks at my ticket, and tells me that I am in line for international flights, we need to be at domestic departures. Which is of course at the other end of the airport. We hurry across and go straight through security, luckily there is no line. When we arrive at the gate, the plane is still there, with the gangway attached. They begin retracting the gangway. The lady at the gate says we are too late, I can’t believe it. The plane is right there!

And that’s how we missed our flight. We aren’t the only ones: a family of 5 runs up and also want on. She says there is another flight in a couple of hours.

The plane begins rolling away.

She looks at our tickets and says “Steffi, Marah….I’m sorry. The next flight is not until tomorrow!” I really can’t believe it now, the family is pissed off too. I am tired and was so looking forward to being home this evening.

Now we will be spending the night in the airport, in our clothes and without luggage, as neither of us are prepared to shell out for another night in a hostel.

Of course, it turns out that we cannot change our ticket to another day because we booked the cheapest fare. And there are no more flights the same day. The only option left to us at the airport is to buy another flight back, which is not an option. We go back to the bus station and get on the next bus to Temuco. Another 9 hours on the bus…I call Viviana to let her know we will be late and arriving at 1 am.

When we go to pick up our bags (which made the flight) from the airport the next day, Steffi’s backpack is broken: the plastic back support, not just a strap or something.

I am really thinking about getting a canvas bag for mine.

iquique

Once we are back in Iquique, we decide to walk to the beach (although Ignacio warned us that the shore is also a dangerous area) and watch the sunset. There are pelicans, yay! I have been trying to get decent pelican pictures for a while. The sunset turns out to be lame so we walk around Iquique  instead. Which has some pretty cool architecture, like a purple church.

We spent 30 minutes hanging around a kiosk, trying to find a junky magazine for our bus ride the next day. However, it seems that all the magazines that cater to women are about knitting, cooking, babies, or decorating. Oh, and gardening and fashion. My favorite title is “Cocinas y Baños” (kitchens and bathrooms). Most women my age here are married with children, so there are no interesting reads for bored singles. There doesn’t seem to be anything like a Chilean version of “Cosmopolitan” or all those other women’s magazines. Just the South American edition of Cosmo. There are one or two celeb gossip mags, but that’s no fun because we don’t know Chilean celebrities. Of course, we could pick up one of the masculine magazines: cars, guns or women.

In the evening, we went out to a bar on our street.

They have a video screen playing horrible music videos, but with the sound off, there is a jukebox too. Everyone starts cheering and singing along loudly each time a new cheesy romantic song comes on the jukebox. All the patrons are men, and there are a million women working as waitresses. I suspect that there is some other aspect to this bar that we are not catching on to, although it seems innocent enough. I ask for a pisco sour, but all they serve is beer. One of the guys at the table next to us asks to buy us a drink, but we decline, since neither of us can finish off another one of these giant beers without getting drunker than intended. But a few minutes later he asks again, and we agree to share one more beer between us. Turns out he and his little person friend are Peruvians. They ask to take a picture with us on their camera phone…okaaaay.

And they warn us to be careful, that this is a “bad area” at night. (Chileans really love telling us this.)

Our hostel is across the street though, so we make it back without incident.

Iquique fotos: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#29.0

iquique/humberstone

Iquique is a coastal town sandwiched between the ocean and the hills of the desert. We arrived there at about 7 in the morning. The bus driver did not bother to announce where we were, even though half the bus was asleep. So we missed our chance to get off at the bus station. He threw us out at the next and final stop, somewhere in Iquique, with the warning to “be careful, this is a bad area.” Great, thanks for dropping us off here, buddy. Once we figured out where we were on the map, it wasn’t so bad, since we were actually quite close to the hostel we were looking for.

View from our hostel window.

There are a bunch of juice bars here. The one we get breakfast at is called “El Mango Alegre”, the happy mango, and I am going to steal that name for the milkshake bar/restaurant/café that I may someday open. 

We took a colectivo (fixed-rate/fixed-route taxi) to Humberstone, an abandoned nitrate town. On the way we get a better overview of Iquique, which is much bigger than I thought. We also see that Iquique has this crazily huge, random sand dune in the middle of the city! Which you can maybe see a bit on this picture:

 

There used to be a saltpeter mine at Humberstone but it was abandoned and now the town is a ghost town.

It is a UNESCO world heritage site, and a tourist attraction.

