Nice Weather For Ducks

As if there was a cosmic balance the needed to be fulfilled, after a three week humidityless stint, the moisture finally caught up with us. And it came with a vengence.

One nights stop in Chillán brought us to the Lake District miles south of Santiago (Chillán - not much to write home about outside a random mexican mural in a school library that we visited) from where we continued south. Even though people warned us that it really rains in the Lake District we were convinced we would be fine. We live in Britain after all and on arriving in Pucón, the town we had chosen as our base, the slight drizzle seemed oddly familiar, so we made some grand plans for the day after.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed we woke up ready for action only to see the world had disappeared and been replaced by a humongous cloud. And so it remained. After a few a hours and a quick check of the weather forcast we changed our plans from trekking to driving, although in hindsight perhaps kayaking would have been a better option.

We drove around the lakes and parks in a hire car, catching glimpses of majestic volcanos and tranquil lakes, but we never managed to see the whole vista. What we did manage to do is get stuck on a dirt road, deep in the deserted forrested park just after crossing a rickety sideless wooden bridge over a raging river. Oh and needless to say it was raining hard. A few heart-in-mouth minutes later we had reversed back over the bridge, turned round and retreated back home. There we met a couple of gringo strangers who thought it would be a great plan to take a night tour to some thermal baths. As we hadn't accomplished much that day, drinking Pisco Sours in a hot bath sounded perfect, and indeed it was in its own peculiar way. We ending up having a great time with the lovely german/english couple in a hardly lit wooden hut about 10kms out of town. The place was a proper spa but we seemed to have been sneaked in by the night watchmen, to earn themselves a few extra pesos. The four of us had the place to ourselves but with no lights! We finished off having a mud bath in something that can only be described as black ash mixed with weeds, moss and a bit of water. Most disconcerting.

Pucón itself was quite unlike the rest of the South America we had seen. It looked like it belonged on the Swiss Alps with its wooden lodges and Germanesque names. Even though it is a bit of a toursit trap (apparently much worse in summer) , and it never stopped raining, we ended up liking it (well what we saw anyways).

Football and Fairy Tales

Like a fish out of water we started to crave unpolluted oxygen so we left Santiago de Chile for a quick jaunt to Valparaiso. The city has always been a fairy-tale place for Nina so going there we almost expected to be disappointed. What can we say - it was a great place to be! We call it the San Francisco of the South with rolling hills covered with half derelict half exquisite buildings, windy cobbled streets, thousands of little galleries and wicked cafes and bars. If it wasn`t for the MASSIVE industrial port the place would have been a real fairy-tale. But to be honest we barely noticed the port except for the sailors wandering around. Being so hilly the place was littered with ascensors (funicular) leading up to the posh districts. We spent few days in Valparaiso just drinking coffee, trying to speak bad Spanish (well we tried for the good Spanish but somehow it always turned bad) and of course drinking great Chilean wine.

As there was not much to do in Valpo we thought we would check out Viña del Mar, the posh sea side resort for Santies. Viña isn´t that great but there was a footy match going on that afternoon, Viña´s own Everton vs their local rivals Santiago Wanderes of Valparaiso. As we were walking to the stadium we were trying to decide who to support. Once we got there there was really only one choice, the home side, Everton. Fortunately we were in the semi expensive seats (tribuna Andes) and away from the manic fans in the cheap seats. The game wasn´t up to your normal South American standards but the fans definitely were. At one point they had to stop the game as one side of the pitch was covered in burning flares thrown by the Wanderers fans in disgust at going one nill down. Their side of the stadium became a sea of red smoke. It was wicked thing to see. The everton fans were also great as they didn´t stop singing for 2 hours. It almost felt like a concert. Turns out we picked the right side as Everton won 2:0 and they were much better sportsmen. At the end of the game we quickly dashed out of the stadium before it turned nasty. Next day we read that 20 people got arrested.

One last thing, we popped into the coolest bar in Valpo, the Cinzano bar. It had an average age of about 60 and a never-ending supply of retirees singing sad songs spanish with voices like Edith Piaf. It was fatastic. With our quality spanish we tried to order some meze as we sat watching from the bar, but ending up with a steak. :) Must practise some more.

Now we are back in Santiago for one day to sort out a few things before we head south. First Lake District then Patagonia.

