Taito Geysers and Valle de la luna

It has been a whirlwind 4 days since I´ve updated.  I´m typing this from an internet cafe in Uyuni, Bolivia right now as I have about 40 minutes to kill and don´t feel like walking around alone.  Although my clothes are worn down, I´m wearing a heat, and I am more tan than normal, I still stick out like a sore thumb as a gringo.

So Monday morning I took the tour of the Taito Geysers.  I was up and ready at 3:50 AM for them to pick me up at 4.  4:00 came, and nothing.  I waited. 4:15, 4:30, nothing.  At 4:50 I was about to head back to bed, figuring the tour company somehow got things mixed up with my location, but then I heard a van pulling up.  As I got onto the bus, there were about 20 others.  It turns out I was the second to last person to be picked up.

Well, I was told to expect it to be cold.  A former student told me that it would get to 25 below zero (celcius), and so I had myself prepared with 3 layers of pants and shirts, gloves, and a hat.  The tour guide even gave everyone a blanket to cover their legs if they wanted.  And we all certainly needed it.  (Our guide later on that day told us that it was 11 below zero celcius).

The geysers were about a 2 hour ride from San Pedro, so we all slept until we arrived there.  When we got there, there were different areas with different geysers.  Some would emit a constant stream of steam, while others would erupt spontaneously and shoot out some water once pressure built up inside.

Then after seeing a few different areas, it was time for some breakfast.  We got tea, instant coffee, a ham and cheese sandwich, and a hard boiled egg.  Apparently all the tour companies cook the eggs over the steam of the geysers, and once they get to us they are still hot and we could use them to keep our hands warm until we decided to eat them.

After that, we got to go to a hot springs area.  Well, I think I disagree with the name hot springs.  It was more like a lukewarm springs.  I wore my bathing suit underneath my jeans and thermal underwear, and so it was freezing getting out of my clothes before getting into the water.  I would say the water was maybe about 75 degrees fahrenheit, and it maybe warmed up to about 35 degrees fahrenheit by this time.  It certainly didn´t stop other people from enjoying it, but I wasn´t impressed.

The tour ended around noon, and by this time it had warmed up to about 65.  Afterwards I decided to grab some lunch with a menu (set price meal) of chicken with rice and tomatoes, and a drink was included too.

Then I was off to Valle de la luna (Moon Valley) later in the afternoon.  It turns out that most of the people staying at my hostel were on the tour, which included a young German couple, a German girl traveling on her own, and an Israeli guy that now lives in New York.  I also met a guy from Philadelphia that is working in Santiago now too.

By this time it was warm and sunny, and it was about 70.  Valle de la luna was formed mostly by wind and water erosion over a period of thousands of years, and it really reminded me of the Grand Canyon minus having a river.  I think the pictures speak for themselves to show the beauty of the area.

At the end of the tour we climbed up the Duna Mayor (Great Dune) and grabbed a seat to see the sunset.  It was a bit steep at parts and I would lie if I said the height didn´t have me a bit scared, but it turned out to be fine.

Then after that it was back to San Pedro and time for some dinner.  The guy from Philly and I chatted over a thin crust pizza and fresh squeezed juice.  As I was telling him about the bueacracy of Chile and the multiple steps involved in doing any type of return in stores in Santiago, the waitress input the amount of our bill wrong into the credit card reader.  I asked her to simply give me cash for the difference, but she wouldn´t listen to me.  She went to consult with another woman working there, and when she came over I told her the same thing.  Then she left and spoke with a man who came over from another store and explained the error she made to her.  (Instead of a tip of 800 pesos she put in 8800 pesos).  He told me that he could return the difference to me or cancel the transaction and do it all over again.  I told him just to give me the difference.  So all in all, it took me 25 minutes to get the difference in cash.

Tomorrow afternoon I´ll be back in San Pedro, and I´ll get the chance to chronicle my adventures traveling through the salt flats of Bolivia.

Arrival in San Pedro

So I am typing this in my hostel in San Pedro now.  The day turned out to be a bit more adventurous than I was expecting, but not in the way I was expecting.

My flight left Santiago at 1:35, and due to the holiday I anticipated some difficulty using public transportation to get to the airport.  Surprisingly everything was running like normal, and I was there by 11:45.  The flight was uneventful, but the real adventure started when I landed in Calama.  Here I am after getting off the flight:

To put things into perspective for those of you who aren´t familiar with Calama, it´s not the safest of cities.  I purposely planned to arrive during the day so it would be safer than at night.  It´s very close to the Bolivian border, and so unfortunately there´s a lot of problems with drugs and crime coming over from the border.  There´s also minimal police involvement on top of that.

