Northern Chile: testing my Spanish ability
Trip Start
Aug 26, 2009
1
24
34
Trip End
Aug 26, 2010
Where I stayed
Antofagasta, Chile
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Las Replicas
Everything returned to almost normal immediately after power was restored in Santiago. Mostly everything was shut the Saturday after the quake for clean up and this unfortunately posed a few difficulties for a traveller with no real food, not even a can of tuna at that point. I ended up having trail mix for lunch and pizza for dinner... nice. By Sunday things were up and running again although there was still a bit of a vibe, a community shared general sense of uneasiness I guess. Probably because the aftershocks were still quite strong and these were predicted to continue for a month or more. Illogical as it was I had the feeling that you never could tell when the building you were in might reach its pressure point, succumb to the seemingly minor after-shock and crumble. As it was the room I was in at the hostel started loosing bricks off the back wall with subsequent aftershocks and so the owners decided we needed to move rooms for safety. This in itself certainly made me uneasy.
The friends I was meant to travel with to the coast to Viņa del Mar and Valparaiso that weekend were kind enough to bring me over to their house the Sunday immediately following the quake for a decent home cooked meal, and then to the supermarket afterwards. It was such a lovely thing to do and just the normalcy that I needed at that time. On the way over I got the rundown on how the buildings are built to sustain the shock so I understand this better now, and we tried to spot high rises with damage or lean. Mostly it was just the odd few windows popped out, but not broken or fallen - just like someone on the 26th floor suddenly decided they wanted to open the window for some fresh air when they woke up that morning :) The more dramatic thing for me was the trip to the shops: people were panic buying a bit, it was busier than Christmas time at home and the shelves for basics like water and milk, and nappys stangely... were almost empty. And the liquor section smelled like an old RSL with dirty carpet. I can only imagine how horrible the clean up task had been there the day before and how much alcohol they may have lost. The petrol stations were also a sight; like the 30c/litre price cut specials the independents run in Western Sydney sometimes - people were queuing up out onto the roads for ages waiting to fill up on gas. A refinery nearer to Concepcion was damaged in the quake and people were concerned about shortages. And then there were the never ending news reports and crisis coverage on every TV and radio - the looting in towns south of Santiago as people got caught up in the panic, the deaths and the search for survivors. One of the networks was hosting call outs at my local subway station, anybody who couldn't find a relative or loved one could come down and call for help over the TV. I watched a few people as they did this and although I didn't know them or their missing people I was really moved by it and found myself emotional. It was just so desparate and touching; you could tell that they knew the likelihood was their people were dead but they still had a small glimmer of hope based on the fact they hadn't heard one way or the other that it was just an issue with getting in contact. Things like this added to the air of unease and it made me feel a little anxious to leave town as soon as the opportunity presented.
La Serena and the night sky
And so I left Santiago the Monday following the quake, presuming the roads north would be open, but not entirely sure of this fact and just hoping it would all work out when I got to the bus station. Got off to a wrong start by getting off the subway one stop too early for the bus station... I thought it was somewhat strange that the guy sitting next to me on the train, who had his big travel backpack, didnīt get off with me at the same stop. I didnīt give it a second thought though until I'd lugged my bags up two flights of stairs to see the bus station wasnīt where it was the previous Friday when I had booked a ticket... and realised I was in the wrong suburb :) Luckily the tickets to the awesome subway in Santiago are only 90c and I had plenty of buffer time before my bus was supposed to depart.
The road was open no dramas, and as we drove out of Santiago the only visible reminder of the weekend earthquake were the odd piles of rubble here and there swept up into neat piles behind police tape and the occassional pedestrian overpass that had collapsed but had similarly been moved neatly to the side of the road so that traffic could flow as normal. If you hadn't been in town over the weekend you might not have even noticed that anything was amiss. Still, the further we drove away from Santiago the more I felt myself relaxing. The buses in Chile are super; really modern and comfortable and after a couple of hours we were travelling coastline scenery which was interesting to pass, and we even watched a movie... in English :) so this all aided the alleviation of my stress. I had asked the look-out man to let me know when we were arriving to La Serena; travelling alone I'm paranoid that I'm going to sleep through my stop, or worse, pass it completely unnoticed somehow LOL. And because of this at one point the man took the time to come and talk to me, in slow Spanish to explain that we were stopping for 1/2hr at a transit stop and I could get off the bus and buy something to eat or walk around if I wanted. The trip to La Serena was about 6 hours all up and I found I actually really enjoyed it.
