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Bolivian Bliss, Chilean Craziness!
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Seth Familian
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Dec 26, 2001 11:06 PST
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Wow it's been a while!
So sorry that I haven't written in so long, but this past month really
has flown by! When I last wrote I was about to head off to the Salar de
Uyuni, and starting with that one trip and continuing throughout the
whole of Chile, my most recent month of travels has really been nothing
more than experiencing absolutely fascinating and incredible places,
each more beautiful and stunning than the previous.
Before I begin, though, I would like to take a brief moment to deeply
thank all of you who wrote in response to my note about Denny. It felt
so good to know that even while I was thousands of miles away, so many
other people shared my same feelings and thoughts, and sent their love.
So THANK YOU!!! :) It's things like that which really make me feel all
warm and fuzzy inside, especially in times of distress. So whether you
realize it or not, you're all amazing friends and you all rock!!
Okay, back to what I've been up to. It's pretty difficult to describe a
place like the Salar, because how can one faithfully describe with words
this absolutely vast, 12,000 square mile salt pan whose brightness is
really almost blinding and whose size is so immense that it seems almost
endless--well except for the giant, 6,000 meter snow-capped volcanoes
and mountains that peak out from the horizon and the mineral-rich lakes
of bright green, red, blue and turquoise that seem almost surreal,
especially when thousands of flamingos flock upon their partially
salt-hardened surfaces. I think that for the three days that I wandered
(via landcruiser) through the awesome, beauty-filled emptiness of the
salar, my jaw was simply dragging on the ground (having dropped from
minute one) and took almost a week to recover.
Perhaps my pictures of the salar (which I SWEAR will be posted by
January 20th--internet access in all of South America, it turns out, is
simply shoddy) will give you a better idea of what I'm so feebly trying
to communicate here, but whether you see the photos or not, my one piece
of advice is JUST GO!! Really. This place is like nothing I've EVER
seen before (and I've seen some pretty crazy landscapes), and is
probably like nothing I'll ever see again, unless, that is, I return!
Experiencing the Salar the way I did has not only prompted me to become
its biggest advocate (thus explaining my urges for you to go there), but
one of Bolivia's biggest advocates as well. That trip was truly the
capstone of my month in Bolivia, for it wasn't just the last place I saw
before heading into Chile, but it reconfirmed my initial feelings that
Bolivia is THE most naturally diverse and beautiful country I've ever
seen and absolutely one of South America's (if not the world's) best
kept secrets. Where else can you encounter some of the most beautiful
high peaks of the Andes, then plunge down into the lush Amazonian jungle
and its neighboring Pampas, then see a giant salt plain with truly
stunning mineral lakes and geysers, all in a country that, by South
American standards, is only moderately sized?!?! So really, if you ever
have the opportunity to take a trip abroad and you're thinking about
South America as a destination, DON'T overlook Bolivia. And hey! those
riots in the streets of La Paz can even be seen as character-building!
:)
From the Salar we crossed into Chile at the town of San Pedro de
Atacama, a fairly small, quaint little village that clearly caters to
tourists coming from the Salar, but also has a few spectacular things of
its own to offer. Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the Valle de
Luna (valley of the moon), about an hour's drive from San Pedro. There
I hiked up and across a giant sand dune in the late afternoon and
endured blisteringly cold winds to witness one of the most (if not THE
most) beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. (I'm realizing the word 'ever'
is becoming pretty integral to this e-mail, but this past month really
has been nothing but superlatives!!) Again here the pictures really
need to speak for themselves, but just as a little prelude imagine the
sun setting over an enormous valley of jagged and rippling salt-covered
rock and the thinly clouded sky turning from bright yellow and orange
into pink and finally a deep crimson red that gives everything a
brilliant deep glow. Yes, it WAS that good!!
After San Pedro I made my way further south to La Serena, a small beach
town half way between San Pedro and Santiago. I endured quite a spell
of culture shock for those first days in San Pedro and then La Serena,
as totally mundane things such as paved roads and busses that were
actually *comfortable* and tables with napkins and endless supplies of
bread, which I had so taken for granted in the states, were now in Chile
total novelties that continually inspired awe and amazement. And though
the pretty severe water shortage in San Pedro did help ease me into this
first-world country, my days in La Serena--the Chilean equivalent to a
well-crafted and highly commercialized beach town--didn't help matters
much.
