Fresh from the Desert.....

Howdy gang, Melanie and I arrived in Punta Arenas, Patagonia several hours ago. We had a long day of traveling, two 4 hour flights from the top of the country to the bottom of the world. We just had dinner and drank a bottle of wine so bare with me on this post.

We just spent 5 days in San Pedro de Atacama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_de_Atacama). Some of our plans didn´t work out as we thought, but was made up in other ways. Our little blue rental car was a blessing and curse, more of the former than the latter. More on that later.

We spent our first evening visiting valle de la luna, a national park a 10 minutes drive out of town. We started off hiking through some lava caves, although we didn´t know the caves were part of the trail and it was a good thing we had our head lamps. There was a group of young Chileans hiking throughout the cave, using their cell phones as lights. You could say we saved their lives, although I don´t think they thought of it that way.

We then drove out to a very old salt mine that sat behind a few boulders that were in the middle of the desert. The boulders were a main attraction of the park, we didn´t find out why until later, apparently they are 1,000,000 years old. The salt mines were nice, only I had to hold Melanie back from wanting to lick the ground and I wore out my arms from her determination.

We ended our time at the park climbing a giant sand dune and from there climbing out through a rocky mountain valley to watch the sunset. We could tell why the park was called Valley of the Moon, walking around the park had strong moon like qualities. The pictures don´t do it justice, the few I´ve posted here make them look tiny, trust us, they were HUGE!

We found out that there were some hot springs along with waterfalls and swimming pools 15 miles out of town. The following day we piled into the great blue clunker and headed northwest. Not far from town, the road was so incredibly riveted and bumpy that we couldn´t venture forward. Somewhat bummed to miss out on the hot springs, we heard of some man-made swimming pools south of town, Pozo 3 (not sure why the number 3 is here, it´s not like there were two others). It was pretty much a Chilean family picnic grounds that had a giant pool, 30ft deep in the adult section. It was a great way to beat the heat for a little while, the sun in this desert is a force to be reckoned with. I did mention it is considered the driest place in the world right? In town they have a stop light displaying the danger levels of solar rays. During the afternoon (code purple) it says that white folk like us shouldn´t be in the sun for more than 11 minutes at a time!

After swimming we decided to continue the drive since we were already out of town. We headed East towards the Andes, a slow and steady climb up to around 4,000 meters. There are several flamingo reservations around San Pedro, we wanted to find one of the few in high elevation. The drive was beautiful, crisp clear blue skies and a great view of a volcano in front of us as we ascended. The lonely road ran parallel to a giant canyon, giant boulders lining the walls. We saw a pack of wild alpacas grazing in the mountain range. Apparently the alpacas love it up there because they and see their predators (pumas) from miles around, not many places to hide in the desert range. I pulled over to take a few photos of the alpacas and the high elevation really hit me. I was totally fine in the car, but taking two steps left me faint of breathe and wanting to keel over. We decided it was enough high elevation for the day and figured we would let the flamingos play by themselves. We headed back to town for some dinner and sleep. Melanie got some mushroom risotto made with a fruit that only grows in the Atacama desert, Chañar. They made a sweet flavored Chañar reduction to top the risotto and it was lip smacking good.

We the had an appointment with a french astronomer to take a tour of the stars. Northern Chile is supposed to be one the best places in the world for some star gazing, they have some giant observatories here. You needed reservations a month in advance, we settled for the local tour. Our appointment was for 9pm and was going to be 2 hours long. We had dinner first at a restaurant down the street thinking we had plenty of time. We arrived at their door 5 minutes before 9 and waited around for someone to show. A few minutes after 9 we heard some voices inside their office and knocked on their wooden door. The people inside informed us that the tour left 20 minutes earlier, and as it turns out, our travel time piece is, well, it´s a piece of something that doesn´t involve time. We missed our tour and were really bummed, partially because it was the whole reason we rented a car in the first place. But, since we had the car, we figured we would go star gaze by ourselves. A 20 minute drive out of the tiny 3,5000 person village left a bright sky even brighter. The milky way was hovering over us so close we wanted to grab it with our hands.