La Serena is not necessarily a tourist attraction in its own right, however it serves as a good base to explore some nearby national parks and an observatory; plus its on the northern route so serves as a good place to stopover. Having said that it is directly on the coast, and although it hasn't a classicly beautiful strip of beaches because of its mixed black sand: which obscures the clarity of water in the waves and just isn't as nice to look at... the fragrant salt air further freshened my spirits and made me feel somewhat at home. Both days I was there I walked the 3kms from town to the beachfront and sat on the beach for a couple of hours listening to my music, people watching and just taking in the surrounds. Loved it! The town itself is also very cute, with enough colonial buildings and churches to wander and look at, a great central park, which you all know I love. Plus a good coffee culture; some of the best espresso coffee I've had in South America which is a bit of an achievement considering its location. And although its also quite a modern town it definitely hasn't lost its latin roots, the latin culture is alive and thriving which gives it a good feel. One day I was waiting to cross the road when an approaching taxi driver put his hazard lights on to warn the cars behind him, and then just stopped in the middle of the road indicating for me to cross in front. So thoughtful... LOL
Other than wandering the town and the beaches, my chosen activity here was to visit the Mamalluca Observatory. From this area north there are excellent skies for star gazing because they have some of the lowest levels of light pollution in the world. So little that international conglomerations are ever investing in increasingly larger telescope projects. At the moment they're working on an 'extremely large' telescope just north of here, although they were originally aiming for an 'overwhelmingly large' but that one didn't get off the ground... too ambitious or something it was... I find it just hilarious that the astronomy community have a sizing scale for their equipment based on nothing more than adjectives :) though I'm not exactly sure where they're going to go after 'extremely large' and 'overwhelmingly large'... I'm wondering if they might not need some help with professional name generations LOL LOL
The tour was a great night for me. I re-aquainted myself with the Southern Cross which I have lately been getting confused with the False Cross - easy mistake I learned, but still a little embarressing when you are trying to point it out to North American companeros... And I learned some new things too like what the different colours of the stars all mean. I did find it a somewhat difficult concept to get your head around, that some of the stars that you can see have in reality already died and don't exist there anymore. Its just that it takes the light so long to reach us here on earth. My concept of reality, like most people's, is based on what I can see, so this is a little mind bending. And then whenever I hear about the sun expanding and enveloping the earth before finally burning out... it always freaks me even though it bears absolutely no relevance to my life in this age. However, the guy did re-assure us, in addition to not worrying about this 2012 nonsense, not to worry about the impending sun explosion because he is quietly confident that by 5billion years time astronomists will have been able to find another solar system by then that we can all move to :) Plus they will have worked out the technology to transport us light years to get us there... All up a highly entertaining evening. For the most part we were using these small-ish telescopes outside in the dark, that maybe had a mirror no more than 10-15cm in diameter. Too large to fit in your house but definitely feasible for your backyard... I enquired as to where I might purchase one - it was way cool to be checking out the things we were... but I struggled with the translation so got no leads on that one :)
Antofagasta - el pueblo que nadie visita (the town that nobody visits...)
A day later I left La Serena via the dreaded night bus, although given the aforementioned bus standards I did manage to get a few hours sleep so I really canīt complain too much in this instance. It was close to a full moon so I enjoyed watching the passing coastline by moonlight until the very efficient watch-out man came and shut all our curtains for us at 9.30pm, must have been bedtime :)
I was heading for Antofagasta. Our river guide on the Fú had recommended it as a great place to see a natural monument - an interesting rock formation called La Portada, off shore just out of town. It is also conveniently about 10 hours from La Serena which is close to my manageable time limit of 12 hours on a bus. So I thought, why not?
Almost everybody else that I subsequently talked to about my plans to visit Anto. warned me not to go to there.. It's horrible, dirty, there's nothing to do there, its a waste of time, people aren't nice, blah blah blah... I thought any town that almost everybody else hates is bound to have something of interest for me in it ;) and even if it was just to see what it was they were raving badly about, that in itself would be worth it, surely.
