arena y sol

Alright, we're going with one more travel post, just because they're so much fun and I've got material. Myself and nearly all my fellow foreign exchange students (12) spent Samana Santa (that is, Easter weekend) in the renowned San Pedro de Atacama.  San Pedro is the geographical bookmark of northern Chile--yet shockingly small in physical dimensions and population considering its international accolade. It's a simple town in the middle of the desert (picking up on the theme around here yet?) comprised of a few dozen hostels, a couple nicer hotels and a bunch of restaurants, pubs and travel/tour agencies.  Oh yeah and...por sopuesto...a large catholic church in the center. Essentially, the only piece of nature it has to offer is a lot of sand and a lot of sun, oh! and unrivaled night-skies due to minimal light pollution and the clearest skies in the world.  But the town itself is quite basic and simple.  So, what's all the hype and buzz about this San Pedro?

Volcán Licancabúr

First-off: San Pedro is one of the only slices of civilization in the heart of the driest desert in the world.  This fact alone makes for a worth while visit--epic no? Beyond that fun fact, the greater San Pedro area is home to some of the most extraordinary natural phenomena in the world, including salt flats, salt lakes, geysers, active volcanos and hot springs--all within a few hours via mini-bus, jeep, horseback or bike. My personal favorite experience was walking atop the world's second-largest salt flat, Salar de Atacama--741,313 acres of salt.  One of the strangest natural substances I've ever stood on. 

Salar de Atacama (salt flat)

From a distance, you think you're looking at snow. Standing on it feels like ice. Then digging into it with your toes and fingers feels like sand, becoming wetter and less substantial as you go deeper...and the field stretches on and on--quite surreal-like. The salt lakes were equally entertaining and baffling. After about a one-hour trek, bumpy and rugged through the desert sand and pitiful grass-like shrubbery, our tour bus arrived at Leguna Cejar. This is a rather large, natural lake with a salt content 3x that of the ocean you're farmiliar with. Quite the phenomenon, I really don't get it to be honest.  However, it made an epic swimming adventure--quite the chilly one at that due to its subterranean-fed water sources/natural springs and extreme desert climate, around 0

degrees celsius at night.  Highly concentrated salt content in a large body of water = effortless

floating upon the surface (like the Dead Sea), ice cube in a beverage style.  Crazy fun!  It was also fun looking at my skin after exiting the lake and air drying in the sun, as the salt clung to my skin and hair doing me up like a poorly dressed crépe. Thankfully Orlando, our tour-guide, was prepared with about five milk jugs filled with fresh water (aqua dulce) to rinse.

El Tatio at 13,780ft above the sea

The other equally impressive tour I went on was Los Géisers del Tatio. Heh, a lot of geysers in a place called Tatio.  This tour is particularly fun because you get to wake up at 3:30am (*3 o'clock if you have a tent, sleeping bag and backpack to pack-up) for a 4am departure.  It's a two hour haul before you arrive at Tatio--a national park in the Andes mountains over 13,500ft above sea level, boasting more than 80 active geysers.  The idea is, arrive at sunrise for the big show: water spouting from holes in the ground at 86 degrees Celsius (186 farenheit. wowzers!), while the air temperature is usually between -10 and 0 degrees Celsius (15-32 F.). And quite the show it was!  After a tour around the geyser field with our guide, we sat down for a nice breakfast: a hard boiled egg (cooked on the spot in geyser water), ham sandwich (that's what they call bread and butter with a couple slices of ham...sometimes cheese), and coffee or tea. ¡Rico, at 4,200 meters above the sea!

After breakfast we bathed in natural, hot-mineral springs next to the geysers, and enjoyed a slow return journey with various viewpoint stops: herds of wild llamas and vicuña (umm, mix a llama, white-tail deer and gazelle =/ ish), lakes, an indigenous village, and other fun stuff.

Okay, but the fun part came after the scheduled stops.  My good mexican friend Raul and I asked the bus driver to drop us off near Valle de Guatín in the middle of the desert (with our packs and supplies), about 15 miles outside of San Pedro.  The previous day, a guy in San Pedro told us we could probably camp out there in the wilderness and survive the night because there's some protection from the cold wind (his name was Jesus...it's gotta be safe!).  But it was noon when the bus driver dropped us off, so we decided to make our way north along the road in search of a small, bathing creek we had heard about and hoped was within a few miles north.

