End of a Chapter

My last week in Viña wasn't anything particularly extraordinary, but normal life in Chile is still pretty cool.  My time was filled with last-minute errands, a goodbye dinner at a fancy restaurant, hanging out with the band, celebrating Vicky's birthday, and chillin on the beach.  It's kind of surreal being back now; I'm just waiting for it to hit - which will probably happen after I take a nap and reset my body clock.  At any rate, thanks to everyone who followed my stories and I can't wait to see everyone in person again!

Les agradezco mucho a Alice y Antonio por tomarme como su niña por el semestre

Begin the Countdown

The past couple weeks I've been keeping busy with final papers and exams, but with a few adventures in between.  Last Friday we went on our last trip as a program to the little town of Pomaire.  The town is most known for its pottery and claywork, which filled the shop-lined street.  For whatever reason, pigs are the most popular subject matter... I think it's a luck thing.  After walking around we had an enormous lunch at a little artisan restaurant.  The meal featured almost every typical Chilean food - an abnormally huge pino empanada, pastel de choclo, a huge bucket of grilled meats, mote con huesillos for dessert, and of course bread.  (See the "Food" tab for descriptions of what all that is.)  After lunch, we went to a workshop where we learned some about clayworking and got to play around with our own materials.  That's about when I accepted the fact that I'm not meant to be a potter...

Saturday was pretty full.  In the morning, we went with a class on a trip to Valpo to get some more historic background and go to an art museum.  The museum is actually a former mansion (on the "Yugoslavian Street", hence the building design), and just reopened a few weeks ago after having been closed for fifteen years for earthquake repairs.

After we finished up in Valpo, we hit the bus station to head to Santiago and see the Booths - our adopted family from Buenos Aires.  As they're affiliated with the Salvation Army, they were in town to present a musical through the church.  We stayed for the production and got to see Graciela, Alberto, and Laura briefly one last time.  Even though it was a short reunion, we were so glad we got to see them again!

Monday marked the last day of classes and, to celebrate, we crashed the beach for the afternoon.  After a little while, a random American guy came up to us all excited and said, "Do you guys speak English?  I haven't spoken English for like a week!"  He sat with us and we chatted; turns out that he lived in the Santiago area for a couple years as a Mormon missionary and now, eight years later, he was back on vacation.  It was his first time in Viña and he was only in for a couple days, so we agreed to have dinner with him at a typical Chilean restaurant that's pretty popular in the area.  It was just a funny, kind of awkward happenstance, but it was interesting to chat with him and hear more about how the Mormon mission system works.  

Today I officially finished with my finals; I'd already had a couple actual tests but had some essays to finish up.  It's so weird that I only have a little over a week left here.  Definitely have some mixed feelings, but for now I'm just trying to take advantage of what I have here while have it, like going out for empanadas with Alice, hanging out with the band, and of course the beach.  

Holidays and Summertime

I'm starting to get a little disoriented with the change of seasons, what with Chileans on the verge of summer break and me about to go on winter break, and commercials advertising beach vacations and Christmas sales simultaneously kind of throw me off.  It's a little weird.  But the fact remains that the semester is winding down; this week is my last week of classes and finals are dispersed between the next couple weeks.

That said, the past couple weeks have been pretty uneventful; just schoolwork and the occasional outing.  The other day we went to Reñaca, where Marie's host sisters' school was having a big fair-like party. We hung out for a bit, got some snacks (including tres leches cake...shoot, so long since I'd had it. Good stuff.), listened to some student performances, and followed Vaihere (Marie's 11-year-old host sister) on a tour of the school grounds.  They go to a French school, so it was funny hearing a lot of French going around.  

Also in Reñaca, I had an asado (cookout) with one of my classes.  The class is a gen ed course for the Adolfo Ibáñez students, Literary Criticism; we're criticizing The Godfather.  Definitely one of my favorite classes.  We went to a student's house and hung out with some good food; it was fun to be with the prof in such a casual context, too.  Unfortunately, by going to this asado I missed out on my church's Thanksgiving dinner that they put on for the exchange students (obviously, it's not a holiday here).  Kinda bummed that I missed my chance for Thanksgiving food, but I'd say it was worth it for some choripan and carne asado.  

Over the past week we've also crashed Vicky's house a couple times to watch movies, order some Papa John's (real pizza!), and make some reese's no-bake dessert that Marie got in a package.  Partying like Americans :)  

The Desert

Our latest and greatest adventure was a total success: San Pedro de Atacama.  The 24-hour bus ride there was slightly less than exciting, but I found some sleep-inducing motion sickness drugs to hold me over.  Although I was out for most of the drive, the scenery that I was awake for was either spectacular or nothingness.  The desert operates on those kinds of extremes...

We found out upon our midnight arrival that taxis don't operate in the tiny town of San Pedro after 10 or 11 p.m.  After asking around and calling the hostel a few times, we found a pseudo-taxi to take us to our place, Backpackers San Pedro.  It's on the outskirts of town away from the busy center, which was actually a super nice change from Viña.  We were there during a holiday weekend so the place was pretty crowded, but we met a lot of cool people at our hostel, whether throughout the day or during the nightly bonfires.  There were also three cats and two rabbits that wandered the hostel haphazardly; Vicky and I especially were pretty enamored with them haha.  The rabbits were pretty hostile towards the cats, though, and attacked them regularly with no real reason.