We arrived at 3:30, and so at the airport I considered my options for getting to San Pedro.  There was a direct shuttle bus to San Pedro that would take about an hour and a half, but it cost 10,000 pesos (about 20 bucks).  But then there was a shuttle bus that would take you to bus companies in downtown Calama for 3.000 (about 6 bucks), and the bus tickets were only about 2.500 pesos (about 5 bucks).

After waiting about 15 minutes for the shuttle bus to downtown Calama I decided to pay for the direct shuttle to San Pedro.  The problem was that it was filled up by the time I went back, and there were no others running for the rest of the day..  I found 3 other people (a woman from Italy and 2 guys from Japan) that were trying to get to San Pedro also, so we decided to split a taxi to downtown Calama and then get a bus from there.

We got the taxi for 5.000 pesos between all of us, and we went to the first bus company.  (There´s not really a central bus station in Calama, so you have to go to each bus company separately)  It was about 4:00 at this point, and at the first bus station the next bus was only leaving at 6.  So we walked to the next bus company, and they didn´t have any other buses going to San Pedro for the day.   On top of this people were coming up to us begging for money, and one of the Japanese guys was casually stopping to take pictures with his professional camera on every street corner as if he were a tourist in New York City.  Things were not looking good.

Someone suggested going to another company.  A scruffy looking man came up to us asking us what we needed, and I explained the sitatuon to him.  He helped us to get a taxi since none were passing by, and he asked us for a tip for his help.  I gave him a few hundred pesos and thanked him for his help.  Once we got to the this company´s location they luckily had one more bus going to San Pedro, so we were able to get that one at 5.  It cost us 2.500 each (about 5 bucks), and we got in around 6:15.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief once I was on the bus, and it was just a 10 minute walk from the bus station to the hostel.

The view on the way from Calama to San Pedro

After getting settled in and exploring downtown I made some dinner and am getting ready for a tour of the Taito Geysers bright and early at 4 AM tomorrow and Valle de la Luna tomorrow afternoon.

It feels great to be traveling again.

Fiestas Patrias

After a 2 month hiatus of updating my blog, here I am again.  It's September, and I have once again survived the cold Chilean winter.  I've formally retired my space heater until next year, and I have changed back to my normal comforter from the down one.  All around there's a sense of relief that the winter is over amongst everyone that I talk to, and we're looking forward to the summer weather.

Today is September 18th, which marks Chile's Independence Day.  Since it's a Sunday this year the festvities started on Friday when most businesses closed at noon.  Tomorrow is also a holiday, and people joke that it's National Hangover Day as everyone recovers.

My celebrations began on Friday with a party in the office where I work.  It included cueca music, empanadas, wine, and good company.  After that a student invited me to a barbeque with his friends.  They speak varying degrees of English, so I was also speaking Spanish a good amount of the time.

On Saturday I went to Roberto and Pame's house out in the country. They manage the office where I work and are great people, and the area was really amazing. There was so much open space, and it was warm and sunny all day. There was good food, good drinks, and even some sack races, tug of war, and other games.

Other than that, life here has been pretty mundane.  The only exceptions are the occasional protests that are still happening and a class of mine taking me out to Starbucks for a change of atmosphere from our usual class in the bank.

Since I've been working pretty hard and haven't been out of the area since February traveling I decided to take a week off.  In about half an hour I'm off to the airport to go to San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile.  I'll be there for a week, and while I'm there I'm going to see geysers, float in a salty lake, see some amazing scenery, and visit the salt flats of Bolivia.  I'm really looking forward to it, as it's one of the trips I've wanted to take since I got down here last year.

Once I'm back I'll update with pictures and stories of my adventures.  Happy 18 to everyone reading this in Chile!

Student Protests Part 2

So, the student protests about the education system in Chile are continuing.

Last time I avoided the downtown area on purpose, as I didn't want to get caught up in any violence or teargas. This time I thought the protest was going to be happening at 6 tonight, but let's just say I was wrong.

So it all started out with me leaving my apartment at 11:00 for my class that starts at noon.  It usually takes me about 25 minutes to arrive, and I got on the bus to downtown without any idea of what was going to happen.

The bus (514 for those of you reading that are familiar with Santiago) took its normal route down Avenida Irarrazaval, and then turned onto Salvador.  It normally turns onto Avenida Providencia (one of the main streets) and then goes down to Alameda (the main street that starts at Plaza Italia), but it turned early down another street that runs parallel.  No big deal, I thought.  It will run parallel and then I can walk the six blocks or so to get to where I need to go.

