Patagonia forerunner

I didn’t write much about Santiago last time although there is a lot to say about it. I loved Santiago from the moment I arrived. The city is clean, nice, organized, save and open, meaning, there are plenty of places to run and it doesn’t feel like a prison. It’s both close to the beach and to the mountains. People are, although their slang sometimes is hard to understand, helpful, nice and open. Of course after all this places in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia I loved, Santiago is a place much closer to Europe and I was a little bit afraid that the wonderful indigenous moments on my travel are gone. Kind of, it’s true, but by looking at the people, Chileans look variable. Although my appearance still is a little exotic, I’m not that suspicious anymore. Beside European looking people there are still a lot of people I could imagine living as well in Bolivia. Chile has got a great mixture. In my life and all my travels abroad, I have not really been to many cities I could imagine living in. Besides Santa Barbara in California, one is Barcelona, another one is Santiago. Although it is said it gets a little chilly in winter. But hey, what do you expect? It’s always been chilly in Chile  🙂

Anyway, I just loved the city. When the GAP people disappeared one by one I relocated to Chimba hostel in Bellavista barrio where I was going to meet Michelli. The night before he arrived it happened. I got to know Alba, rather luckily. If Diego and Andrea wouldn’t have picked me up for another beer, if I would have followed my plan to go to sleep earlier, if there wasn’t a concert the same night Alba attended, if the hostal would have followed their internal rule not to let in Chileans (“but hey, these ones are nice, no?”, Diego, the guy at the reception said), if there wasn’t her sister strongly supporting us, if I didn’t hand over a beer… and a lot more coincidences, we would just have gone our individual way. But she became my girlfriend. So, that must be enough gossip for all of you who have heard rumours about it. The story belongs to us.

As Alba left towards home to Curicó, Michelli arrived and we spent two more days in Santiago before heading to Viña del Mar, which we decided the last moment instead of going to Valparaiso. I was told by many travellers before that Viña is nicer than the just 3 km away Valparaiso. It was ok, but I thought Valparaiso, though I didn’t see much of it, a lot more authentic then this rather corny and touristy Viña. Michelli relocated to Valparaiso while I decided on short notice to head forward to Curicó for Alba’s sake and wait for him there.

Valparaiso

In Curicó Alba surprised me by taking me to the countryside near Molina where we spent the weekend camping. I got to know some more of her nice friends while swimming, doing BBQ (no problem being a vegetarian) enjoying the warm sun and drinking beer. It’s been a wonderful lazy Sunday in Chilean summer.

Back in Curicó, Michelli arrived soon and after a few more days I separated again from Alba and her sister and we went further south and spent a night in Concepcion. Like Curicó, Concepcion too was badly damaged when a big earthquake (and a tsunami in Concepcion) on February 27, 2010 happened. With a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale, it was the 6^th highest earthquake ever recorded by seismographs. Big parts of both cities have been destroyed. Not all of it has been rebuilt since. You can see damages on several churches. It was an indescribable terrible day, but luckily, as Chile knows its threat and is on western standard, the official number of 550 dead victims is unbelievably low for a century event like this. Luckily, luckily! Alba and her friends and relatives could easily have been part of a higher number (!!!). If you want to read more about the earthquake, you should visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake

From Concepcion, we travelled to Pucón, which is some sort of St. Moritz in Chile, only much, much better and far less “schicki-micki” (English explanation: rich places try to appear even richer and the result is they become ridiculous). Situated in a beautiful region, which reminds me to the southern part of Switzerland around Lago Maggiore, there are a lot of lakes to visit and swim in, hikes to be done and mountains to climb or look at. But unlike Switzerland, there are 3 volcanos in the region, one of them, the 2847 high volcano Villarica is greatly visible from within the town. The volcano is active and at most times you can see little smoke escaping from its peak. You don’t actually feel it in the city, but there is a permanent danger that the volcano erupts and spits its ashes and lava to the city limits. For that, they test their alarm system I think on a daily basis at noon. The city must be evacuated quickly.

Because Pucón is such a popular place to go as well as for foreign tourists, Chilean families and backpackers, it is not easy to find accommodation. Especially in high season. High season? Good cue! When was the change from low to high season? Everywhere I was before, in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia I’ve always been told it is low season and there are not many tourists around. But suddenly, from one day to next, withouth prewarning, I’ve been told ever since that now is high season with all the accompanying disadvantages like the need of booking ahead, everything being more expensive and less relaxed. I really can’t tell how and when it happened. But it’s no joke: it’s high season and we unsuccessfully stumbled around in Pucón in search for a hostel or even a hotel, well, just somewhere we could spend at least one night. Then we met Cecilia. She picked us up and showed us her probably unofficial hostel which had just two beds left. The price was just 6000 Pesos (about 12 USD) and for most of our stay, we have been the only non-Israelis at this place. She must be mentioned in an Israeli guide book or so…. They have a talent to find the cheapest places for living. But how stupid is it when they can save money on cheap accommodation and on the other hand a couple of young guys were so badly informed that they were about to buy a ridiculously expensive bus ticket to Santiago if we wouldn’t have told them other options.

Ojos del Caburgua

Landscape around Pucón

We also did a trip to Huerquehue National Parque close to Pucón and did a hike up to the lagoons. It’s a beautiful place and that is kind of touristy doesn’t have much recognisable impact. It’s been worth it.