But don't get me wrong, La Serena wasn't bad at all, just different from
what I had experienced over the previous month and a half. From La
Serena I was able to visit one of the many nearby observatories (the sky
in that part of Chile is well known for its clarity, as almost never
rains and is only cloudy a whopping 25 days a year, and so it's an area
that houses some of the biggest and most important observatories in the
Southern Hemisphere--and the world), and the sky certainly met if not
exceeded it own reputation. Never before have I seen so many stars so
incredibly clearly, and because I was in the Southern Hemisphere I was
able to see the Small and Large Megallanic Clouds, the two companion
galaxies to our own Milky Way, without a telescope!! With the
telescopes I was able to see nebulae and moons of jupiter and saturn,
and the whole thing was just a total treat. (An equally cool treat was
witnessing an impromptu breakdancing session in the town of Vicuņa
before heading up to the observatory, but I'll just let my photos speak
for that one...)
After La Serena I continued south to Santiago, where I stayed only for a
few days to take care of a bunch of travel logistics before continuing
onwards to the lake district of Chile. My reason for staying so briefly
in Santiago had little to do with the quality of the city itself--it's a
pretty standard big cosmopolitan city with all the usual shops and a
metro and big buildings and lots of people and crazy bus drivers, etc.,
etc.--but rather that I wanted to spend most of my time in Chile seeing
the remarkable landscapes it is so famous for having, and so felt like I
would've been almost wasting my time hanging out in a big city for a
while when there is so much else out there to see and do.
Logistics having been sorted, I continued south to Pucon, the adventure
sports capital of the lake district, where in a single day you can
wander though parks with giant waterfalls, kayak down emerald green
class III water and ascend the still active Volcano Villarica which
literally looms over the small town. I did everything--though not in
the same day, I'm sorry to say, as my body can only take so much--and
was all really fantastic. The waterfalls were taller and more stunning
than I could have ever imagined (some were more than 70 meters (210
feet) and were so strong that the spray cooled you from almost a quarter
mile away!). The kayaking was simply stupendous (I've never paddled
water that was that consistently hard and it was such a thrill to do it
with really experienced people who wanted nothing more than to see me
paddle well, have fun and be safe). And the ascent (and descent) of the
volcano was just something else alltogether.
For the volcano we began our roughly three hour ascent first on gravel
and dirt, and then for the most part on only snow and ice, aided with
mountaineering boots, crampons and ice axes. The day was crystal clear
and beautiful (somewhat of a rarity for that volcano) and so although we
were hiking on snow, most of us ended up in t-shirts by the time we
summited, since it was really quite a workout! Though we did choke on a
bit of sulfur at times (since the volcano was totally active and
constantly churning out sulfur gas) we (our group of 8) all made it to
the top successfully and soaked up the breathtaking views of the 14
other lake district volcanoes within sight while scarfing down a
well-deserved lunch. Then the real fun began as we slid (yes slid) a la
human toboggan down the entire snow-covered hill we had just recently
struggled up, flying down in a mere fraction of the time of our ascent.
We all felt like little kids again, playing in the snow and zipping down
the mountain, ice axes in hand as makeshift breaks, and by the time we
arrived back at the base it was like we had been to another world that
morning.
Though I did seriously entertain the idea of stopping the rest of my
trip and settling down in Pucon as a whitewater rafting guide for their
summer season, I soon found out that I was lacking a requisite
certification and so reluctantly boarded a bus to my next destination,
Puerto Montt. This harbor town was the place where my boat down to the
southern tip of Chile was leaving in two days, so with some time to kill
I headed out to the nearby (and ridiculously beautiful) island of Chiloe
and stayed for two nights in the tiny fishing village of Chonchi. I had
to keep reminding myself that I was actually still in Chile while on
Chiloe, since the whole place eerily smacked of the Irish countryside,
with endless rolling hills and open fields interrupted only by tiny
weatherbeaten farmhouses and fenceposts. And I also had to keep
reminding myself that I had a boat to catch, since everything in Chonchi
was so relaxed, carefree, and downright delicious (especially the salmon
dinners that were a specialty of the hostel I was staying in) that I
really didn't want to leave! But alas, I did have that boat, so I
hopped on a bus back to Puerto Montt two days later and then went right
onto my floating home for four days, the Navimag Puerto Eden.