Anyway, that's a digression... San Pedro de Atacama is renowned as the world's driest desert, which leads to some obvious issues with water supply.  Taking the long-weekend crowd into account, water doesn't always last and the town shuts water and electricity off on occasion to conserve.  I was usually fortunate enough to get in a shower early enough to avoid the issue, but not everyone was so fortunate.

Anyway, enough of general conditions; what's really exciting is all the excursions we went on.  Our first day, we happened across a fellow UAI intercambio student who had been tripping around the area for some nine days, so she gave us some good tips on where to go and who to go through.  Her connections proved invaluable throughout our stay.  So our first day we kicked it with some of her tour guide friends to Laguna Cejar and Valle de la Luna.

Laguna Cejar is one of three saltwater pools in the middle of this desert.  Apparently the Atacama region used to be a giant lake, but some climate shift happened so as to cause most of the water to evaporate, leaving a vast salt plain as well as these pools.  Two of the pools are restricted because they're home to flamingos, but the third is open for swimming.  The novelty of these pools is their incredible 75% salt concentration (as a reference point, the Dead Sea has a 50% salt concentration), so that you float.  The pools are shallow on the outer rims, but reaches a depth of some odd meters; on the opposite side of the pool is a ledge with a giant dropoff into clear blue water.  We didn't jump it (honestly I was kind of scared about invisible rocks), but that's one of the "things to do" there.

(Photo cred: Marie LaBossiere)

It's also worth noting here that the backdrop for all of San Pedro is a series of Volcanoes and snow-capped Andes peaks.  Our tour guide, Alfredo told the traditional legends for each, which regrettably I don't remember clearly enough to make sense here.  What I do remember is that the primary peak (the perfect cone looking one in this first picture) is called Licancabur, and the one to the right is his beheaded brother, Juriques.

Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley, is so named not only for its desolate, moon-looking landscape, but also because it contains some mineral (yeah, I'm lame and don't remember what it's called) that is found most plentifully on the moon.  We went through some crystallized-salt caverns in the Valley and then made our way to the Duna Mayor (Major Dune) in time for the sunset.  As the salt and rock formations hid the sun, the Andes opposite turned gradually from red to blue.

(Photo cred: Strangers)

(Photo cred: Marie LaBossiere)

The next day, we rented some bikes for the afternoon and rode to some nearby ruins, Pukará de Quitor.  It was originally a fortress for the Atacameños until it was overtaken during the Spanish Conquista.  I honestly don't know how the Spanish managed to rush the giant hillside; with the altitude change all three of us were taking our sweet time meandering through the rubble to the peak.  It did have some sweet views, though.

So the holiday that this long weekend celebrated was All Saints Day, or Day of the Dead.  As such, the local cemetery (which was super close to our hostel) was swarmed with vendors selling flowers and decorations.  One day we took a stroll through; pretty much completely different from the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

We also hit the local church, located in the central plaza.

One night we took an "Astronomy Tour," which took us up to some hills to hear a Belgian astronomer, Steve, answer whatever questions were thrown his way.  The desert sky is so clear that a number of international space programs are based in the Atacameñan region.  We had telescopes at our disposal, which Steve and his assistant helped us manage.  It was seriously incredible to just stand there and see all of infinity before you.  To end things perfectly, we watched the almost-full moon rise from behind Volcano Licancabur and erase the dimmer stars that had until then been perfectly visible.  

Our last big excursion was to the Tatio Geysers.  The trip started early--4 a.m.--and was incredibly cold.  We'd heard several reports to go "bien abrigado," well bundled-up, and to anticipate altitude sickness.  A two-hour bus ride later found us in the mountains surrounded by boiling spouts of water and steam; the water in the geysers is around 85 degrees celsius, which translates to approx. 185 degrees fahrenheit.  They were gorgeous, though, especially with the sunrise coming over the snow-capped peaks.  There were also thermal pools there, which had been converted into one big pool to swim in.  Vicky and I were satisfied to dip our feet in, but Marie went all the way.  I don't feel too bad about missing out, though; the water was kind of nasty...not to mention the freezing temperatures to deal with upon getting in and out.  

On our way back to San Pedro from the geysers, we made several stops to enjoy the scenery as well as to scope out the tiny village of Machuca, which has a population of approx. twelve or so families.  There are some houses, some souvenir and food stops, and a llama pasture.  There was also a church up on a hill, which doesn't look too impending on the outset, but throw in the altitude change and we were all out of breath by the time we reached the top.  On a few other stops we witnessed some local wildlife, like flamingos and vicuñas, which are kind of llama-esque.  

(Photo cred: Marie LaBossiere)

So that about sums up the adventure side of things, but of course we met a number of pretty cool people.  It was a pretty cool change from Viña; it seemed like the people were more eager to make meaningful conversation and listen as well as be heard.  We made friends with people from our hostel, tour guides, tour agency employees, as well as random people on the street.  The bus ride back was long, of course, but it was at least light out as we departed from San Pedro, which allowed for a clear view of the Andes rising out of the desert and finally disappearing into the vastness.