We wandered around Humberstone for several hours. When we want to go back to Iquique, the concerned old man in the office tells us that a taxi comes by at least once an hour. Yay. We stand out by the road, he says we can take the tour bus which is coming, but it seems to be full and doesn’t stop. We decide to hitch, although this may give the old man a heart attack. We are picked up right away, by Ignacio in a jeep. He works at a plant close by and drives us all the way to our hostel (warning us that it’s a bad area). Along the way he asked the usual questions…. "Don't you miss your families? Do you have boyfriends? Your parents let you come all the way out here? I would never let my kid go so far away.”

Humberstone fotos: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#27.0

leaving putre

After packing up we went out to dinner, then caught the ride we arranged to “Putre Alto”, the highway intersection where our bus is supposed to pick us up.

We arrive there around 8 pm and wait under a street lamp. The night before we were dropped off by the bus around 8:45, we figure things at customs should go faster today, so we show up early, in defiance of all the lessons we have learned about Bolivian time. After 5 minutes I am already bored of waiting and make a rock pile. (We have seen many rock piles, I still don’t know what they mean though)

In the distance, we can see the lights of trucks creeping down the mountain, coming from Chile. We can tell by the length and light placement whether there is a bus coming or not. We begin a discussion on truck length and wheel-count. How many wheels do trucks have? What exactly is an 18-wheeler? Are there 18-wheelers in Chile? Where do the wheels have to be and how many sets does it need to be an 18-wheeler? Do they have double or triple sets of tires? I begin counting the wheels on all the trucks going by (there was not a single 18-wheeler), there are a lot, they are all getting in their border-crossing before customs closes at 9:30 pm. Many of them flash their lights, meaning they would be willing to pick us up, so we are assured of hitchhiking possibilities. After an hour, we are starting to think that our bus was actually on time/early, and that we missed it. I have not yet given up hope, since everything in Bolivia was late, it’s safe to assume that our bus is late, not early. We begin debating the pros and cons of hitching.

At 9:15 we give up and agree to hitch on the first thing that stops and get as far as we can. We are freezing and tired. But! There’s a miracle! The next thing that comes is our bus! And it actually stops for us too.

Unfortunately, this is another one of those buses without heating, and there is only one blanket left, so we have to share it. It takes me hours to warm up.

Word of advice: never take a Bolivian overnight bus if you can help it. Other than that, Bolivia  is great.

more putre

Putre is located in the Lauca National Park, which according to my guidebook is a “don’t miss”, most spectacular national park in Chile, blah blah. We have one day.

At the tourist office they give us a tip for a 5 hour walk where we can see some ancient, pre-Incan cave paintings. It sounds interesting, but I am still a bit sick, my voice is still gone (I have been croaking for days) and not sure about the whole thing. We go anyway, figuring we can always turn around. She tells us it is easy to get lost as there are several forks in the road, and gives us an extremely poor black-and-white satellite map.

Of course, we get lost. At each fork in the path we are unsure…the map is no big help. We walk directly into a military training exercise and sort of stand in the middle of it, discussing which way to go. (There is a military base in Putre - you know, close to the Bolivian border and all).

The whole area is sandy, with a few bushes, and the military has driven all over in their jeeps, meaning it all looks like it could be a “road” like the one on our map.

We are asked to move because we are in the way of some pictures a military dude is taking. He keeps shouting numbers, and one group of soldiers is setting up a tent, but most of them don’t seem to be doing anything.

We ask one group if they have heard of the “Sendero de las Pinturas” (trail of the paintings), but they just look at each other and laugh. One in-command guy (I can tell that he must be an officer because he is nonchalantly yet authoritatively chewing on a piece of straw) has a look at our “map” and tells us where we are….much further than we thought. He says to go back to the big eucalyptus tree and behind it is the road we are looking for.

When we arrive at the eucalyptus tree, there is a road passing in front of it, and one behind it, so we take the one behind it, since that’s what he told us. However, we still have our doubts, and when we run into a lady on a horse she says we are going the wrong way. “Do you see that eucalyptus tree? Next to it is the path you want.”

We cut across fields of oregano (?!?!) instead of doubling back, and manage to intersect the correct path. At first the scenery continues in the same vein: boring, sandy, rocky, oregano... But then we walk right along a spectacular ravine, cross it, and continue along the other side on a very narrow path with great views and an excitingly dangerous drop-off.