The trouble is, Antofagasta is a working town. A port town. It's not set up for tourists and this makes it a little bit difficult. There are no backpacker hostels there, its not even listed as a town on HostelWorld or HostelBookers, even though its a city of sizeable population. But even as the taxi driver taking me to the center of town after I arrived in the hopes that I would be able to find a cheap hotel on foot, tried to convince me that we needed to turn the taxi around and take my luggage back to the bus station to leave in storage, then visit La Portada, and then be gone from town before sunset... I felt my stubbornness growing. I will love this city despite what everyone says!! And naturally, with such low expectations set about it, it was always bound to be good for me. In looks alone I was happy, looking up into the mountains from the shore it could have been Bolivia or Peru, all desert dry with pastel coloured houses dotted up into the hills. And I had had such good experiences in those countries previously that this itself made me feel good. And the oceanfront was quite pretty too and I enjoyed walking along it a couple of times. People sometimes I think have too high a expectations. They rate towns based on how touristy they are, ironically the more tourists there are there the worse the place is deemed to be. But if there are seemingly no tourist attractions at all the place also can score a bad wrap because of the associated inconveniences for the traveller.
I did end up finding a cheap hotel, quite easily though at twice the going rate of hostels in Chile. I justified this to myself by the fact that I had my own, clean bathroom and a tv :) The simple pleasures in life... My next challenge was to find my way to La Portada which is maybe 30kms from the town. I had conflicting information about bus services out of town and I knew there was nothing going to the site itself and so I was a little bit worried about first finding my way there, and then if I did manage that how I would manage to get myself back without having to hitchhike or walk the 30kms back in the dark. My first plan, not really a plan but more of a thought... was that I thought perhaps I could I put on some make up and a nice top (with a hint of cleavage), and sit at the local coffee shop hoping that I could strike up a conversation with a friendly local who might actually offer assistance or maybe even a lift :) A long shot, and of course this didn't work out. Antofagasta, remember, is a working town... nobody has time for such frivolities, and in truth this didnīt even happen to me in Cuba where there is time and people aplenty, so there was never really any hope that this plan was going to work out for me here. But I thought it was at least worth a shot. At least I got another great coffee out of it.
My next, more realistic plan was to ask a few people around town. Nobody speaks English in these parts so it was quite a test for my spanish but I thought if I understood the same response, more or less, from three different people then I would be pretty close to getting it right. This didn't really work for me either... I got two different directions for where the bus stop was and they seemed to be saying I could get on any bus, even though all the buses had different route numbers. It made no sense to me whatsoever. Eventually I just hopped on a bus at the main stop in town and asked the driver if I could take his bus there. He said no, and gave me entirely different directions again to which I must have given him a look of total bewilderment because he immediately yelled out the door to a passing guy selling ice-creams from an esky to take me to the bus stop himself. The ice cream man wasn't too happy and at one point tried to tell me directions again, but as I started to cross the street in the wrong direction he must have thought better of it and yelled me to continue following him. The problem originated from the fact that it was a private inter-town bus in a small shed terminal/driveway behind a gate... so I never would have found it without Mr Ice Cream's help.
On the bus I was back to understanding again. The driver took great care to explain that buses went by every 30mins and he pointed out where the bus stop was that I would have to catch it from back to town. Very easy. Also, despite being on the coast the landscape there is practically desert so its difficult to lose the road when you can see traffic coming and going for miles. And so all that was left for me to worry about was finding my way the 2km from the main road to the monument. This was also easy since this turned out to be a bitumen road with very large directional signs and so by this point I was definitely on a high as I walked the final distance to the ocean. I felt so totally free and independant, and hugely proud of myself for perservering with my visit and for being able to find my way out there on my own using just my basic spanish. Being in such a positive state of mind I really enjoyed La Portada. The coastline was an unusual kind of pretty, the ocean a really deep blue and the adjoining cliffs looked almost sandstone. Actually, they looked almost like tall vertical sand dunes that were being slowly blown away with straight edges... And the monument, although not bearing a physical resemblance, kind of reminded me of the 12/11 Apostles.