Well, that's when things started to go downhill.  Shortly before we got to Vicuna Mackenna (another main street), the bus driver made a left turn and started to go back the way he came.  When people on the bus asked him what he was doing, he said, "Voy a casa".  (I'm going home)

Yup, that's right.  So we all got off the bus and tried to figure out how to get to our destinations.  The closest metro (Parque Bustamante, which wasn't anywhere near where the protest was taking place) was closed, so I started walking.  The main streets all were shut down, so I called my student and explained the situation.  He's now at the level of being able to understand on the phone in English, and he told me not to worry.

I tried getting on buses that were passing by, but they weren't taking any new passengers.  I asked a policeman directing traffic how to best arrive to where I needed to go, and he told me the only way to arrive was to walk.  So that's exactly what I did.

I got to Alameda, which is the main street where the protest was happening.  Here are some pictures:

The fence I had to jump over to cross the street

You can't tell from the picture, but they are on the roof of the overhang for the bus stop.

I tried  post a video, but after waiting for over an hour I'm going to try to post it another time.  In the end, I made it to my class a few minutes late.  When I walked back to the office it seemed like there was a lot more happening towards La Moneda (which is their main government building) and I thought I saw teargas or smoke in the air, but I didn't stick around to investigate.

Just another day in Chile I suppose.

Laptop Saved, Ticket Home, Student Protests, Oven Fried Chicken, and 4th of July in Winter

So my laptop is alive!

A Chilean friend helped me by taking it around to repair places.  Long story short, he got a place to clean it out for 10 dollars.  Ideally they would have replaced the keyboard, but they didn't have any in stock.  Now it has a few nuances about it:

1. The right arrow key doesn't work.
2. When it turns on it beeps angrily at me until I hit the right shift key three times.  After that it loads normally.
3. Once it loads up, any time I click on something it automatically scrolls over to the icon to the furthest right side of the screen.  The solution?  Hitting the right shift key three times.

I was so relieved to not have to shell out money for a new laptop, as I'm considering getting a new one when I'm home visiting in February.

So yes, as I always do with my planning, I already have a ticket home to visit.  I'll be getting in to JFK February 7th, and I'll be home until the 28th.  I wanted to be home to celebrate the 4 family birthdays, and this year is a big one for my dad since he'll be 70.  My plan is also to get in a visit out to Los Angeles again to see friends and escape the Jersey winter for a week too, and on the way back to Santiago I'll be in Colombia for about 8 days.

The student protests in Santiago have been ongoing, so last weekend I decided to take a stroll around downtown with my camera and take some pictures to document.  And here they are:

This is near where I work in downtown. 

The phrase "en paro" means on strike in Spanish.  ICEI is the abbreviation for a school.

Someone cleverly put a bandana on this statue, and my guess is that they are making reference to the government being robbers with the education system.

Free education

Translation of the middle sign: Engineers taking over for a public education of high quality

A lot of buses have things written on them in protest of the education system.  Lavin is the Education minister, and many have called for him to resign.  It looks like this says Lavin Educriminal.

This is from a public school a block from where I live.  "We want a quality education!  Liceo 007 taking over!"

Another photo of the same school.  "Now it's our turn!"

There was a huge protest here on the 30th, starting in Plaza Italia and going all the way down Alameda (the main street of Santiago.)  The reports vary between 100,000 and 400,000 people marching, but in any case it was huge.  I had a class in downtown shortly before it started, so luckily I avoided it.  I considered going back to the office after my class, but I decided to avoid the possibility of teargas and the like.  I tried putting a link to a news article from the Santiago Times on here, but unfortnately their website wasn't working right to view it.

I've been meaning to post pictures of this for a while, but I finally got around to taking pictures and getting them up on here.  I've found a really good recipe for oven baked fried chicken.  I usually also make a salad and mac and cheese, and so here's what it looks like:

And it's hard for me to believe that it's the 4th of July already.  Due to Movistar not yet installing internet and cable in my apartment, I'm actually sitting in a Papa John's that has wireless, bundled up in multiple layers due to the cold weather.  I'm not much of a patriotic person so I'm not doing anything tonight, but yesterday I went to an event at California Cantina (a gringo bar here) that had burgers, fries, a drink, and apple pie for about 10 bucks.  I normally don't like going there, but it was a nice afternoon event for a change.

And that's all for now.  From Santiago, wishing everyone back in the States a happy 4th of July!