Cheeky Iquique
Trip Start
Jul 03, 2009
1
25
28
Trip End
Feb 02, 2010
Iquique, Chile
Thursday, December 10, 2009
My new travel buddy Tim is tall German lad, quick to laugh with a quirky fun sense of humour, we discover that the places we want to visit in Chile are the same and I think it will be cool to travel with a mate for a while especially over Christmas and when it comes to trekking in the mountainous south, we work well together pulling the outline and details of the trip quickly together despite challenges which bodes well for the next few days ahead. He is enjoyable company and leaves me in stitches sometimes without meaning to. Plan is to head north to San Pedro, then up to Iquique for sunshine and beaches, fly down Patagonia for snow, mountains and trekking then head to Pucon for a quiet spot of active volcano watching. We also arrange to meet up with a lovely American lass Luara (also from Spanish school) for the Patagonia section.
Leave Santiago in luxury bus, 24 hour trip, settle down for movie, The Yes Man or something along those lines with Jim Carrie, fab, dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles, bugger, make disturbingly discovery that not being able to fully understand what is being said in Hollywood blockbuster movie makes little difference to the overall enjoyment of the movie, fab.
Arrive in sleepy San Pedro, Tim and I arrange to go sand boarding which is like snow boarding (which has no bearing on me what-so-ever as I have done neither). Discover that I love sand boarding, there is a group of twenty of us and we all grab beers after the boarding and climb a hill to watch the beautiful sunset. In between laughing loudly with our two new friends, Callum and Ursula, I quietly pick out the sand from between my teeth from the countless (but expert) sand boarding braking techniques that I applied - Ladies and Gentlemen we will be using my face to bring myself, and the board, to a complete halt, once my body has come to complete halt you may switch on your mobile phones, thank you for flying with Boyd Sand boarding Airlines. The four of us head off for a nice meal later that night in a sleepy cute restaurant in the sleepy main road in the sleeping little town where you can hear wood cracking away as it burns, then about midnight as we sit with relaxed smiles on our faces looking into the fire we are asked to head to the door, then we are herded into a minibus and driven to the middle of the desert where there is a RAVE with music blaring, lasers set against the sand mountains and a portable BAR with ice! At six am after copious cheap vodkas and many a dance round the fire we are herded into another van then unceremoniously kicked out back onto the same sleeping street in the same sleepy village. As the van drives in the distance we look at each other all wonder if that actually just happened.....
Next day the four us rent a jeep and rent a Chilean girl, 20,000 Pesos for her to sit and sleep in the back seat of jeep with her indispensable Chilean driving license (which we need to rent a jeep, so bloody weird). We visit the salt lakes and watch flamingos and then go swimming in the salty lake, where you can float in like the dead sea, very cool. My sides are sore with the laughter Tim, Callum and Ursula are outrageous fun to hang around with.
Sad to say goodbye to Callum and Ursula as Tim and I head off to Iquique for 6 days. Iquique is famed for paragliding. Tim spends most the time doing just that. I try a tandem flight once just to see what the fuss is all about, basically you and your tandem buddy (in my case an old crusty bearded man who informs me that he gets sea sickness during flights, eh? what? sea? erm we are in the air? what??) Anyway you basically throw yourself off of a 500 metre cliff of sand and then glide for a kilometre over the city (that is the city below with the jagged building, huge big trucks and masses of tangled electricity wires below) and land on the beach, sounds fun eh! It is interesting what goes through your mind when you are about to launch yourself into the sky, in my case it was "Just to clarify, once AGAIN, the fear of heights?? Hellooooo!!!Ļ My tandem pilot comforts me with assurances that if some daft bird hits the paraglider that he has a secondary emergency parachute, thank you oh crusty bearded man with your comforting words, Iīm like all crazy now with the bird spotting - bird, bird there, bird, bird over there, BIRD! BIRD! BIRD! BIRD!
Spend week relaxing on beach in between trying to do Christmas shopping for family over the Internet. Search all different types of Internet sites, finally get selection done. Very happy, relatively good way to shop instead of buying and posting presents, however need to ask Mum to wrap said presents. As it turns out lovely Mum let me know that all presents were delivered to her and she can wrap them for me no problem, she also let me know that she had returned and exchanged the Clarins night face cream gift pack that I had bought for my frail gorgeous 85 year old Gran because it wasnīt face cream it was cellulite removal cream, tiny mix up there, bless you mum!
Head to airport for next section of trip, will be going via budget airline, got to love them, seriously, better than the bus (hello, five days from Iqueque to Patagonia by road), SKY airlines, 7 hour flight, $150, bargain, hah! Smashing. Get on plane, take off and ....err we seem to be landing one hour into the flight, stopover at Antofagasta (OK, didnīt know about that), take off err landing one hour later...what is going on? Fine whatever, take off again and f4ck me dead are we landing again?? You have got to be joking me! Quickly look out of window to check for engines in case am in fact on a glider that is being catapulted down the country via elastic band. FIVE take offs, landings and safety demonstrations later we land in Patagonia, all kind of freaked out from having 4 stop overs on a domestic flight. Settle down for nights sleep in the Punta Arenas Domestic Airport Accommodation Services Section otherwise known as the floor of the airport, arrived at midnight, no taxis, no buses, no food, no nothing, airport is the size of supermarket shopping trolley. No big deal, only six hours until our bus arrives to take us to the next destination and I have enough Valium to knock out a small horse. Fat Bag comes up trumps suppling me with comfortable sleeping bag, warm clothes, pillow and I have the most excellent snooze. I wake up all refreshed, sleeping beauty like, then spot Tim sitting on plastic seat with a red eyed lack of sleep look on his face which, as it turned out, resulted from sitting on plastic seat all night and not getting any sleep.
Laura (Lovely American chicky) meets us at the Airport at 7.00am and then we catch a bus to Puerto Natales, then another bus, then a boat to our destination and the beginning of our 80km, 4 day mountainous trek at the bottom of the world..... details to come ......
Happy holidays to everyone
J xo
Comments
Hey Jhon,
I will follow your bloc. Miss travelling with you already.