Really just a glorified cargo ship with some passenger cabins and a
dining room/bar/disco/video room, the Puerto Eden was nonetheless a
pretty remarkable way to head through the narrow channels and open
waters of the southernmost part of Chile and into Puerto Natalas, the
starting-off point for treks into the Patagonian wilderness. And what's
more, I though that it was downright cool to be riding on a boat that,
for the most part, was filled with cargo and had giant truck trailers
anchored down to the aft deck. Just something different, I guess.
Though we had been warned that one part of the trip in particular would
head through extremely rough seas (swells of 6-10 meters (18-30 feet!!)
on average), we were very lucky and crossed this part, called the Gulfo
de Penas, on one of the calmest days the crew had ever experienced.
Still, though, there were constant 1m swells that lasted for about
8hours and so did claim some victims who, well, 'fed the fishes'. I
luckily wasn't one of those unhappy campers, but if the seas had been
any bigger I think it would've been a different story...
In terms of things I saw from the boat, it was pretty much an endless
landscape of green, sprawling, waterfall laden hills that only partially
hid the giant granite patagonian peaks of the mainland that often poked
out from behind, and the water was so full of life that we often saw
dolphins, porpoises, and even penguins racing in front of and alongside
our boat. (Though we saw no whales, it was pretty funny, one dreary
afternoon, to sit inside watching a movie with about 50 other passengers
and then have one member of the crew shount 'whale! whale!' just to see
all 50 passengers leap up out of their seats and race to the windows,
searching for the mythical whale. No Moby Dick analogy there, just
plain funny!)
The day after we arrived in Puerto Natales I was off to Parque Nationale
Torres del Paine, one of the most famous national parks in all of South
America and home of one of the 7 best trekking trails in the world. The
trail certainly lived up to its reputation as I spent 6 days with 5
other friends marveling at simply incredible sheer granite towers and
horns (some of them, such as the infamous Torres, we managed to see at
sunrise and so looked like red hot pokers against a dark blue morning
sky), deep blue glaciers that seemed to ethereally glow, and skies that
really can only be found in Patagonia. Again, the pictures are really
going to have to speak for me on this one, but once you see them you'll
understand why I thought that Torres is one of the most beautiful and
downright amazing treks I've ever done, and why I would go back again in
an instant.
And after Torres, I headed back to Puerto Natales for a day, then to
Punta Arenas (a larger town slightly further south and with the added
advantage of an airport) for a day and a half, had a surreal christmas
eve with people in my hostel and then hopped on a plane and flew back to
Santiago. Whew! I'm now in Santiago where I stay for one more night
before heading off to Rio, Brazil tomorrow, and then I'll be in Rio for
the new year (woo hoo!). After that it's probably only a short week or
two before I fly back to the States and work on the photos I've taken on
this leg of my trip (hence the reason for the promise that my photos
WILL be online by Jan. 20th), and then in February I'm off to southeast
asia for a few months.
I still have so much more to tell you all about my travels--especially
what I THINK about all of these experiences I've had, and especially the
quirks of Chilean culture and how they compare to Bolivian and Peruvian
culture, as well as the often overlooked but in my mind extremely
important topic of backpacker culture and what IT'S all about--but maybe
I'll save your eyes for now and so save all those thoughts for another
note. But those words are to come!!
For now, I hope you all are having happy holidays and that your
christmas/hannukah/etc. celebrations were fanatastic. Have a happy,
healthy, safe and rewarding new year, and if you get a chance, drop me a
line and let me know how it goes in your neck of the woods!
much love from afar,
Seth
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