Smog City

How weird is to sit on the plane and be able to see both sides of a country so clearly. "On your left you can see the mighty Andes and on your right the Pacific ocean crashing into the rocky desert". That was our journey from Antofagasta to Santiago - the Smog City! We heard the stories but you really can´t believe it until you see it or as the case might be not see it. Santiago is a beautifuly city - kinda European in feel with coffee shops lining the cobbled streets, big modern buildings, banks and an improbable number of chemists (there is a theme developing here - banks and chemists everywhere, any city, any place, any time). There are few cute areas, like barrio Brasil - popular with students (dark doggy bars with punk music) and where we stayed, the pretty area of barrio Paris-Londres (an area simply made up of two blocks and two cobbled streets crossing each other).

On our first night in Santiago we went to a bar in barrio Brasil where we ended up chatting with the only two people there who, fortunately for us, spoke very good english. There was drinking, dancing on tables and much fun had. The next day we met up with them again and they showed us around the town while we compared hangovers. One thing we have to say about the smog is that it produces absolutely amasing sunsets. Well, you can´t actually see the sun setting but the colours it makes are kinda trippy.

There is one other great area called barrio Bellavista covered with trendy bars and clubs situated in multicoloured little buildings. Right next to it is Cerro San Cristobal where you can take steep journey on the funicular railway to the top from where 15ft Virgin Mary benevolently looks over the city. On our way there we went through what seemed to be a student protest. We didn´t click until we saw all the people carrying gas masks surrounded by tv crews and riot police. That is when we started to feel what must have been the remains of tear gas as our eyes started to water and our noses started to burn. It wasn´t that dangerous though, or so the policeman assured us. All of this before 11 o´clock in the morning, and we thought students are lazy.

Moonlit Sandboarding in Death Valley

The midnight trip to San Pedro was going so well. We had comfy seats, it was dark and quiet. Just as we were lulling ourselves into a half sleep we were rudely awakened by a police control. We were asked to get out of the bus and collect our luggage for an inspection. It felt like we were in a prison movie. We got out to the very cold night not being able to see anything beyond the inspection tables and a burnt out car. After 15 minutes of standing around in the cold, having found nothing, we were allowed to go back to sleep. Two hours later we were dropped off in Calama to wait in the freezing cold of the bus terminal for two hours. Nothing was open, not even the promised cafeteria. Luckily for us we bought a couple of good sleeping bags in NZ and how we needed them then. Cold and tired the morning bus took us the last steps to San Pedro dumping us in a dusty middle-of-nowhere. Luckily for us San Pedro is very small so only short walk to somewhere. After an unimpressive welcome we found San Pedro to be an absolutely wonderful place. Small but stock full of cafes and restaurants with open fires burning all night in the middle of them to keep off the desert chill. Unpaved dusty roads infested by lazy ownerless dogs and adobe built buildings with thatched roofs make up San Pedro, home to some 4000 peoples. Although most of these people seem to be young, hip and trendy Chileans who work here helping the passing gringos.

So what do you do in the middle of the driest desert in the world? Well, you go on tours and so did we. We took a tour to Death Valley, walking through stunning scenery and running down massive sand dunes (that was soo much fun). Then through the tiny narrow salt caves we clambered before finally ending in the Moon valley to watch the sun set and full moon rise. Wow, what a view, what colours! We even saw an UFO, well it could have been a satellite, but we know they are out there. Back to the hostel to grab some food before we took a 4x4 back out to the Death Valley for some pisco sours and sandboarding under the light of a full moon. It was an incredible experience. Nina was more interested in sampling the local produce then going up and down, up and down but Rob managed to utterly exhaust himself by trudging up the sanddune muttering to himself that the trip down wasn´t worth this walk, only to decide to go down again once he reached to the top. In the end we both succeded to have a few good runs and lots of fun and of course some spectacular wipeouts. Good thing the sand was soft and the headfirst falls were not as painfull as they looked.