We almost miss the paintings, even though they are on a gigantic rock. They have been vandalized by generations of idiots.

 

On our way back, we keep running into soldiers, they are everywhere. They shout things like “I love you” at us as soon as we get far away from them. Cowards. Back in Putre, we chill in the sun and knock off our clothes, causing a mini dust cloud…from the knees down I am the chalky color of the trail.

Putre fotos: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#26.0

putre

Next stop: Putre

In the afternoon we took a bus from La Paz to Chile, to Putre. We had worked out our whole trip all the way to Iquique with a Bolivian bus company because they are so much cheaper than the Chilean ones. We had arranged to be dropped off in Putre, close to the border, then picked up from there the next day with the same bus.

We were supposed to arrive in Putre at 6 pm, but at that time we were still at the border. We spent 2 hours at Customs, due to some guy on our bus who had a suitcase full of porcelain. Also, once again the bus company had lied to us about having heating…

The bus driver dropped us off at the side of the highway around 9 pm. He said, “Putre’s down there” and drove off. OK, great. We were thinking, “what the hell?” There were no signs of civilization, it was dark, all we could see were one or two street lights in the distance, which we assumed to be Putre. No one had told us that the bus doesn’t actually stop IN Putre.

We began walking down the highway, although we had the impression that Putre was in the other direction. It was cold and we had no idea how far we would have to walk. Walking at this altitude (3500m), with a giant backpack, is not easy.

It looked like a long walk, we suspected that the road looped all around the valley and back to Putre, which is at the bottom. Later, we figured out that it is 6 or 7 kilometers. Luckily, I had my hand-powered flashlight along (thanks, Dale!) to ensure that we would be seen by drivers and not run over. Not that there were any drivers. Putre is in a National Park in the middle of nowhere and no cars were passing. At least the moon was very bright that night. Bright enough for us to see the snow-covered volcano in the distance and the deep gorge to our left.

We got a ride in a mini-van, the second car that passed. A rabbit ran into the headlights and our driver chased it for a while which sort of creeped me out. He asked where we need to go, which place we are staying at, and I told him. He dropped us off at a different place, saying it’s good. The room is over our budget, but when we see it, we take it anyway. After Bolivia, it’s very nice. Everything is brand new, the hotel must have just been built. We have our own bathroom and breakfast is included.

la paz

Next stop: La Paz

I really liked La Paz, but unfortunately, we only had two days there. And even that was cut

short as our bus from Copacabana was road-blocked for a couple hours due to protests by fishermen. There was a local festival with dancing and intricate costumes going on, so we checked that out. And on our bus there was a very funny Peruvian hippie with a crooked didgeridoo who kept the whole bus entertained.

The roadblock left us with one evening and a day in La Paz. We didn’t get to do much, we went out to dinner (I had tempura, yum). The next day we just wandered around a bit and did postcard and bus-supplies shopping. We also bought coca leaves to chew on. Chewing coca is not as exciting as it sounds: tasted like grass and filled my mouth with leaf bits, ugh. And the effect was not very noticeable, like that of drinking too much coffee. But I felt cool anyway. We tried to chew as much as possible before we had to dump our baggy at the Chilean border. (you can’t bring any organic products into Chile - Chile is sort of island-like due to the mountain chain, and super strict about avoiding bacteria and viruses and stuff.)

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, at almost 4000m, It is located in a valley surrounded by mountains, kind of like a giant bowl. The city has expanded to creep us the sides of the hills, from above it looks insane. I couldn’t get any decent pictures from the bus window so I've posted some I found online. We were going to go to a lookout point, but at the hostel they told us that is too dangerous to go there at 9 in the morning and we should forget it.

I imagine that La Paz is hellish in the summer.

There were tons of shoeshine boys and they all wear masks…no one really knows why, there are various theories;…to protect themselves from the social embarrassment of shining shoes, to protect themselves from the fumes, to protect themselves from being recognized by the cops…In any case, they are also camera-shy, so I only got fotos of them from farther away.

La Paz fotos are here: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#23.1

subscribe

Subscribe to my blog:

Send an email to the following address and you will be subscribed to my yahoo email group. You will receive an email when I update my blog: the email includes the entire post, pictures as well. So make sure you have enough space in your inbox.

marahinchile-subscribe[at]yahoogroups.com

replace the [at] with @ !