After hiking about two miles down the road (mostly uphill), the midday sun was hot overhead and my pack was getting heavy, with nothing but sand, rocks and heat-crawling asphalt on the horizon...I was getting slightly uncomfortable and kept thinking of Fievel Goes West...until a little red pickup pickup appeared on the horizon behind us.  After a bit of smooth talking (that is, as smooth as a gringo can speak spanish) Raul and I were cruising across Chilean soil in the back of a pickup, the first of many more "hacer el dedo" (hitch hiking) trips to come.

After nearly ten minutes in the back of the truck (and we were cooking), we saw a cluster of vehicles parked ahead, off the road a bit and near a cliff that dropped into a valley...where we found our oasis!  Some less than graceful scrambling and sweating brought us to clear waters and a friendly chilean family.  We found the local spot, Puti Pobre, at the bottom of a rocky gorge, about one mile below the tourist swimming hole, Puti Tama, which charges a $15US entrance fee.  At this point we were feeling pretty good about ourselves, particularly after a long, cool swim, followed by a chilean cerveza and a couple more hard-boiled eggs from our new Chilean friends--a truly perfect afternoon.  We headed out several hours before sundown, in case we didn't have the same luck of transportation for our return trip.  Yet, sure enough, after another mile or two on foot, an affable pickup came to a halt.

Did I mention the cactus were large?

Raul and myself were feeling quite unstoppable by the time we reached the valley...amped about our succesful afternoon and ready to explore the valley of gigantic cactus and find a place near the rocky-river canyon to spend the night.  But unfortunately, it didn't end so well.  After 30 minutes or so in the breathtaking valley, two very suspicious middle-aged men appeared out of nowhere and passed us by dropping some unsettling comments.  After a second encounter with the two and more disconcerting vibes, Raul and I decided against spending the night in the foreign valley and made a quick, yet arduous exit, scaling the cliffs out of the canyon.  We made a b-line in the direction we hoped lead to the road back to San Pedro, our shadows getting longer by the minute.  After less than a mile of rocky scrambling, we were relieved to find the road not far below us.  Fifteen minutes later, we were even more relieved to find two friendly German's, Gwendalf and a name a didn't understand (something like Micah...but not), in an extended cab pickup.  They were headed to San Pedro of course and took us the whole way.

UGGH!  Yes, incredible day. Great trip, memories and experiences.  But it will now always be the trip that was ALMOST perfect...Sometimes I don't get locals, or whatever those two were.

hair-like salt crystal-formation en Salar de Atacama

geyser shy

Puti Pobre: our oasis

La Casa del Sol Naciente

camping: hippie-hostel style

Other highlights of the trip included midnight sandbording (think snowboardingt on huge dunes) under a full-moon in the famous Valle de la Luna, and a fascinating museum covering over a thousand years of the region's history with ancient indian artifacts and tools.

Thanks for reading.  I'll get back to you soon!

el camino

Considering I spent a week on the road in northern Chile and southern Peru (plus the following easter weekend/semana santa in San Pedro de Atacama), it seems appropriate to include one more travel post.

Let's spend some time in Peru...

Cuzco schoolyard: i spy blue

As previously mentioned (no hay palabras post), I spent a lot of time cruising through southern Peru in various tour buses. While this means of "new country orientation" falls way short of the prefered

 backpacking/camping/hitch hiking option, it proved to be an excellent alternative on all levels...practicality, time-efficiency, cost, and cultural exposure. Plus, I enjoyed a healthy portion of the latter means of tranport the ensuing weekend in the desert.

So how about that Peruvian culture?