Volcano Villarica and Tinquilco Lake

Cascada

Via Valdivia we now are going to Puerto Montt where we meet Alba and her sister again for one week of travel together.

Skyline Valdivia with Sea Lions

The Atacama Crossing

Originally, I didn’t have a very good feeling about being part of an organized tour with GAP-Adventures from La Paz to Santiago. I somehow knew after all this travelling alone and being free from whatever duty, I would find it difficult just to lay back and experience, whatever will happen to me. But I missed the last cancelling deadline 2 months before departure by a very few days. So I knew I would be travelling in a way I became to dislike the months before by looking at travelling groups I met on the way: travelling without much of contact to local people because everything is just organized. Contact to local people is one of the main joys during my travel. Especially now as my Spanish got to a point in which I can talk pretty much about everything without having too many difficulties.

The upsides of the trip I thought of were: convenient and hassle less crossing of Uyuni and Atacama Desert, of which you can hear a lot of horror stories from other travellers (a Dutch group just recently got stuck in the salt lake for a couple of horror nights, due to a driver who was not instructed well) and a fast transport to Santiago. And if there are a couple of good people on the tour, it wouldn’t be that bad after all.

The start of the tour was in La Paz but to me it made no sense to return there and I preferred to wait for them in Sucre to join them. My original plan was to join them on their first day in Sucre as I had a hotel room with them prepaid for me. But I didn’t. I just had too much going on doing farewell things.  Only next day I moved out. But again, my schedule was full of visiting places so I didn’t meet anyone of GAP that day either. I only managed to have a short talk on the phone to Ana Julia, our tour leader, who asked me where the hell I was… She asked me to join the group for dinner, but I had to decline this too, as I already had an important appointment for dinner. So I only met her and the rest of the group the next day. In the group I was already known as the phantom and some of them didn’t believe I’d exist. This was funny… the group, and especially our guide, Ana Julia, turned out be very nice and I had a couple of good talks and we had lots of fun. I couldn’t say anything bad about it. But the downsides of it were exactly as I expected. Anyway, it was on me to adapt and make the best out of it. But I could never drop the feelings of being torn apart between my farewells in Sucre, what had happened at work and the outlook of meeting my best mate in Santiago. So I probably wasn’t the best travelling mate. But they all were very cute to me and I always had someone having a beer with me. Thanks guys! It’s been lovely with you!

Enough about conditions and let’s get to the important things: the nature. And nature was at its very best!

Before the salt flats of Uyuni we went to Potosi. Potosi on 4000 meter above sea level once was one of the world’s most populated city because of its rather easy accessible silver mines. But with silver price dropping and mining conditions in the mountain becoming more difficult, people’s interest of mining silver decreased. But still, today there are about 5000 miners in the mountain every day. The mountain behind Potosi is also called “The mountain that eats men” because it is said that since people started mining it almost 500 years ago a total of 8 million people died in the mountain and of slavery or of direct consequences of working in the mine due to dusk in the lungs, asbestos and other highly poisonous material. A miner normally doesn’t get older than 45 years. One should think the motivation behind it would be a solid pay. But most of them don’t earn much, because prices are low, quality is bad and the big sources of silver are gone. Furthermore, the methods the miners are working with, have not significantly changed during the last 500 years. There is a German documentary I can recommend about the mines, which is called: “The devil’s minor”. The devil refers to the protection power inside the mountain. Outside, the minors believe in God, inside the mine, where they think, God cannot reach them, they ask “el Tio” (the uncle), but it means devil, to protect them by sacrificing coca leaves, alcohol, sometimes llamas… this is not fiction, this is reality! In Potosi you can also learn a lot about the history of money, coin welding and the fall of one of the world’s richest city to poverty.

Potosi and the mine

 

The salt flats of Uyuni are one of the big wonders of the world. I’ve seen so many pictures of it and people told me, how amazing this experience is, my expectation grew incredibly high. And I wasn’t disappointed. This huge flat land of 12’000 square km, also visible from the moon as a white spot, cannot be explained in words and pictures. Due to the rain season, there was a considerably amount of water on the salt flats which unfortunately made it impossible for us to cross it in order to sleep in the salt hotel. But the water increased the mirroring effect and the sun shone back from the endless whiteness of the salt. It was magic to stand and lie there in the middle of the salt and trying to play with the distance effects on photographing (on which my camera of course completely failed).

My game with the chess figures didn’t work out

Salt flats of Uyuni

 

We continued our travel southwards and visited the lagoons with their numerous flamingos in the middle of a stunning landscape.

 

Finally we left the 4 to 5 thousand meter altiplano with the visit at some geysers and came down to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, where we visited the valley of the moon. A landscape so dry and rough, it could be on the moon. Maybe the pictures of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Adren were taken there?

 

Further south in La Serena, we reached the ocean and I spent two afternoons at the beach. Finally it feels like summer with temperatures of more than 30 degrees. We also paid a visit to the space observatory in Elqui valley. The nights there are always clear and there are the world’s biggest telescopes. The place is sold and maintained by scientists of USA and Europe, but Chile gets 10% of the time for their own researches.

At last, we arrived in Santiago, where I was not doing much except for enjoying the summer and wait for Mitchelli to arrive. Santiago is great, open, safe and cultural city and I spent a few great days there. Finally, my friend arrived and we now do some travelling together, which I am really much looking forward too. I think Patagonia will be THE highlight of my trip.