In and Out of Chile

We crossed the Peru-Chile border easily. There´s a trick. If you walk across, you often get hassled and it always takes longer. If you are able to take a bus or shared taxi ACROSS the border, the driver goes with you and makes the process simple. The immigration officials generally don´t bother you because they know a vehicle is waiting for you and the driver has already filled out all the necessary paperwork. It´s worth it! And that´s what we did for this border.

So...we went from Peru to Arica, Chile. Arica is not too far from the border, a lovely little beach town. Had a big bay, and OK beach (still not as nice as San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua)! We felt like we had left Latin America and walked into Europe! This town was very upscale. Our very first 15 second impression was that Chile was cool! Then we looked for a hotel. Dinner. A glass of beer. Whoa! Chile was VERY expensive compared to the countries we had already visited. As you know, we are backpacking and taking buses so we have a budget. Chile was way OUT of the budget. But Stacy was meeting us in Santiago on the 16th, so we had to make our way down there. We picked a couple of places to see on the way and hoped for the best. After spending the next day in Arica, with Josue playing guitar and singing on the beach while I tried to get a nice tan (WITH sunblock, don´t worry) and read my book, we decided we´d better start moving south to make sure we got to Santiago on time. It was very far away.

We decided to take a night bus since it was 13 hours to Antofagasta, the next place we were going to check out because it was on the edge of the DRIEST desert in the world! South America has lots of the ¨biggest, driest, wettest, highest, deepest¨things and it seems like Chile has most of them. About five minutes before we were to get on the bus, Josue took a bathroom break and in an instant, I turned my head,and in that instant someone had stolen my backpack with my most precious things. I can´t believe I didn´t have my leg threaded through the backpack straps, as I always do when it is on the floor. I even think two people were working together and one made a noise or something to make me turn my head. Whatever, they were very professional because I didn´t hear or see a thing! I lost my brand new IPOD and speakers, my portable hard drive and card reader (Wolverine) on which I had all of my photos of the trip AND an entire backup to my laptop, my SONY camera recharger and computer cable connection, my journal of the trip, my notebook of all the information I need while I´m gone (all phone numbers, all of my account addresses in the U.S., bill information, everything you can think of), and tons of souvenirs I had bought for different friends. I was devastated! Thank goodness Josue reminded me that they are only things, and that we were still fine. We weren´t too happy with Chile at this moment.

The view from the bus on the way to Antofagasto went from dry, to drier, to driest. Sometimes it looked like we were traveling on the moon! Hundreds of miles of hills and mountains with nothing on them! Once we got there we looked in our book and realized that Antofagasto is not really where we wanted to go! So we hopped on another bus (five and a half hours) and went to Copiapo. Near Copiapo was a National Park (Tres Cruces) that sounded so intriguing we had to go. The next day we tried to make our way to the park, we took a bus as far as the highway turnoff, but there was no transportation! No buses or taxis or anything going in and out. We went back to Copiapo and visited Hertz Rent a Car to find out our options. We had to rent a 4 x 4 because of the road. Our adventure started then. We were promised views of the driest desert in the world, herds of vicuna (a cousin to alpacas and llamas), an exquisite turquoise lake in the middle of the desert, the highest active volcano in the world (6893 meters, or 22, 614 feet!), a flock of wild flamingos, and glorious desert mountains. And actually, except for the absence of the herds of vicuna, we experienced everything else and more. We started driving through the desert. There wasn´t a soul there! And imagine this desert scene…..not a blade of grass, not ANYTHING on the mountains for hundreds of miles. Not a bird, a bug, NOTHING. However, talk about a painted desert. Every time we went around a bend, the view became more and more dramatic. Higher mountains banded in colors of gold, green, purple, burgundy, orange! We kept driving and driving and driving…seeing no living creatures of any kind, including humans. At one point we came upon an immigration office because we were about 20 miles from the border with Argentina. It was a drive up border, but no one came out and we couldn´t get through the gate. We got out of the car and went inside the building where we found the two officials in the middle of a heated game of ping pong! In fact, when we walked in, they continued playing out that hand. They didn´t ask us any questions, just opened the gate. So much for complicated county crossings! We were getting tired because honestly, the road was made of sand so it was a bit slippery, the edges of the road had no guard rails and the drops were spectacular because as we drove we were climbing UP! As we drove, we passed the highest active volcano in the world…Ojos de Salado (Salt Eyes). On this day it was snow-capped, monstrous, wild and breathtaking! We kept driving along and were wondering if we were ever going to see the beautiful lake and thought maybe it had dried up since everything was so desolate with no hint of water anywhere. Suddenly we went over a hill and oh my god, we both said at the same time… ¨Vale la peina!¨ translated roughly as ¨worth the pain!¨ In front of us was a pure, turquoise lake surrounded by mountains of all shapes and sizes. We got out of the truck to take a look and suddenly those little headaches we were both getting and the inability to breath very easily made sense. We were at 4,345 meters (14,255 feet)! That´s the highest I´ve ever been! We were both a little dizzy…altitude sickness? Also, it was freezing!!!! We forgot about that. We had some warm clothes, but not all of them. Also, some menacing black clouds were coming our way and we immediately thought…snow storm…not good. So we took our photos, and tried going down to a lower level. Well, I wasn´t feeling wonderful at that moment and started getting very sleepy. It was dusk and we thought there would be a campground, but there wasn´t. So we were stuck there…to sleep in the truck! As the sun faded behind the mountains, the temperature dropped quickly. It seems funny to us now, but we were pretty stupid. We had two oranges, a half a bottle of water, not enough warm clothes and we were having trouble breathing. We tried sleeping a dozen ways, but nothing was working. It was obviously too dangerous to drive at night…we´d drive right off the edge of the cliffs! Even though we didn´t say anything…a fleeting thought hit both of us that we shared the next day…could we die up here? Anyway, the ending is happy. It didn´t snow, we managed through the night, we left at first sun. We took a different route through the park, saw a lake with flamingos, wild horses, birds, bugs and small shrubs. The trip was great!