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Peruvian people offer the most diverse and particularly distinct

culture I've encountered in my short traveling career. Actually, the image of the buses above offers a pretty good projection of the culture. I'll settle with colorful and resolute. A motley sample of alpaca sweaters, scarves and hats, new foods and lots of coca leaf products greeted us at the border city of Arica (still Chilean soil)--where we met our first speed bump and "veered off" our charted course.  No wait, we were forced off by the Peruvian border officials.  *NOTE: Mexicans need a visa to enter Peru.  Quite inconvenient for myself and my two travel companions...particularly Galia who is in fact Mexicana.  "Denied...but not defeated."Unfortunately it was Sunday, which meant the consulate was closed. Therefore, we explored the city and found a small seaside mountain (el morro) to climb with a flat bald peak that offered a museum and war memorial of the historical battle of Arica between Chile and Peru, Cristo del Paz (a 

huge Rio de Janeiro-style Jesus statue overlooking the sea with arms wide open), as well as an incredible view of the whole city with snow- capped Andes on the far eastern horizon.  The sun soon fell into the sea and we descended back into the city and found some pizza (yup, same stuff you eat), then a cheap hostel.  Okay...I gotta start speeding things up, forget the details. After spending all day waiting outside the consulate (think DMV...but double the red tape), we finally crossed the border at 5ish monday afternoon.  Our unfortunate, yet enjoyable, setback meant dropping the 1 day and night stay we planned for Puno (to check out Lake Titicaca) and booking it straight through to Cuzco...but the 20ish hours at 99kph behind tinted glass gave me a great survey of southern Peru.  We started off in the northern rim of the Atacama Desert (same desert I live in in Antofagasta), we're talking sand...and rock and not much else of anything.  But most of it was really hilly and mountainous with occasional daunting cliffs and bulgy peaks--rugged/uniquely beautiful landscape.  After hours of lunar desolation I caught glimpses of vegetation here and there, between my intermittent REM, and before I knew it the sun was rising over lake Titicaca on the eastern horizon.  We were entering Puno.  I spent all of about 45 mintues there, in a bus terminal, too tired to barter with each bus agency and unaccustomedly acepted the offer of the first screaming man that found me, "Cusco...CUSCO!!!"...which was actually before I got my bags out from under the bus (they're pretty aggressive).

The 10 hour haul to Cuzco was almost as beautiful as the city itself.  Puno seems to be the dividing line between the harsh desertscape and lush mountain scenery.  We climbed for hours, through green fields with grazing sheep and bushy alpaca, taking in the enormous snow-capped peaks, reflected in still waters and dwarfing the foot-hill pueblos like stubble...hundreds of miles away from any familiar civilization.  But the Peruvians live out there.

We passes random women swinging hoes, in tandem with their thick swaying braids, dressed in long blue dresses

 and bowler hats. Others hunched over, trekking with enormous striped bundles of food and goods strapped to their back while children herded llamas.  All of this took place miles from any home or building...life in the planes 

and valleys.  I wondered if many of them had ever seen the city before and kept coming back to images of

Abraham, Ruth and prophets.  These folks were truly indigenous, and it seemed to me the closest thing I've encountered to the "Old Testement".  At any rate, this "inside the cover of National Geographic" exposure stirred my spirit and weighed heavy within me.  The simple life, as simple and basic as it gets--so peculiar and novel.  Maybe that's how it's supposed to be?  I mean honestly, in my mind the lives of folks like Abraham and Moses appear a lot more epic and exciting than mine.  Okay, I'll spare you.  But the experience left me with a pool of ambiguously spiritual and philisophical questions to ponder and talk

 over with God until I arrived in Cuzco.  *The only resolution I reached was that next time I won't just be "passing through" (YWAM???...you wanna come with me?)

While Cuzco bears a heavy touristic weight, I must say it's done very tastefully (if tourism can taste good). We thoroughly enjoyed our 24 hour stay there. Nearly all of the streets and a great number of the buildings in this very large city are stone, and this is not the smooth/well leveled cobblestone or brick you've met in Charleston or under your feet on N Main St. in downtown Aville.  This aspect alone adds a particular enchantment to the city.  El centro (or main plaza), oriented around the enormous catholic cathedral of course, was filled with overaggressive vendors, taxis, foot traffic, and an occasional alpaca at all times. Whether you're a shopper or not (I'm not), you can't help but enjoy spending at least a few hours jumping from tienda to street kiosk to random street people carrying a trunk load of blankets, sweaters or scarves, bartering for that perfect deal on whatever distinctly Peruvian article that fancys your liking.  And we're talking dirt cheap prices!  My bartering pride is wrapped up in an alpaca wool winter hat that I got down to 5 soles (that's $1.66 US).  We're talking a quality hat too.  You know the ones, black with white alpacas encircling it, with the styling ear flaps and tassely strings...same style as columbia and north face like to 

sell for  $30 a pop.  It kind of matches my long, wool, alpaca print socks that I bought for 8 soles (about $2.50 US).

