Pachamama - Part 1of 3

  Antofagasta, Chile
Monday, October 27, 2008

I got woken up on the Saturday by a girl who had slept with one of the Irish guys in my
dorm the night before. I guess that worked out well for both of us. The German
guys in my dorm who I'd asked to wake me up, gave up after hitting me (as
requested) and presuming I was dead. 

I dragged myself to the tour bus and well.... I'm not sure what happened that day. I was a
mess. We stopped at a church and then for lunch. I tried to talk to some of the
people on the tour with me, I'm not sure how that went. The only thing I
remember was saying that my lunch, which was a beef, ham, and cheese combo,
looked like a cow's vagina. I couldn't eat anymore after that.


 





Now let's see if I can remember everyone's names...

John - Irish
Andrea - Irish 
Kev - Irish
(see a pattern here...) 
Martin -Irish
Rob - Irish
Ivan - Irish
Steph - English
Christin - American
Jerome - French
Michael - Dutch
Rutger - Dutch
Pirmin - German
Raphael - German

And the tour guides...

Yerson - Tour Leader
Vanessa - Trainee Tour guide
Rodrigo - Driver

We stayed in a really shitty hostel when we got to La Serena. Nothing
worked and there was a window that looked in from the kitchen to our toilet.
Classy... That night everyone was tired so we just went to a shitty restaurant,
had a shitty shitty meal, drank some shitty beer, and went to bed. It's fair to
say the first day was.... Shitty.

 

The second day, I was feeling a lot better. This was a long day of driving, we had to get
to Bahia Inglesa which was 490Km away. We stopped at Dinosaur Canyon which was
a massive dried up river bed where loads of dinosaur bones were found. I didn't
find any...

 

* I'm on the bus again (next day), and we are listening to someone's Ipod. It's
currently playing 50 Cent. All his music seems to be about guns, money, crime
and oral/penetrative sex. It really is music for idiots.*



*This is my view of our mini-bus driver. I think he is skinning up whilst driving.. What a legend! I was drawing this, trying to be discreet, and I felt like Will Wheaton in ´Toy Soldiers´ (the film where tourists hijack an american boarding school, also starring Sean Astin...) where he draws pictures of the terrorists to give to the police and Louis Gosset Jnr. But then he gets shot... Maybe if I died, people would look through tis longingly, like in the film, and say stuff like "We have to do it..... for Paul man!" What a film....*

Later, we went on a boat tour of Isla Choras and Isla Damas. I was convinced I would be
spewing everywhere, but I wasn't! 3 cheers for me! I actually really enjoyed it..
I saw some dolphins, sea otters, sea lions, and penguins! Penguins!! I thought
they were only in Antarctica...or Whipsnade. When we got to Isla Damas, we went
to the beach for an hour, and I decided to get a sunburnt face. Perfect. We
arrived at Bahia Inglesa at about 10 pm. We had cabins to stay in that night,
they were cool.... Like wooden tents. I had some food, we lit a bonfire, and we
all got smashed. It was a good bonding session.



 

Day 3 was ours to do with as we wished. I decided to recover. When I did finally get up,
I went to the beach to top up my sunburn. I went to the part of the beach that
didn't smell of death and shit. A good choice. 

* Ah good, some George Michael.. At least he doesn't revel in breaking the law and sexual
deviancy... oh yeah... I was thinking, if everyone knows that he hangs around
Hampstead Heath, waiting for some cottage pie action with a stranger, then why
aren't all gay George Michael fans forming a queue there? I mean, there must be
millions of gay men who wouldn't mind giving him one, surely, and they know
where he is... waiting... It could be you! That should be his advertising slogan...
Maybe he needs to get the London tourism board to recognise him as an official
London Attraction. Come to London, Come to the London Eye, Come to Buckingham
Palace, Come in George Michaels face.. He might even be able to get some
National Lottery Funding... Oh, maybe not, he should have thought about that
before he stole their slogan.*

After the beach, it was pretty much beer o'clock. First though, I went for a shower. When
drying myself, I thought I could hear the unmistakable sound of a horse being
strangled. I went to investigate, and it turned out to be a massive (very
squeaky) adult playground on the grounds of the cabins, that until now we hadn't
noticed. So I got my cowboy outfit on, hence my new nickname "Woody" (that's
the story I'm sticking to...), got a beer, and went to play on the seesaw. Just
like the good old days.



It was time for the BBQ, which seemed to take forever, but it was worth it. The local dogs,
of which there seemed to be an infinite amount of, were also pleased.
Especially the one the girls named Millie, or to be precise Millie Big Nips,
due to the freakishly large lacteal ducts this thing had. She looked like one
of those African tribes women, who's had 40 kids... It was another really fun
night, full of dancing, fire, falling, falling in the fire, Irish songs, and
then back to the playground. Not the wisest move.

 

The morning after, I realised that in the previous nights' frolics, I'd lost my MP3 player.
Balls. I was definitely going to miss that!



*Lost/Stolen/Broke Count 

1. Debit Card
2. Mobile
3. Memory Card
4. Jacket
5. Camera
6. Replacement Debit Card
7. MP3 Player
8. Shower Gel & Shampoo*

That day, we were crossing the driest part of the Atacama Desert. Apparently, there has
been no rain recorded there for over 50 years! We stopped first at an old
cemetery of Oficina Alamania, an abandoned nitrate mine. It was so creepy..
Loads of graves made from wooden sticks and babies cribs. It was so Isolated,
and so sad, that people had to travel a massive distance to visit their dead.
And it really gave me the willies....

Driving through the desert made me feel like I was in some kind of old road movie, or a
bit like "Duel", the old Spielberg movie where that guy gets chased around
these desert roads in his car by a massive truck. In Chile though, people tend
to overtake you rather than force you to drive off a cliff. It's all very
civilised. It also reminded me of those randy old Russ Meyer films... like Faster
Pussycat Kill Kill. Unfortunately, there were no scantily clad big breasted
nymphomaniacs waiting on the cliffs to pounce on us. Although, one of the girls
on the tour, who is well equipped in the chest area, had her hair in pigtails
one day, and one of the Dutch guys said to one of the Germans "It's Hiedi mit
ze Grosse Booben!" She wasn't impressed.

The next stop was Mano del Desierto, the big hand in the desert. It is supposed to be a
symbol of environmental awareness, saying give a helping hand before we are
over-powered by the effects of global warming. The power of the message is lost
slightly because of the graffiti on it saying "Derek is a cock".



We stayed in a hotel that night in Antofangasta, where everything seemed to be shut.
There was an Italian place open that looked nice, but wasn't. I had a very
weird pizza, actually it was so bad, I don't want to talk about it... Nobody went
out that night, I was in a room with John, and we just watched some tv then
went to bed. How sensible.