After my visit I hiked back up to the hot tinshed bus shelter on the main road and had to wait almost a full 30mins for the next bus back. However I easily entertained myself for this time - it was the first opportunity Iīd had in ages to really sing outloud to my IPod cause nobody was around... LOL And I was encouraged in this pursuit by the number of passing cars giving me a wave, beeping their horns and even shouting hello out the window... the people here are soooo friendly ;) Actually, later that night I even got a round of applause when I went out for a walk: a bunch of construction guys just finished working scrambled to get their gear off the footpath for me and then burst into spontaneous clapping as I walked by: another reason why I love latin men LOL LOL LOL I pissed myself laughing and we all know having fun while exercising makes it seem not like exercise at all... I wished I could have taken that particular group with me to encourage me in my health pursuits :)
San Pedro y Los Desastres (Sandboarding Disasters)
San Pedro de Atacama, the town in the middle of the driest desert in the world, was my next visit. A very short 5 hours away on the bus. Not too short for a nap though... and as I woke I could feel the heat vibrating through my curtained window and I knew that we were now in the desert proper.
The town is very small and low-key, maybe there are 4 blocks to the town centre not much more, and although they have water viaducts streaming water from the snowmelt off the nearby mountains through town, its still dusty, sandy, sparten and hot. The low rise buildings are all of mud brick type construction with small, if any windows, and doorways to darkish interiors which preserve the almost cool air - no airconditioning... and most shops are tour operators or supermarkets. And the streets are narrow, just wide enough for cars going one way. Which tells you there really isn't much traffic. When I was wandering 'downtown' I passed a North Face store (its a tourist town afterall...) which had a small, freestanding blackboard out front of their shop where somebody had handwritten 'North Face. Open.' their store signage... which summed it all up really.
The first evening I arrived, after the heat of the day had passed, I walked around town taking a few snaps and taking in the surrounds. Also booked my field trips for the following day. There are heaps of things to do in the desert surounding San Pedro but since I had visited the area before on the other side of the border in Bolivia, there were only two things that I wanted to do here: visit the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and go sandboarding.
All the trips leave pre-dawn or at 4pm, escaping the heat of the middle of the day. And at 4pm the town becomes like a city at peak hour. Everybody is trying to get out, and there's mini traffic jams and horns beeping as minivans try to navigate the small and overcrowded streets. By 4.30pm its deserted again with just the pedestrian activity of the tourists who have decided to stick around. I had a feeling when I stared my sandboarding trip that it was going to be a bit of a weird one. First the tour guide I had booked with took me to another store to pick up a board, and then another one again where he left me explaining that I was joining with another group, with a girlfriend of a friend of his who would take good care of me and give me all the instructions when I arrived. And then he left. Then when we were about to depart there were too many people to fit in the car so the guide kicked one of the group off the tour... it was all a bit disorganised and not completely professional. I had read reviews that had said San Pedro operators were notorious for this, so I just went with the flow.
When we arrived we got our boards and were directed up the 'chair lift' - the walking path up the sanddune that everyone had to stick to - to the practice area on a small section of the dune. They told us how to clip in and then pretty much left us to our own devices. I'd never even seen snow before this trip so obviously hadn't been snowboarding before and probably could have done with a little more tuition than this. Still, I felt like I got the hang of it quickly and I enjoyed the first 4 runs I made, each time going progressively higher up the dune. Before my 5th and final run the girlfriend came up with us and gave us a basic demo in braking. As I was making my run I felt myself going a bit fast and tried the technique she had shown us but got my angles all wrong and ended up going head first over the front edge of my board at high speed... It all happened so fast my hands did not break my fall, my head did, and initially I couldn't move because of the shock, dizziness and the feeling of needing to vomit. So I thought it would be better if I lay there for a second until the dizziness subsided. The guides saw me stack but obviously see a lot of stacks that people get up from so left me to my devices. A guy who had gone down in front though came back up the hill and helped me right myself. I was thinking at this point I should wait and finish boarding down to the bottom, get back on the horse you know, so I wouldn't be scared to try it again... It wasn't until the point when I felt able to stand back up that I noticed an extreme searing pain in my shoulder. I had sand everywhere and my sunglasses had been squashed into my face as I impacted so my eyes hurt as well, and now with my arm I thought probably I should call it a day with this activity, so the guy helped me unclip and I kind of stumbled my way back to the base.