Utterly exhausted the next morning we went onto another tour of the amazing desert. First we went to the Atacama salt plain to check out some flamingos. That was a really weird place. It was absolutely massive (third largest in the world) covered with crust of white/brown salt and mineral crystals. It looked like a massive field of dead coral, with a couple of small fresh water lakes which are used as a breeding ground for flamingos. They were not as pink as we though they are going to be but they were cute none the less. After that we went to the antiplano to see some lakes (sorry lagoons) over 4000 m above sea level nestled between mighty Andean volcanos. There we saw a herd (or whatever the collective noun is) of vicunas. Apparently the jumper made of vicuna wool can fetch around $25,000 US. This is because the only way you can get the wool is to find it where the animal has shed it up in the high mountains, and on top of that the animals are rare. On our way to the antiplano we took the freaky road where the water flows upwards. That is what it looked like anyway. The driver switched the engine at the bottom of the road and then suddenly the mini van started to roll backward up the hill. So immediately we all jumped out to investigate. There were some experiments involving water, waterbottles and lots of head scratching until we decided it was an optical illusion. Content that Newton hasn´t deserted us we jumped back onto the bus.

The next day we were sad to say good bye to this cute little hippy town of San Pedro but we had no choice and so we took another bus to the capital of the second region - Antofagasta, a town seemingly famous only for a little green replica of Big Ben. We went to see it of course and it didn´t look much like the real thing but we took few photos anyway. It´s amazing though how an empty and desolate place can look as pretty as the 6 hours bus ride to Antofagasta did. The washed out reds, greens, greys and browns of the rugged hills like waves of rock drifted past creating the perfect landscape for daydreaming.

Highs and lows

Ahhh, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that. Things often do not go quite to plan.

We bussed our way to Arequipa only to be struck down with a lovely mixture of altitude sickness and a more traditional stomach complaint (you know what we mean!) What were the chances ... well come to think of it, they were probably quite high, but anyways. Feeling as we were, we had to sit down and make some choices. We hung out in Arequipa (a pretty pretty place to be stuck in we must admit, but more of that in a moment) for a few days before deciding that the best place for us was not the high mountains of Peru and Bolivia, but the sunny coast of Chile.

Arequipa itself is a lovely town. Nestled amongst the volocanos and canyons of the Andes, the town is mostly made from white stone (sillar, a white volcanic rock) which gives the buildings a majestic feel and it contains some incredible colonial places. This includes our favourite, the Convent of Santa Catalina, a beautiful place vividly coloured in reds and blues that covers an entire city block. Don't worry, we have loads of photos :)

So after our stay, which was made even more pleasant by the loveliest hostal so far in South America, we headed south, to the border town of Tacna (which seems only to exist to give home to a million casinos and chemists - what the connection or reason for this is we have no idea) for one night and then onto Iquique, the surf capital of Chile. Crossing the border had a certain charm too, with us being crammed into the fastest shared taxi in Peru with 4 other people, speeding across the deosolate landscape which we have become surprisingly accustomed to, with the speedometer consistently showing zero. Our driver, having overtaken everything he saw, seemed to sneak us past all the queues at the boarder and get us through the formalities in record time. Not that we were complaining. And then onward into Chile with a stop in Arica simply to get a bus down to Iquique.

So here we find ourselves, actually at the end of our stay in Iquique. We found ourselves a lovely little hostal to hang out in, as we have not been inclined to do that much while we have been here. The town has a faded charm, with numerous old buildings with their slowly flaking paint which are quietly falling apart, and long beaches, overlooked by massive massive sand dunes and mountains which remind you that you are at the edge of the Atacama desert. It really is quite a peculiar place. But time waits for no man, so we are off again, towards San Pedro, the desert proper and to the salt lakes of Chile. Should be fun!

Nazca Aliens

Iit´s midday in Nazca and it´s sooo hot here that we decided to spend few hours in the internet shop next to the fan. These people have no idea what an autumn is all about. ¿Where is the drizzling rain, wind and cold weather? ¿Donde, Donde? Well it is one of the driest places on earth after all. The journey here took 7 hours through amasing Peruvian desert lodged between the mighty Andes and the Pacific Ocean. There is not much we can say about Nazca town itself but this morning we took tiny 6 seater plane over the Nazca plain to see the lines. The figures are bit smaller than we expected but amazing none the less. The plain is massive and the lines criss cross it in bizzare geometrical paterns. And then there are the figures themselves. So wierd. They say it´s something to do with ancient Nazca civilisation but we know it´s them aliens again. We had jolly little pilot who decided, at the end of our trip, to take us on a little rollorcoster ride. Off we went up and down, up and down - it was good we didn´t have breakfast before the flight. Nina was happy when the pilot decided to level the plane and calmly touch down. Now we have 11 hours wait for our next bus journey, 8-10 hours overnight journey to Arequipa.