This week there will be a post almost every day as I have already written them all. I am going to Santiago this week for a seminar with other experiment volunteers and have scheduled the posts to go online automatically.....cuz I'm so tech-savvy, ooh!

copacabana

Okay, back to Bolivia. It is around 6 am:

We arrived at the bus terminal in La Paz and continued directly on with a different bus to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca! One of the highest navigable lakes in the world, and the largest lake (by volume) in South America. (source: wikipedia)

In order to get to Copacabana we had to cross the narrow strait of Tiquina. Everyone had to get off and take a boat across.

Our bus went across on one of these ferries.

This poor sheep rode on the roof of the bus for 4 hours.

 

We had already picked out of my guidebook which hotel we wanted to stay at, “El Mirador”, because we wanted a view of the lake, but once we saw it, we started to have doubts about whether we could afford it:

However it turned out to only cost 5 Euros per person per night. We even had a private bath and there was a terrace right outside. (The shower turned out to be a catastrophe though, it flooded the whole bathroom.)

We had fried trout from the lake for lunch and that night we watched the sun set over Lake Titicaca.

The famous Titicaca lake trout have an interesting story, turns out they were native to the American great lakes and introduced in various south American lakes. Meanwhile, they have become extinct in the American lakes due to the introduction of the lamprey…and in Lake Titicaca, they probably contributed to the extinction of the Orestia, which was native to and only present in Lake Titicaca.  

My throat felt weird, by the next day I had lost my voice and didn’t feel so good. We took a boat to the Isla del Sol, an island on the lake. The island was revered by the Incas as the birthplace of Incan civilization/the sun…or something like that. There was zero information about anything there, so that’s about all I can tell you. There are lots of Incan ruins on the island, including a labyrinth, a temple, and a sacrificial table. It’s a 4 hour walk from the north end of the island to the south end, where the return boat leaves. It’s tough, the sun is out and the path is steep at times, we are panting at every little incline. But it is amazing.

Along the way we have to pay several times; each community apparently levies its own fines. There are people along the way sitting by the path, selling drinks, handicrafts. Also there are kids asking if we want to take pictures of them with their sheep, llamas or donkeys. There was one woman with her kid and a llama. We walked by and the llama was not looking too happy…then it spat on the guy walking behind us!

Incan staircase

There was a little girl who asked me to take a picture of her and her little sister…I thought aw, that’s cute…but then after the picture the older one said “Now pay us! One boliviano for me and one for her!” In retrospect, I can’t believe I fell for it…
I was like, “Wow, you drive a hard bargain. Would you prefer 2 bolivianos or 1 boliviano and the rest of our chocolate to share between the two of you?” They ended up going for the chocolate bar.

In Copacabana, there is a large church (pretty large for such a small town) and pilgrims come from all over to visit the Virgen of Copacabana, who is a big deal: "Our Lady of Copacabana" is the patron saint of Bolivia and known for working several miracles. And I just found out online that Copacabana beach in Rio is actually named after her, too. On the weekends, they bless cars in front of the church, with garlands of flowers and stuff.

The rest of the photos are here: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#25.0

borko

cartagena

my friend borko is also in south america right now. he is a great photographer, check out the rest of his pictures of colombia here: http://kontraband.tumblr.com/

tobi

Tobi macht auch weltwaerts, in Posadas in Argentinien. Er ist auch mit Experiment unterwegs und ich habe ihn beim Vorbereitungsseminar getroffen.

Hier eine Beschreibung seiner Arbeit:

"Das „Reserva Natural Urbana Rincón Nazarí“ ist ja mehr so ein großer Garten mitten in der Stadt, nicht weit vom Stadtzentrum entfernt. Die Hauptaufgabe des Reservates ist Umwelterziehung mit dem Ziel ein Umweltbewusstsein bei der Bevölkerung zu schaffen, welches bis jetzt nur sehr marginal vorhanden ist. Man schmeißt halt seinen Müll einfach auf die Straße oder verbrennt ihn vor dem Haus. Das ist Gang und Gebe.