At this, the guides finally took an interest and inspected my shoulder, the pain of which nearly caused me to faint... The guy suggested it was dislocated and offered to pop it back in for me, but it didn't feel dislocated to me and fortunately I had the good sense to suggest waiting for a doctor to check it out. But we couldn't leave until the session had ended and so I had to sit in a slither of shade created by the van and wait, with intermittent nausea spells until it was time to go. Some of the girls came to check on me before heading up to go again on another run, and suggested I might feel better if I cleaned myself up a bit. I didn't really care though how much sand I had on me, it hurt just sitting still and the pain of any movement was too much to worry about what I looked like.
The ride back into town was torturous because I felt every bump on the dirt road back. And when we arrived the guide dumped me out front of the medical clinic and left :(. I kind of expected he would come in with me, but no, he left me to take care of myself. And here my spanish failed me. I couldn't say anything other than 'pain, here... accident'. We couldn't communicate at all, so I had no idea what was going on. Its just a small clinic with one nurse and one doctor but they had some basic supplies and the nurse tried to put a drip in for pain killers. I was confused and I was worried about sand getting in the drip strangely, but luckily she couldn't seem to find a vein anyway so they settled with an injection. The doctor told me he thought I had broken my clavicle (una fractura de su clavicular... this I could understand) but they had no xray here so I would have to go to a hospital tomorrow for tests. He gave me more pain killers, a sling, and told me to ice it. Ice it, strange, you can't even get a cold coke in a town like San Pedro so I've no idea where one would find ice... And so then I left, walked back to the hostel exhausted from the stress, unfortunately I was on a top bunk bed too :( the whole day and experience was just painful and I didn't sleep much that night either. And I never made it to the Valle de la Luna...
Mi returno al Sur (my return south to Valparaiso)
The desert and seaside towns up north of Chile were so interesting to me, and so uniquely beautiful, I really could have spent another week or two exploring the area, heading up to the Peruvian border and back down again stopping at different towns along the way. I had a few days up my sleave but after the sandboarding accident I really needed to get myself to a town with a proper hospital and while I could have gone somewhere closer to San Pedro, I was more comfortable coming back towards Santiago where I knew I would be able to find what I needed. And so I booked a 24hour torture bus - can you believe it, the time it takes to get to Europe... - to come back to Valparaiso, about 2 hours from Santiago by the sea. I upgraded to the cama class, better than airplane business class in my opinion, and dosed myself up on painkillers for the journey. I think I slept about 15 of the 24 hours so it passed by quite quickly. Although also like travelling O.S., it seemed as though I entered a time warp, one day just disappearing without me noticing where or why...
Again I had had fantasies of meeting a kind local, possibly even an attractive one though these people seem to rarely take buses :)... who would take me under their wing. Closest I got this time was a guy who offered to show me the bus stop. I'm like, dude, I have one arm, I can't even carry my bags, let along climb on a bus with them... but thank you so much for your offer!! LOL Instead I got a taxi and directions to the closest public hospital to my hostel. And then I headed on down to wait it out in the ER... It was all a bit confusing when I got there, I couldn't find the entrance which you would think would be a virtual impossibility. Somehow I managed to slip through two guard stations, wander around through a back entance somewhere, past administration, past the clinical laboratory testing place and wind up on the inside of triage... I had taken the time to write down a few notes in spanish so I wouldn't get caught up in the moment, so I wandered up to the least doctor looking person i could find and said while handing him my notes, I don't speak much spanish but I need help, this is what's wrong with me... He rolled his eyes at me initially but I think I impressed him with my notes and maybe the fact that I had brought the doctor's diagnosis notes from San Pedro with me; and so he went off and did all my paperwork for me even though he didn't have to, and let me stay inside to wait, away from all the hundreds of people in the waiting room. I was quite impressed with the service, all up it only cost about $100 and took maybe 2 hours and after the first contact they were very patient with me, spoke very slowly and had a doctor who spoke English give me the diagnosis. I met a nice lady while I was waiting, a new mum, with a broken or sprained ankle who chatted with me about her baby and gave me safety tips about Valpo and this passed the time. It was a very similar experience to the occasional I have had with an Australian ER, the only real difference was that everything seemed just a little bit older and run down, not as much high tech stuff, and maybe not quite as thorough for minor injuries - they took one x-ray for example whereas in Australia I would have had at least 2-3 from different angles. And admittedly the attire was a bit concerning. The choice of footwear was not what I would have thought would meet health and safety standards... there were women in sandals and clogs, and men in crocs. And a lot of really short, tight skirts and really long hair. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had seen high heels, but then this is latin america... The diagnosis was a sprained shoulder: more pain killers, a couple of weeks in a sling, 4-6 weeks rest and I would be fine. This was good news as I was supposed to be trekking in 2 weeks time... Again though, the whole experience and going through it in another language, without anyone there to really help me; it was really draining and so I crashed out as soon as I got back and slept through until 9.30 the next day. I pretended when I woke up that the last couple of days hadn't happened and set about discovering the city of Valparaiso.