Our last day in the desert we decided to give the high elevation another try, this time we were armed with some special tea that locals drink to help the blood get to their brain, making it easier to acclimate. Our destination was two alpine lakes that had breeding grounds for flamingos, what seemed just an hour from town on our map. Well, 45 minutes out of town it turned into a dirt road, and we were hoping it was better condition than the road to the hot springs. It was, for the first 45 minutes. The scenery was desolate and beautiful. As far as the eye could see was desert and mountains. The slow and steady climb with out little putt-putt car started to get more difficult as the road worsened. We were getting passed by speeding tour buses with 4 wheel drive. People would just stare at us like we ate the wrong end of a snake. We eventually made it after 2 hours on the road, Melanie´s back was killing her from the bumpy ride. Blah blah blah, more gorgeous mountains, pretty lakes, is this getting repetitive or what? They wouldn´t let us go down to the water as it is protected flamingo territory. I want to say we saw herds of flamingos, frolicking and fornicating, but I wouldn´t be telling the truth. We were in the wrong part of the season, and we only saw several lone flamingos, and they were so far away we could barely make out the lines of their thin bodies.

We drove back to town, rocking out to Chairmen of the Board on our little travel speakers (we didn´t have the cable for the auxillary input in our car and the local radio was terrible). We were pretty grateful for the rental car, it was difficult at times, but we saw some great stuff thanks to it. It was also much better than donig stuff on a tour.

We woke up at 5am the following day to catch our flight back to Santiago from the Shithole. After getting yelled at by a bus driver for driving down the wrong way on an unmarked one way street, we luckily navigated ourselves back to the airport just in time for our flight. Most of the 9 hours on a plane down to patagonia was uneventful, except for one of the coolest things we´ve ever seen in our lives. South of Puero Montt, we got to witness the legendary volcano Chaiten erupt from the sky on a clear blue day.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE51I77H20090220

see other cool Chaiten pix here, some amazing action last year with volcano battlin a lightening storm.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi/noframes/read/124233



We are meeting up with our dear friends Brandon and Annie tomorrow, then we head off to Torres Del Paine national park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_del_Paine_National_Park

That is all for this report, I cheated and finished this post the following day. It was too hard to stay up after the long day and wine. We met a great Dutch couple, and today we went to a maritime museum where they had pictures and artifacts from Sir Ernest Shackleton´s (one of my heroes) great voyage to the south pole in 1914. If any of you haven´t seen The Endurance, you need to rent it now. We are going to make some squash and musrhoom risotto tonight. The squash here are the size of horse heads. The mercados here cutt of 1/16 pieces for about a dollar. I also go some local scallops (at least I think they are scallops) that I´m going to cook in some chili and lime butter.

much luv to all of you back home

T$M

OI Vei! with a capital Ñ

Whew, what a whirlwind. Well, we´re here, despite a few bumps in the road. We got stuck in Lima by the international narcotics authority. They thought Melanie´s bag of unmarked vitamins were drugs. We got strip searched and vocally abused in several languages. They took our camera, passports, and credit cards then let us loose to survive and whatever means possible. JUST KIDDING! Sorry moms, had to mess with you a little bit.

We are now in San Pedro de Atacama, a small desert town in northern chile. Sorry we didn´t post earlier, this has been the first crack at the internet since we´ve been here. We arrived into Santiago on the morning of the 19th. We took a taxi to our hostel in the Provedencia region of Santiago. Our place was nice and quiet, exactly what we were looking for after traveling for 24 hours straight. The room was a little dark and had bunk beds in them. We had to go through another person´s room to get to ours, luckily it was the habitat of a very nice older Canadian Terry. Terry teaches English, and lives in South America 5 months out of the year to beat the cold in the great white north. He was a great resource to have so early in the trip. We unpacked our bags and took a good long, well deserved nap, me on top of the rickety bunk bed. I had a bookshelf a foot above me so every time I turned over my arm hit the thing. Luckily no serious bunk bed injuries transpired.