Um dem Ganzen entgegenzuwirken versuchen wir im Reservat den Schulkindern einen Sinn für die Natur zu vermitteln, denn nur was man schätzt wird man auch schützen. Jeden Tag kommen ein oder zwei Schulklassen (zw. 8 und 14 Jahren) ins Reservat. Themen sind die Biodiversität von Misiones, die einzigartig ist in Argentinien (550 der 1000 Vogelarten von Argentinien gibt es in Misiones); verschiedene Strategien der Samenverbreitung von Bäumen und die entsprechende Form der Samen; verschiedene Arten wie sich Vögel ernähren und wie man von der Form des Schnabels auf die Ernährung schließen kann; und verschiedene biologische Kuriositäten z.B. Gewölle einer Eule die oft im Reservat ist, die Nester eines Vogels der zum Brüten in die Stadt kommt weil der Tucan im Wald seine Eier frisst, parasitische Pflanzen, und vieles mehr. Weitere Themen sind Umweltverschmutzung und Umweltschutz. Nach der Führung bearbeiten die Kinder in kleineren Gruppen verschiedene Aufgaben und präsentieren die Ergebnisse der Klasse. Ich helfe momentan mit bei der Betreuung, laber auch ab und zu mal was, zum Beispiel über den Komposthaufen den ich hier in Kürze anfangen werde. Außerdem betreue ich die Gruppen bei ihren Aufgaben. Viel geht halt noch nicht wegen der Sprache. Eigentlich passt es mit der Sprache mittlerweile ganz gut, aber manche Kinder verstehe ich einfach nicht, die reden so unglaublich schnell und nuscheln dermaßen... Das ist das Hauptziel des Reservates, Themen wie Natur, Biologie, Ökologie, Umweltverschmutzung, aber auch Pflanzenanzucht und Kompostierung den Kindern zu vermitteln."

Auf seinem Blog koennt ihr seinen Einsatz verfolgen:

http://tobi-en-argentina.jimdo.com/blog-1/

hogar life

I’m interrupting the account of my travels in order to tell you a bit of what’s going on at the Hogar.

The kids were on winter vacation from school for two weeks, so they were here all the time. However a lot of them were gone to visit family, or someone from the church took them along somewhere, so we didn't have so many.

We did one or two reading workshops with the smaller girls. We had discovered about 7 copies of a Clifford picture book in storage, so we started out with that. You know, the big red dog? The book was called “Clifford’s first Halloween” and it was all about him dressing up and eating candy and stuff. After they finished reading, we talked with them about Halloween to find out what they know. Linda said “Halloween is the day of the Devil!” Which was my first inkling that maybe this was not such a good idea. I said “No, no!” and started talking about trick-or-treating when I was little and the origins of Halloween. While we were talking, Tia Barbara came in to prepare for the Sala de Estudio and once she heard what we were talking about, she took me outside. She said that Halloween is considered occult and a forbidden topic and that we might get in big trouble if they start telling the other Tias about what they did today. And instead of having them draw the pumpkins, we might rather have them draw candy instead, since Jack O’ Lanterns are considered occult.

I thought it was pretty funny, but by that point it was too late. I told the other Tias about it later in the kitchen and they didn’t seem to think it was too bad either. But I think Barbara was more worried about repercussions “from above” (this is a Christian Hogar after all). She had no idea why, if the topic is forbidden, we had 7 copies of this book in our library. Later we gave them all to Tia Viviana (our boss) and I assume she got rid of them. (However, yesterday another one turned up in one of the houses!)

Another thing that we did over the holidays was make Kaesespaetzle, the German version of mac and cheese. Unfortunately, I did not think to take pictures of us, in the kitchen, with 8 children and giant pots and Spaetzle dough EVERYWHERE. They were not very authentic, because we did not have the right size holes to make the noodles….once a Tia got the idea of nailing holes in a can the dough was already too liquid and we couldn’t go back. So the spaetzle were really small, but at least they tasted good. We made a salad to go with it and also Apple Crumble.

We also went bowling with three of the girls, which was a lot of fun. None of them had ever been bowling before. Tabita was terrible, she couldn’t hit anything except the gutter and had a long row of 0’s…and then suddenly she bowled a strike!

 

Recently, two new girls arrived, I will tell you a bit about them and their reasons for being here. (Achtung, this does not make for easy reading!) One is 8 and one is 6.

