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.