After Copiapo we headed for Valpariso. Up until this time, we had not really encountered typical Chilean food or music or anything. In fact, it seemed to us that Chile did not have its own culture, but sort of borrowed everyone else´s. It is notable that Chile loves American jazz, classical music and oldies (60s and 70s). When we went out dancing in Copiapo, they had videos going all night of old, old songs. Some Beatles, Olivia Newton John, Commodores, Herman´s Hermits, that kind of stuff. VERY strange! We had to go into the dancing room to here some of our Latin salsa, meringue, and reggaeton favorites.

Valpariso. We loved it! To be honest, Chile is SUPER expensive (yes, more than Argentina!) and we had a hard time finding the essence of the country. But we think we found it in Valparaiso. It is the first city where we found authentic food, including pastel de choclo (a pie of corn bread with chicken and vegetables mixed through it) congrio (a mild fish), humitas (like a tamale) and avocado sandwiches. They LOVE avocado in Chile and put it with anything…chicken, beef, fish and even mash it all over hot dogs! Rather than using the usual Spanish word aguacate, Chileans call it palta! We have been often confused on menus by words we have never heard before. From country to country the Spanish changes. Sometimes the natives don´t understand us either!!! It´s all interesting. Valparaiso is a bustling city, perhaps a little worse for wear, but we felt its heart. One startling thing…the street dogs were all purebreds! We saw huskies, golden retrievers (one even tried to adopt Josue as his new owner, but how could we take him with us?), German and Belgian shepherds, shaggy dogs. You name it, we saw it. You may be thinking…oh someone must own them. But no, they were filthy and hanging around in packs. But they were apparently fed well enough because they looked great. We really wish we could have chosen a couple of them to keep. There are many parks in this city and we found one near the hotel that came alive at about 9 p.m. There we spent a couple of nights watching the people, eating wonderful beef and chorizo shish-ka-bobs and downing a couple of good Chilean beers. We had wine too, but we were really saving our wine palates for Argentina!

After Valpariso we took a bus to Santiago, the capital, where we spent only one day looking for electronic equipment that might help me use my SONY camera again. We figured Santiago was big enough to possibly help us out. And it did! Josue found a portable hard drive-card reader and unbelievably, we found a camera recharger (not a SONY product!) that worked with my particular SONY camera. And it was very cheap! Suddenly I was in business again and that is why I´m behind in my blogs and photos, but now I can put them up again. So stand by for Argentina….

We were also in Santiago to meet Stacy. You remember her… my first travel companion, well, she´s BAAACK! Just couldn´t keep away from the crazy fun we´re having! She had no idea what our plans were going to be when she landed at the airport that night, but she knew it would be great! After spending the entire day in downtown Santiago (just a typical big city, really, all the U.S. products, restaurants and amenities) and cheating by having a fabulous sushi lunch (I´m a big sushi fan and have been craving it the whole trip), Josue and I went to the airport. Stacy arrived at 8 pm and was surprised to learn that three hours later the three of us were hopping on an overnight bus, passing one of the highest mountains in the western hemisphere (Aconcagua 6962 meters), and making our way the next morning to Mendoza, the wine making center of Argentina! Here we go…. Click here to view the photos from Chile.