The 8 year-old comes from a rural area and has not had much schooling. She has a younger sister who has some sort of brain damage as far as I understand, and is paralyzed. The mother would leave her in bed and walk the older sister to school, which apparently took a couple hours. One day, while they were on their way to school, some people came by and sexually abused the handicapped sister. I think that since then, she has not been back to school. She is behind and not up to the standard of her class. When she arrived she was incredibly filthy, the Tia had to spend half an hour scrubbing her and cutting her nails. She was also surprised when she found out that all the girls here have to shower every single day…I assume that they probably did not have running water where she lived. She also had encephalitis, but she seems to have recovered and so far it doesn’t seem as though it affected her in a major way.

Our new six-year-old was sexually abused by her father when she was 5 and put in a home. However, the home continued to allow her to see her abuser, so she was removed from that home and sent to us. She seems really bright and has a strong personality! She is even already standing up Maria, who is 9 years old and very bossy.

They arrived on the same day about 2 weeks ago and are still behaving fairly well. However, I think both of them will turn out to be real handfuls….the older one insults the other girls and lies (but then, they all do), and steals, and the younger one has already started refusing to finish her plate at dinner.

uyuni fotos

i almost forgot, here are the rest of the photos from uyuni:

http://chile.marahtyler.com/#24.0

uyuni continued

Our tour of the Salar started the next morning, beginning with the train graveyard. Supposedly, the last train that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed, which led to their untimely demise here in Bolivia, is here in the graveyard. 

Yeah, it’s probably this one.

I could have spent hours climbing around (although very short of breath due to altitude), but we have a lot left to do and the other tourists in our jeep are not so into it.

We drove on to Colchani, a town at the edge of the Salar, where the salt is processed. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles). It is at about 3,600 m above sea level and used to be part of a giant lake.

The salt is scraped together into little mounds, then transported to the “processing facility.” First it is dried, by spreading it out on a big table over these 3 furnaces;

 then put through this machine which grinds it up fine;

 Then it is hand-filled into plastic bags of about 1 kilo, which are sealed with a blow torch.

Because Bolivia has so much salt, (they have another salt flat too), it is worth practically nothing: 50 kilos of salt are sold for 9 Bolivianos! (~1 Euro! $1.50!) They can’t export it either, because all of their neighbors have their own salt flats! They should export it, unprocessed, coarse and “organic”, to Europe and the US and make a killing.

Anyway.

Because of the endless white plain, the tourists all hop around making weird pictures and playing with perspective:

 

There is a hotel in the middle of the salar, built entirely out of blocks of salt. There we engaged with other tourists in taking silly pictures. The tour compay serves us lunch in the salt hotel: llama and mashed potatoes.

As I said, the Salar used to be a huge lake….in the middle of the salt flat is an island out of coral, and covered by cacti. It is called  Isla de Pesca because of its fish shape.

 Back in Uyuni in the evening, we went to an internet café (where I received the emailed news that Michael Jackson is dead) and buy souvenirs and blankets, alpaca shawls, etc. We found a great greasy spoon to eat at: chicken and fries.

Boarded another bus, to La Paz. We had asked 3 times in the office if the bus had heating, we were told “yes.” Turns out the bus did not have heating. Which is really a problem at night, at these altitudes. It was another rough night. The “road” was so bad that I did not sleep. Eventually, I couldn’t hold out any longer and had to go to the bathroom. First I had to clamber over all the people sleeping in the aisle, then discovered that the light in the bathroom was broken. Which was probably not such a bad thing…

Eventually, closer to La Paz, the roads got better and I dozed off.

uyuni (part 1)

We got up at 5:00 and took yet another very long bus ride, to Bolivia. The bus this time is pretty rudimentary, and the road is quite bad, we get pretty shaken up. Sleeping is not really possible for me. We drive to Ollagüe, the last town on the Chilean side of the border, where we have to get out and wait around for customs for about an hour. It is quite cold, we are high up. There are volcanoes all around us, and a lake with flamingos. It was too dark for me to get a good picture of them though.

Bus switch in no-man’s-land.

Then on to Avaroa, the first town on the Bolivian border. Right away we discover that Bolivians aren’t as friendly as Chileans…the border control dudes were rude and demanding.

It is light by  now and the scenery in the altiplano is spectacular. However, it is freezing and the bus doesn’t have heating or a bathroom. The Bolivian buses aren’t nearly as comfy as the Chilean ones. This is our first taste of Bolivian buses, but unfortunately, not the last.

 High in the Andes, the altiplano.

We continued on to Uyuni (population ~10,000, elevation ~3600 m), and also immediately see that Bolivia is completely and utterly different from Chile. Not just the buildings, general look of the place, and dirt streets, but also the people look completely different.