Valpo has an edge to it that i found lacking in Santiago. Its bright and colourful, noisy and dirty and a little bit dangerous if you end up in the wrong alley... Its another port town built up into the multiple, steep hills surrounding the harbour. All the hills have different names and you can catch these ascensores - little rickety, wooden elevators up the side of the hill, although stairs and climbing are inevitable at some point. From the flat there are heaps of little (but long) stairways and alleyways, paseos, that lead you up the hills and around houses and once up there, the alleys have some amazing street art, all with in bright, alternative vein. I wish that I had been able to explore this city with my Santiago friends, but I was just so happy that I had the opportunity to stop there at all.
From a tourist perspective the place was virtually deserted. My hostel only had a couple of other people there the 3 days I was staying and the front desk guy said its been empty since the earthquake. I was feeling a little bit vulnerable with my sling on so I was happy to enjoy the relative piece and quiet and I spent my time there wandering the paseos, looking at the quirky buildings and shops, catching the ascensores and drinking coffee, when it was available... twice there were cuts to the water service in downtown because of earthquakes and repairs activity and there was no coffee to be had in these times :(. The very last day that I was there, there were a series of +7 earthquakes. I judged them to be bad because they were strong enough to knock the products off the grocery store shelves, and in comparison to the other aftershocks this is quite strong. This lead to a local tsunami alert. There was never really an announcement, or a siren or anything, but it was obvious because all of a sudden everybody was rolling down the security shutters on their shops and running up the hills. I stopped at one point heading up the hill to look back over the ocean to see if I could spot anything, and a lady started yelling at me telling me it wasn't high enough, I had to keep going!! I have to admit that this 'crisis' was a little bit more humourous to me than the previous earthquake: a lot of people were unnecessarily panicking, crying because they couldn't get a hold of someone on the phone.. but it was obvious there was no tsunami, we were looking right at the ocean, and so I think some of it was a little bit OTT. And a lady at the hostel told me that they are trained in schools, tsunami responses because they are very common along the coast of Chile, so its not like it was because it was new territory. I think everybody was still a little bit on edge.
I had to wait a couple of hours for the transport network to reopen but I caught a bus back that night to Santiago. While I was waiting I caught up on the Chile newspapers and I read that most of the goods stolen in the post-earthquake looting had been recently returned after an appeal by the president. Although there is some room for error with my translation skills... :) I believe it said she made an appeal saying it was not Chilean to take advantage when the going was tough and what did it say about the country and its people... and all these people brought the TVs and fridges back they had stolen... I felt so warm and fuzzy, I'm not sure the same thing would have happened in Australia.
My final day in Chile en route to Colombia, via a layover in Venezuela (long story),was also mildly dramatic. The airport sustained a lot of damage in the quake and it was quite unique to see this. Because of the damage to the terminal, they had virtually picked up all the inner workings and moved them out to the carpark under a whole heap of giant marquees. The airline counters were like visiting a trade fair or an exhibition, and there were food stalls like what you'd see at the show, and rows of chairs, obviously taken from the terminal waiting rooms, just sitting in the open air on the bitumen. Customs was a bunch of 5 laptops at the top of some escalators near the only functioning section. It was really bizarre. I didn't have time for photos though because my flight was at 6.30am, and I didn't realise but it had been brought forward an hour as part of the schedule changes with re-opening. So I arrived 20 minutes before depature, they had already commenced boarding, on an international flight... Luckily I think because of the circumstances, everybody was in a flexible mood so they let me check in and I had to race to the gate. Made it... though it was a dramatic end to a dramatic visit to Chile and I'm really hoping for some weeks of less dramatic occurances in the next few months in Colombia
Vanessa
