Eye of the Tiger

Only 2 weeks left in Chile…Vamos, po!

Tomorrow are elections here, so my culture class has been studying the interesting process and atmosphere that is Chilean politics. There are 9 candidates this year, an absurd amount, partially because the vote has been made voluntary for the first time. Before, registered voters would be fined for failing to vote (which means voting in your hometown, because absentee voting does not exist here. If you’re studying somewhere, or traveling, or whatever, too bad). Now instead of registering, everyone with a valid Chilean id over 18 is automatically registered. Some think that this will greatly improve the representation problem of the last elections, in which only about a 3^rd of the voting population participated whatsoever in the elections (and to be president you’re supposed to have 51% of the population on your side). Others, like my host mom, think that now there is no incentive for people to vote at all, and since everyone is disillusioned altogether with the politicians, no one will vote. We will find out tomorrow. Other interesting elements of the voting scene include: 1. Men and women vote in separate places 2. You get drafted as a volunteer to hand-count the votes, much like jury duty 3. The counting process is entirely by hand, and an entirely public event. Every ballot is announced and shown to the politicians, public, and press watching 4. Voting takes place in local schools

Last weekend Emily and I hopped a plane to the Atacama Desert to do some touristing. San Pedro is basically a tourist village, with tour companies, hostels, and restaurants on every corner. We stayed in a hostel a little bit out of town so we saw more locals (we also did not have a reservation the first night because of complications with bus schedules, so the hostel owner let us stay in his house with his daughter. Chileans are so nice.)  I had never seen a desert before, so it was really neat to experience the dust and colors and heat of the place. Bible verses kept popping into my head with more meaning; ‘streams of living water’ mean a lot more when you are out in the middle of plains of rocks and sand under a hot sun.

            The first day we spent the morning walking about (meaning getting lost in the town, which clearly does not believe in street signs), hitting a couple little tourist shops, and walking out toward Pakara de Quitor, an archeological site about 2 miles from town. We wandered uphill and down, and could see the fortress for most of the time, but only actually arrived after many failed attempts to locate the entrance. We finally did arrive, however, and the view from the top of the mountain was incredible. It looked out over San Pedro, as well as the Cordillera de Sal (the range of salt). There was an incredible memorial at the top for the natives who died defending the fortress from the Spanish in the 1500’s. We also wandered through the ruins of the fortress, which had been built on older ruins; it was cool to be among ancient stories like that.

We made it back to San Pedro around 3 and promptly devoured a banana pizza. Yes, a banana pizza. It was basically a Hawaiian pizza with banana instead of pineapple. Pretty tasty. We spent the rest of the day organizing our tour plans and whipping up supper in the hostel kitchen. We also had some good chats with our roommates, a guy from England and a German living in Slovenia (who had also traveled to 64 countries in his lifetime). They were both quite interesting characters, and also happened to be going on the same tour as us…which left at 4 in the morning.

We got up so early to see the Geisers de Tatio, a site at about 4300 m about sea level and several hours from San Pedro by van. The stars are beautiful at 4 am, by the way…the Atacama is known for incredible stargazing conditions (they have a project out here to discover life on other planets and there are lots of observatories), and even in the patio of the hostel we could see the milky way. I didn’t realize the geysers were so high (no one had told us) and I ate an apple before we left…I was also experiencing the disadvantages of being a woman, and I ended up with altitude sickness even before we made it all the way up there. Despite my nausea and weakness, the geysers were pretty cool – totally new thing for me. There was an entire field of them, big, small, and otherwise. Pinochet had tried 4 times to harness their energy, but they are so unpredictable that every one of his attempts ended up with exploding machinery. We also saw a fox, and on the way down we saw Vicuñas galloping across the lime-green tufts of grass. I was excited to see them, since I knew that their coats are about the only thing that beats quiviut. They need it up there, even at 7 in the morning it was about 20 degrees F. They are also surprisingly graceful.  We stopped at the pueblo of Machuca on the way down, and I got ahold of some coca tea to help the altitude sickness. Always drink this stuff, it was about the only thing that kept me going.

We got home and took a nap after all this, which was very rejuvenating. We then sallied forth for some almuerzo – chorrillana for me with a bean salad. (Chorillana is a typical dish of fries covered with fried onions, steak, sausage, and egg). The food was…chilean. But satisfying.

