As you know, we have quit teaching English, moved out of our apartment, and started traveling. Our first stop was to hop over the border with Argentina to get a tourist visa. We were on a work visa, and it had expired, so we needed a tourist visa in order to keep traveling in Chile. We were worried there would be a problem at the border, there is always a problem when you try to do anything involving bureaucracy in Chile because the initial people you come into contact with don't actually tell you the correct information regarding the materials, papers, payments, locations you need. There are minute things like the size of your passport photo that can delay the whole process.
But there was no problem! We camped in Uspallata for 2 days. We saw some cool petroglyphs in the desert, which had been made 2 to 10 thousand years ago, which was pretty cool!
Then we went back to Santiago for a couple days and stayed with our friends Alex and Naoko. We of course watched the Packers game at our friend Gregorio's house, and then left on a bus on Monday night at 10pm. It was an overnight bus. The trip was 15 hours up to Chanaral, a town in the Norte Chico region of Chile. I am a pro at sleeping, even in transportation modes, so I slept most of the time, so it wasn't too bad for me. We arrived at Chanaral at 11am, pretty weary. We were headed for the national park called Pan de Azucar, but we weren't sure how far away it was and if we could get there that same day. Our guide book said there was a cheap bus that could take us there, but we soon found that that bus only ran during peak season, which is January and February. A taxi was following us and told us that he would take us for $40 round trip. Which is crazy, but it was the only way. So we quickly bought some food because we were camping, and went up to the park. It was so beautiful and uninhabited. We pitched tent at an amazing camp site right on the ocean, and then took at boat ride to an island just offshore where we could see Humbolt penguins. The next day we hiked into the hills through a valley, at is was just so gorgeous, something out of the imaginations, like something Disney would build for a a theme park ride. It was a perfect hike, only 3 hours, and we brought sandwiches with us and ate them when we got to the head of the valley where there was a spring.
Then we walked along the shoreline, which was just stunning. We were the only people. There was no one else the whole time we walked. I was shell collecting, as usual, in the beautiful rock pools. The next day our taxi driver picked us up and took us back into town to get a bus south to Caldera. Caldera is a really historic town in Chile because it was the first port in the north. We visited the cemetery, which was very cool because there were graves of the first immigrants from Germany, England, Scotland, and even China there. We also visited a religious shrine for Padre Negro, a black priest who lived in the area 80 years earlier, and then we went to a beach town just south called Bahia Inglesa, because the English pirates and sailors used this bay to hole up while resting. It was really beautiful, although a bit windy. We are traveling a bit before the high season so there really aren't many tourists and the beaches and towns have all been pretty empty, which has been nice, but also annoying since transportation and tours haven't started yet.
After Caldera we went down to La Serena, which is the second oldest colonial town. And it looks really colonial. It's as close to Europe I've seen yet on this trip. I really loved it! There were tons of old stone churches. We went to the beach but it was a bit chilly and windy. We stayed with a couchsurfer, Cecelia, who had her own little townhouse up the hill from the center of town. She was really friendly and we had our own room. She was having a lunch for her brother's birthday on Saturday and invited us and we had a great time. No one spoke English though, so I had a hard time trying to follow the conversation! I tried more Spanish the more wine I drank! The next day we were getting ready to leave on the bus for Valley de Elqui, when Cecilia's brother, Jaime, told us he was cooking the wild rabbit he shot last night for us... so we stayed for that. It was pretty cool to be eating a wild rabbit he just shot, and it tasted good, but about twenty minutes after I ate it, it came back up... not sure what happened there! :)
We got on the bus to go to Pisco Elqui, which is deep in the valley, about an hour and a half. It's such a beautiful ride through the valley. The vineyards are so beautiful contrasted with the rocky hills and mountains. The Elqui valley is the center of pisco production in Chile. We camped there for 3 nights in a really cute campsite at the bottom of the valley. There were hot showers! And only a couple other people camping. We rented bikes in Pisco Elqui and rode 7km to an artisan town called Horcon. There were some serious hills and it took about 2 hours to get there! We stopped at a cute artisan pisco brewery called Los Nichos, where pisco is still distilled and bottled in the old ways. Then on to Horcon. I bought a necklace. The artisan booths weren't all open, there were only about 6 or 7 out or 20 open. But the stuff we did see was really really cool and I could have easily spend hundreds of dollars on gifts there! We had hoped to find a restaurant but everything was closed. We were told there was a shop to buy sandwiches deep in the valley, so we set off on our bikes and ran into a really great little hidden spot – it was actually someone's home cum restaurant and the girl made us some great chicken and rice and salad for $8. We were the only ones there and it was gorgeous and peaceful. Then it was the ride home, which went much faster since we were going down most of the hills. It was really fun. The next day I was so exhausted and we only took a 10 minute bus ride to the next town called Monte Grande, where the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral was born. Her old school was turned into a museum and we visited it for about a dollar.
After Pisco Elqui we took a slightly terrifying bus ride along the valley hills to Vicuna, where we hoped to visit an observatory to see the amazing night skies. But it was too cloudy and we didn't go. But during the day we had visited an house-museum from the 19th century, which belonged to Basque immigrants who got rich exporting Chinchilla leather to France for clothing. It was a very cool house with beautiful furniture from all over Europe. Then we visited the Capel brewery, the most popular and distributed pisco in Chile. We took a tour. Some of the pisco is actually put into barrels make from North American oak. As we were walking back from the distillery we saw a massive spider walking along the side of the road. Massive, as in big, round, hairy body and legs. At least 40cm long and 12 tall. Which was really ironic, because Jesse had wanted to visit the local bug museum anyway! There are some serious bugs in South America that I hope not to encounter!
We wanted to go on a tour that night, of the observatory near town. Which is why we stopped in Vicuna. But there were so many clouds, that we knew the tour would be canceled. We were really bummed out. The stars are amazing, filling up the sky. I used to see them like that when I was a kid and we went camping near the California-Oregon border at Jedidiah Smith State Park. I think that was the first time I saw how many stars are in the sky. Before TV and radio and Iphones, I bet people spent every night watching the stars and planets.
So, we left Vicuna and took a 9 hour bus ride back to Santiago, stayed at Alex and Naoko's again, and then took our stuff to our friend Pamela and Pablo's apartment for them to store for us until July. On Sunday we of course watched the Packers game.
Then we took a 1am flight out of Santiago to Punta Arenas.
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