Moving right along...we found a solid hostal (yay baño privado...but no hot water), Hospedaje Samani, for 15 soles a person (little less than $5 US).  After finally dropping our heavy packs and cleaning up a bit, we headed back out for the evening and sat down to our first formal Peruvian meal, bartered down from 25 to 15 soles--not half bad for a four course meal including a glass of Peru's famous pisco sour and dessert.  Turns out alpaca is quite tasty!

After exploring the city for half of the following day, we caught a $3 (US) taxi out of Cuzco and snaked up, down, and around more breathtaking mountains, through prairies and planes and finally into a deep valley where we met our last village between us and Machu Picchu's Aguas Calientes.

The name of this town is Ollantaytambo (it took me three days of asking taxi and bus drivers how to get there/how much it costs before I could say it without studdering).  Umm, because I'm running out of ways to

describe these enchantingly beautiful and mystic towns, I'm just gonna say it was great...and I wish we could have spent more than one night there. This town gave us a little teaser before Machu Picchu, as it has its own ruins nestled in the cliffs, which we ascended just in time to catch my first sunset atop Andean peaks.  In the evening we found a small market to buy food for the rest of our trip, and then another hostel, which turned out to be the best overnight deal of the trip, yes obviously after a little bartering (10 soles per person/ about $3 US). 

We had the lights out by midnight and the 3:30am cell phone alarm came all too soon to catch a 5am train about a mile down the road. The funny thing is that I planned on sleeping an extra two hours on the train ride, not really taking into account that it's the final two hours of 

travel before arriving at the foot of Machu Pichu. More mountains, cliffs, clouds, vegetation and now waterfalls falling into the Urubamba River, a partially navigable (class 5 rapids) waterhead of the Amazon river which our train ran alongside for the entirety of the trip. I sipped on matte de coca (tea made from coco leaves) as 

a substitute for the two hours of sleep and marveled at the verdant Andean scenery through train windows, trying to spot Mogley or Jaguar Paw in the foliage.

In Aguas Calientes we opted out of the $7 bus to arrive at the entrance of Machu Picchu and chose the stairs...45 minutes, staight up, and up...and up.  VVV For Machu Picchu, you can check the post below VVV

After a LONG (8-10 miles on foot/scrambling--4 of them extremely steep), life changing day, we found a hostal in Aguas Calientes (another $5 US) and slept, quite soundly.  And the next morning we began the return trip *reverse the transportation routes above and drop the hostals.

I love you all and wish that some of you could have shared this trip with me.  Give me a holler when you can afford it.

no hay palabras...

I sincerely apologize that I've gone 12 days without etching new marks on these pages (or I guess it's more like sending html bytes through cyber space).  But, I hope a one week survey of southern Peru was a good enough reason to leave you all waiting.

After 3 city buses, 3 tour buses, 4 taxi cabs, 1 train, and miles walked I arrived at the summit of what would quite probably be the peak experience of my young life.  To translationally echo my post title, there are no words.  At least, I have no words to capture the essence of Inca stone fortresses, temples, and homes 8,000 feet above sea level embodying more than five hundred years of harsh weathering after a hundred years of raw history.  Nor do my 335 photos, now edited and embellished (or, *Picasafied thanks to google), offer a sample of the emotions and mystery as dynamic and sheer as the surrounding granite faces.

I'm quite certain Machu Picchu is not a place to be observed and justly-appreciated through a computer monitor or any digital space for that matter.  It is absolutely an experiencing, so keenly palpable in every sense that I can only urge you go...and I don't say that lightly.  Buy some Inca Cola, find a taxi from Cuzco, take the train from Ollantaytambo, chew on some coco leaves so you don't get altitude sick and take on the 1 hour hike straight up the mountainside to arrive at the grand entrance.  Try the pisco sour, pet an alpaca, barter for a chompa, by all means climb Wyna picchu, and please eat some pancita off the street before you ask what it is.

It's late and I'm waking up at 5:30 tomorrow morning.  So, now I'm just gonna post a lot of photos and hope they're good enough to convince one or two of you take me seriously...see you before the end of the semester?

I'm waiting...