Woke up from our nap and desperately needed food and water. Terry told of us of a nearby grocery store and bank. We walked around the neighborhood that was bustling with young Chileans and business people alike. Santiago reminds me of a Latin Portland, lots of trees everywhere and the hipster youth factor was abundant. We were testing the waters of restaurants that meet Melanie´s inscrutable dietary restrictions. Nothing seemed of particular interest so out of sheer hunger we decided to cook our first meal here in Chile. Luckily I brought one of my Henckels cooking knives which is an invaluable possession to have while traveling. You never know when you will need to cook and it´s hard to rely on wonky hostel kitchen utensils. We cooked up some rice with zucchini, had a very fresh avocado and soft chilean cheese on top, delicious! Can´t believe we forgot Tapitio though.

We then took the metro and walked around the Bellavista area, lots of street art and is the hub of the night life in town. It was getting close to sunset and we got some great photos of the art. We decided to head back for some relax time and then to dinner. Dinner proved to be somewhat difficult and we put that down as strike number two in Melanie´s food quest. We went to an Italian restaurant (lots of Italian influence in this country) that was down the street from our hostel. We sat down and tried to get a menu, the waiter didn´t speak any english, I tried to ask for a menu and he was basically saying there was none. Not sure if it was some prejudice against us or there was some secret sign language for getting fed, either way we split and found an empty chinese place. Melanie had some plain veggies with rice and we had a hell of time trying to ask for hot sauce, which we were unsuccessful. We did get a small plate of pickled peppers which were good.

The following morning we woke with a big breakfast on our minds and getting back to the airport for our 4 hour flight up to northern Chile. We made a big breakfast of eggs and chard with the leftover avocado and great cheese. We bid farewell to Terry, wishing we had exchanged email addresses, but we´ll get back to that later in the story.

We took the busy subway to a bus stop, trying to keep ourselves from falling over with our heavy packs on our backs. Since we´re going to be in many types of climates, we had to have many clothes options. Anyhow, teetering tottering back and forth, we made it to the bus stop and luckily there was a bus just about to leave for the airport. When we checked in, we realised our brains were still fried from the jet lag and previous few days long journey to notice that we were an extra hour early for our flight up north. Could have used that sleep in a comfy bed! Oh well, no rest for the wicked.

The flight was serene, a glorious view of the andean mountain range the entire flight. Some of the mountains and volcanoes were higher than the plane was flying (around 20,000 feet!). There were great scenes of the desert turning into sand and ending into the deep blue ocean, just incredible. Wish we more time to explore the northern coast. The plane turned inland towards Calama, to quote our Lonely Planet guide book, it´s a shithole in the middle of the desert. A run down town that has survived off the surrounding copper minds. It´s the closest airport to our current residence in San Pedro. Our plan was to rent a car and drive to San Pedro. We didn´t have a reservation for the car, moving up the north bay right before leaving for the trip left us somewhat unprepared for certain destinations, not impossible to accomplish by any sense though. Most of the car rental agencies were totally out of cars. One place said they might have a car if we waited around for 20 minutes. A wonderful and interesting man Eric came to our rescue from the Budget rental agency. He spoke great english for Chilean standards, and had a very rich British accent, so rich it was kind of weird. He had one car left for us and was very helpful. He has lived his whole life up here in the desert, and is also fluent in German.

An hour later we were on our way to San Pedro. The challenge was getting through Calama. We were given vague instructions on how to get to the freeway towards San Pedro, and we ended up getting lost in nasty Calama for 45 minutes. At this time we were both starving and really needed water and did not want to stop in this town. The desert here is considered the driest place in the world. Within an hour of being here I could feel my hands and skin dry up (and I´m a guy, I normally don´t notice that sort of thing). The 100km drive was gorgeous. The sun was setting behind us and casting all sorts of orange and blue lights that slathered the snowy tips of the Andes with color. Too bad our camera was in the trunk, more focused on getting some food and water to pull over. We got 3 more nights here so I´m sure there will be alot of good photo opportunites.