The women wear bowler hats, layered skirts, woolen knee socks, sandals, and shawls or blankets wrapped around their shoulders. They carry things in colorful blankets on their backs. Some of the women are laden like pack mules….and I don’t see the men carrying anything.

After the bus ride, we realize that we should seriously consider getting canvas bags for our backpacks…they are completely covered in dust. Not for the last time, either. We are met at the bus station by a woman who says she got a call from our friend Freddy at the Calama bus station. (We had a long conversation with Freddy about busses, schedules, prices, tours, etc.) She is from a tour agency and wants to give us a tour of the Salar. But all I want to do is go to a hostel and sleep off the migraine from the jolting bus ride. We end up declining and later going with a different company.

We were lucky, it happened to be market day when we arrived so there a bunch of stands on the main drag. We bought textiles that all the women here use to carry stuff around in, and also, in preparation for going to the salt flat the next day,

cheap sunglasses!

Bolivia is much poorer than Chile, and definitely a “developing country”, which means it’s very cheap for tourists. For example, our tour company is family-run out of their home: at the back of the storefront is a curtain, behind which is luggage storage and their sleeping area. The reception area with the desk and some couches is their living room. Every time we enter, the family is huddled around the gas heater, watching tv. The tour, which took a full day, cost less than 20 Euros, and included lunch.

part two about the Salar coming up laterzz....

chuqui

Our next stop was Chuquicamata, which until recently was the world’s largest open-pit copper mine. Copper is one of chile’s biggest exports. The mine is state-owned, runs 24/7 and employs in total something like 60,000 people, including all the bureaucracy/office workers.  

There used to be a town here for mine employees, called Chuquicamata, but in 2007 the population was forced to leave because the mine has gotten too big and too close to the town. They have all moved to nearby Calama and I believe the company had to offer them houses at dirt-cheap prices as incentives to get them to leave.

 

abandoned playground of chuqui: in the background, hills of refuse from copper processing

street in chuquicamata

The mine pit is 5 km long, 3 km wide, and 1 km deep. The copper concentration in the rock is 1%. Which sounds like nothing to me. For those of you with poor math skills, that means that in order to extract 1 ton of copper, they have to haul and process 100 tons of otherwise useless rocks, leaving them with 99 tons of refuse. But apparently it is worth it, even in these days when copper prices have apparently fallen significantly. Also, there are other mineral by-products which are marketable as well.

They are in the process of connecting the main mine with two other mines right next to it: Mina Sur (“south mine”) and Mina Name-of-some-dude-which-I-forgot. Once the three mines are connected, it will again be the largest in the world, and the length of the mine pit will be around 15 km.

 

the mine pit

There are three truck sizes at “Chuqui”: large, larger, and largest. The largest is the largest in the world, and, naturally, german.

The smallest, (Komatsu, Japan) holds 170 tons, the medium truck (Liebherr) 330, and the biggest (also Liebherr) 370 tons. Unfortunately, we did not get to see one of the biggest ones up close.

 me and steffi next to a medium truck

 

a truck in the truck garage, having it's 7 ton tires checked.

More about the biggest truck in the world, here, in German.

 

to give you an idea of the scale of the pit: do you see the giant truck in this picture?!

pools where copper is being processed

More pictures of trucks are here: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#22.1

cabalgata

my new life goals: a horse, a dog, and the atacama

early monday (22.06.) morning we got up to start our 2 day horse ride in the desert. it was just me, steffi, our guide, Roberto, and of course, 3 horses. and also 2 awesome dogs from the ranch that followed us.

We cantered/galloped a few times, and wow, it was crazy. I’ve only cantered before under more controlled circumstances, you know, in circles, under a roof. Or outside with summer camp horses who go short distances and then quit. But this horse just took off and wouldn’t stop, and was way faster than any other horse I’ve been on, it was so awesome. Actually the first day I was totally taken by surprise and discombobulated, but the second day I was better at it.

We rode through areas where the pre-Incan peoples used to hang out, there were millions and millions of pottery shards, and also a few bones, and ruins/walls remaining:

Our “camp” was at a half-finished building in the middle of nowhere which I guess belongs to the ranch. The ranch people drove out with the supplies we needed, our tent, and also dinner. After talking a bit with Roberto we discovered that he is slightly crazy… he keeps bringing up blood circulation and “equilibrium’ as the answer to all ills. The next day at lunch he was talking about “photons” and the 4 alien races, and that Jesus was an extra-terrestrial. Smile and nod, smile and nod… Also, he is the first person in the world to guess that I am around 30 years old, and so obviously I have to hate him for that.