 In the evening we had another tour – this time to the Laguan Cejar, a series of salt lakes out on the salt plain (5th largest in the world, just after Salt Lake in the US). We went ‘swimming’ in the chilly water, or floating rather. It was pretty neat, and really wasn’t as cold as I was expecting. Alaska prepares you well to swim in the rest of the world. We also checked out another sort of salt pond. The salt crystals were beautiful, and they sure made our shoes look cool afterwards.

Our 3rd day we headed out early again to the Salar de Tara, which, to my horror, was also really high up – 4,800 m. I mentioned that I had been sick to our driver, however, and he made some stops on the way up so that we could breathe and adjust. I was so happy to discover my stomach remained content, even after we had a camp breakfast up high. We were a bit chilly however, since we had stupidly read the wrong description of the tour…we thought we needed light jackets, instead the right description called for bundling up on account of high wind. We dashed in and out of the van to see the sights, and it wasn’t too bad – but I did wish I had grabbed my wool coat! We went up through La pasa Jama ( the Jama pass) which leads to Bolivia, so we can now say that we have seen Bolivia. We also got up close and personal to the many volcanoes in the area, and saw shepherds with llamas on our way up. We also saw these incredible pillars of rock when we left the high way. One looks just like Pablo Neruda. My favorite stop was La Catedral de Piedra, the Stone Cathedral – it was a canyon full of these towering pillars, with incredible texturas on the reddish stone. From there we could look down and see the salt lake full of flamingos that would be our finals stop, and the sun was so brilliant on the stone, and the sky so incredibly blue. Fantastic. The lake itself was also beautiful, surrounded by purplish mountains, with lime green algae growing from a hot spring, and pale pink flamingos stalking throug the water. It was certainly worth the long and rough ride, and all of the wind.

For lunch we cooked up 2 zucchinis with a couple eggs, tomatoe, onion, and some pasta – we ate so much, but it was so good. And we kept the salt far from our plates. Naps and a bit of homework also ensued. For the evening I dug out our trusty jar of peanut butter and we made sandwiches with apples and some tea.

Our last morning we had found a trusty guide to take us horseback riding. Emily had never ridden before, so he picked out a route that would be easier for her, and promised to teach her what to do. Come Monday morning, he had gotten mixed up and thought that we were coming Tuesday. He came dashing in and was quite worried, but our schedule was relaxed so we got to use my favorite word: Tranquilo! (tranquil, literally – means chill out, no worries, etc. Very very useful here, I love it.) He arranged for us to join another friend who was taking a couple German girls out for an easy ride, but he did walk with us out to the horses, after stopping to say hello to a piggy friend (they have conversations daily, apparently) and introducing us to Jr, the enormous dog. Our guide himself was rather large, we should have known he was from Rapa Nui before he told us. He clearly loves animals, and it was so neat to watch him talking to them and helping Emily learn how to tell her horse, Sueño, where to go. Marcelo, our commandeered guide, took us out towards Pukara de Quitor, and on the way back we doubled through Valle de la Muerte – so cool. We went twisting through a canyon full of rock and sand, and when we got to some dunes our guide asked if we wanted to go faster – I was all down. My horse and I went loping right up this huge dune where we waited for everyone else, who took a slower, more gradual way through the rocks. It was so good to be back in a saddle and to have horse smell all over me again. Sueño did try to roll on Emily (Marcelo warned that he liked sand a lot), but she leapt off after he had sat down as I yelled at her, and everybody was ok. She was NOT happy with her horse, but she got back on like a trooper and we made it home without further incident.

So that was the desert. Definitely worth every bit of the sunburn on my back and the salt marks on my backpack.

This morning I went with my host mom and her boyfriend to go shopping at the market in Viña – YUM. Everything except for the bananas are grown in Chile – kiwi, strawberries, zucchini, garlic…so much fresh food. We ate lots of salad today, as well as some fresh goat cheese with green aji (hot pepper). And fresh melon for dessert…I waddled off to do my homework. Which is what I ought to be doing right now – only 1 more week of school, so it’s final time. Eye of the Tiger, and here I go! Can't be any tougher than the desert, after all :)