We arrived in the very small village that was bustling with tourists on foot, along with a few cars and a horse. The dirt roads were bumpy and hard to navigate through the narrow streets. The need of food, water, and a place to leave our packs was overwhelming, and making it difficult to concentrate. We ended up turning down a road that was only supposed to be for people walking, we got yelled at by a big group of tribal native musicians and their crowds of fans. One nice guy who didn´t speak english helped us figure out how to get the hell out of there and where we could park.

After several confusing turns we found a place to park and set off on foot with our heavy packs, looking for a hostel first, as it was getting really late and we wanted to make sure we had a bed to sleep in. We got a dormitory room in a surprisingly clean hostel all to ourselves. We quickly found a restaurant that looked to have Melanie friendly food. The place was a really fancy, the outdoor dining patio had adobe walls and a thin wood awning with a nice fireplace in the middle. I scarfed down some bread served with a peanut-mint salsa that was delicious. I tried to serve melanie some cubes of butter, or a drink from the olive oil bottle but she declined. Our first real Chilean meal arrived and we were overjoyed. Melanie got a big bowl of a thick and dark quinoa with lots thinly sliced veggies and a tasty citrus sauce. I got a mint risotto that was combined with mashed potatoes, served with a heaping pile of shrimp, salmon, and the freshest calamari with a tomato cream sauce. Yup, it was tasty. We opted out on drinking wine this night, being too out of it to consume alcohol. We did have a small glass on the plane ride up north, which was surprisingly good for being plane ride wine.

Sleep was on our minds and hard to come by. There was some crazy loud thumpity thump music going on nearby with a super annoying MC. The music would stop for 5 minutes, we thought it was over, then it would just be the MC screaming in spanish, then music and screaming, then music, then silence, then music, then the MC etc. We fell asleep eventually and it was awesome.

Thats pretty much it for now. We´re going to try and see some flamingos this afternoon in a nearby national park. Tomorrow we have an appointment with an astronomer to give us a star tour. The stars here are indescribable. Hope everybody is well back home, please feel free to pass the blog along to anybody you think would find it interesting.

-t

P.S. bet you wondering when I would get back to Terry and his contact info. Well, on our way to the airport in SF, we stopped by REI and Melanie bought a new Marmot jacket that was the end all be all of jackets and especially great for this trip. Well, she accidentally left the soft shell (aka liner) of the jacket at our hostel in Santiago. Kind of a bummer, but I´m keeping the faith that we will be able to retrieve it with a lot of optimistic thoughts, and a serious amount of luck. Keep your pinkie toes cross for her por favor.

Kick Off baby!

Howdy folks, welcome to our new blog. We (Melanie and I) will be posting here during our upcoming travels to South America. We are a bit overwhelmed right now, leaving in 3 days! We just moved into our cozy new house in Cotati. We are living with our good friends Sabin, Xochitl (pronounced "so-chee"), and their 6 month old baby Yona. It's been a challenging move, and we couldn't have done it without the help from massive friendpower, and my Dad for storing most of our junk at his place in C-Dale. We can try to finalize the the things on our many "to-do" lists, hopefully we can get it done in the next three days.

We're starting off the first month in Chile. We arrive in Santiago and stay for just a few days before flying to the Atacama desert in the far north. There we have a reservation with a local french astronomer who will give us a guided tour of the stars close to the new moon. After that we fly to the opposite end of the country (kinda crazy distance wise), to Punta Arenas. There we are meeting up with our friends Brandon and Annie and checking out Patagonia for a week. After that some days in their wine country, and hopefully a good amount of beach time.

Much love going out to all of you, we hope t hear from you on our travels.

T&M