We had the most amazing night sky, I’ve never seen so many stars, and the Milky Way too! The Atacama is supposed to be one of the best places on earth to stargaze. Also, it is so incredibly silent. If you are not making noise yourself, there is none.

It got really cold at night, I was freezing, even though I was wearing all my clothes on top of my pyjamas, but the sleeping bags that we borrowed from the hogar weren’t so good. When we woke up the next morning, all the water jugs were frozen.

i had a hard time taking good pictures because a) i was on a moving horse and b) the sun was very strong and bright and all the pictures were washed out.

The scenery was amazing, we mainly rode through the oasis the first day and the second day we were in the desert all day, in the cordillera de la sal. We rode through ravines and up sand dunes, and on a scary little path with a million-meter drop-off to the side.

It doesn't look so scary in the picture, but our guide was really impressed with us on that bit, since we didn’t even bat an eyelash. Supposedly those wimpy women are always screaming and dismayed at that part. Whatever. Now he is convinced that all German women are hardcore.

After the beauty and silence of the desert, once we got back to San Pedro, I thought the town, which I had found so cute before, looked so squalid…and the tourists were even uglier.

We were groaning and moving like little old ladies for days afterward.

All in all, it was utterly amazing, and one of the best things I’ve ever done, I’m so glad I didn’t give up on the idea. And I want to go back.

pictures: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#21.0

 

el tatio

Sunday morning we woke up at 4 am to see the el tatio geysers. We were picked up at our hostel by the tour agency we booked with, luckily the van had heating. It was a 2 hour drive out to the geyser field, however the road was very rough so I couldn’t do more than doze a little bit. The van took us directly to El Tatio geyser field, which according to my guide book is the geyser field at the highest elevation in the world, at 4,400m above sea level.

ugh, it's still dark.

The geysers aren’t geysers of shooting water, they are steam plumes. The lava underground from a volcano heats up an underground river, which begins to boil. (At least that’s what our guide said, I haven’t been able to find any information on it) The hot water boils out of holes in the ground and produces plumes of steam on contact with the cold air. The reason we had to go so early in the morning is because that is when the temperature difference is the highest, causing the most spectacular plumes. Our guide said normally it is around -18 degrees C, but we got lucky and only had -12. I was not prepared for the cold, if I had known, I would have worn tights under my pants, as we were hanging out there for a while. My camera hand, which didn’t have a glove on it all the time, was freezing and the next day the skin on my hand was all messed up and dry and ugly.

Our tour guide set up breakfast: coffee/tea, balogna, cheese, bread, and cookies…he warmed up the milk for the coffee by sticking the carton in a geyser…and after about 20 minutes the balogna was frozen. I had my first “mate de coca”, tea made out of coca leaves, which, among the many other wondrous properties ascribed to it, is supposed to be good for altitude sickness. I don’t feel sick, but walking uphill is difficult, that is, breathing is difficult.

There is one geyser they call the “killer geyser” because in the last year or so 6 people fell into it and died afterwards from the scalding. The water has a temperature of around 86 degrees Celsius. The ground in some places is not really firm, just a crust, and can break under your feet.

the killer geyser

There was also a thermal pool where we could swim, but I didn’t have a bathing suit, also, did I mention that it was -12 degrees outside? Yeah, so, no. Steffi swam though, I guess she is just a bit more Teutonically hardcore than me...

After the geysers we drove to a tiny one-street town called Machuca, with an official population of 40 (and year-round population of 7). on the way we saw a bunch of vicuñas (wild camelids, smaller than llamas), vizcacha (chinchilla family), and llamas. Also we drove by a field of huge cactii.

baby llama

Once we got back to San Pedro we had a great lunch and walked around a bit, and went to the museum, on the history of indigenous Andean cultures. We bought some bread and sardines to eat for dinner in the hostel common room, and drank the half-bottle of red wine someone had kindly left, yessssssssssss.

All the fotos of San Pedro and the geysers are already online here! I don't know if i mentioned it yet, but in the two weeks of the trip i took over 1,500 fotos...so these are just some of them.