Girl meets world.

Although I rarely mention it, one of the most constant aspects of our trip is riding the bus. In the last 3 months, we have traveled thousands of miles, and spent countless hours on buses of all sorts in order to get from place to place inexpensively. But what you may not know is how many interesting things go down on these hours of bus time. Have no fear: I´m here to tell you about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Although the buses in every country of South America are different, generally speaking buses are a comfortable, safe, and affordable way to get around. Bus companies are plentiful and competitive, which means the customer wins, and since bus travel is really the primary means of getting around a country or the continent (they´re a mainstay for backpackers here!), the buses are kept in good condition. In some countries, for example Argentina and Chile, bus travel can even be luxurious. Buses have spacious and comfortable seats, bathrooms, and offer blankets and pillows, just like on an airplane. For someone like me who has never had the money to fly first class, it´s a lot of fun to ride first class in the buses in Argentina: for our nearly 24-hour journey from Iguazu Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina to Buenos Aires, we sprung for the nicest bus available, with fully reclining seats (called ¨cama¨, the Spanish word for ¨bed¨, as opposed to semi-cama, a comfortable seat that is a little less wide and doesn´t recline quite as much) and ¨full service¨, which not only included a hot chicken and potato dinner as well as breakfast, but a glass of champagne after dinner, and an optional shot of whiskey before bed. The attendant who served us actually wore a bow tie.

However, when we got into Bolivia and Peru, bus ride quality rapidly declined. We got a wake up call that we weren´t in the land of luxury bus rides anymore on our very first Bolivian bus ride, from Calama, Chile, to Uyuni, Bolivia.

Drew and I arrived at 5:30 in the morning as instructed to catch our bus into Bolivia. It was a very cold morning, but we weren´t bundled up because we were going to be on a bus all day. However, everyone else seemed to be wearing hats, coats, gloves, and more than half the people waiting to get on the bus had blankets with them, too! It wasn´t until after most of our warm clothes were stashed safely under the bus did we realize why: these people knew that there was no heat on this bus.

Wearing flip flops, jeans, and a light jacket, Drew and I nearly froze to death for the first 3 hours of our long journey while we waited for the sun to come up and heat the bus. Meanwhile, the Bolivian passengers sat warmly wearing their hats, gloves, and blankets. But even after the bus warmed up a little bit, we had other problems. The biggest was that there was no bathroom on the bus. We were scheduled to be on the bus for about 10 HOURS and we stopped two times to use the bathroom. But did we stop at a gas station? No. A rest stop? No. About 3 hours after departing, we made our first bathroom stop in the middle of the nowhere in a desert-like terrain. There weren´t even TREES to pee behind. All of us piled out. While the men peed just about anywhere, most of the women peed behind the small desert bushes with their blankets covering them. Grown women of all ages, peeing in front of a bus full of people. Things I would NEVER see in the US, lemme tell you. I tell you this, friends: in desperation and not knowing when the next opportunity would be, I myself, thanks to the nice Bolivian lady who let me use her blanket to cover up, peed in the middle of nowhere in southern Bolivia in broad daylight, without so much as a tree to duck behind.

By the time we left Bolivia, I didn´t think buses could get much worse: not only did they consider things like proper restrooms and climate control luxuries, but there are barely any paved roads in the whole country, which means that it is impossible to read or even fall asleep on the buses because they are so incredibly bumpy. You just had to sit there, being thrown around for much longer than any bus ride should be because the roads are so bad, you can´t drive more than 40 miles per hour. In addition, many buses in Bolivia allow for standing seats. Literally, people will stand for 10 and 12 hours and longer because it´s the only ticket they can afford. Most of the women whith children younger than 5 can´t afford seats for their kids, so they just keep their children on their lap the whole time. This was especially irritating to me, because not only does that make an already crowded bus even MORE crowded with people that should have their own seat, but can you imagine sitting next to this? Bolivian mothers, as well, have no problem changing their baby´s diapers on a bus full of people. You can´t even imagine the smell. But when I got to Peru, we had even bigger bus problems: we had to worry if we would make it out alive!

Despite the warning I had read in the Lonely Planet guide to Peru that Peruvian bus rides were ¨notoriously dangerous¨, the bus ride from Cuzco to Ica started out ok. Roads were much better in Peru than in Bolivia, because tourism in Peru has been booming for many years. There were all paved roads and even guard rails. We had departed at 8 in the morning and had a clear beautiful day to travel. However, by nightfall and with 7 hours to go, things started to get pretty scary: we had been driving on steep switchbacks with tight turns very high in the mountains all day, but now it was getting dark, and the turns because more and more dangerous. Our double decker bus didn´t exactly turn on a dime, and progress was slow and tedious. As night fell, we traveled higher and higher in the mountains, with tighter and tighter turns to make, and with less light to do it all in. Drew and I usually sit in the first two seats in the front on the top level, right above where the driver sits and with full view of the road. However, this day, we were regreting this choice, because we could see EVERYTHING. We could even see that, every few turns, there was a cluster of wooden crosses where people had lost their lives off the steep cliff in the past. Late in the night, however, things only got worse: we were so high, that we were in the ¨cloud zone¨: and when we looked out the window to the front of the bus, we could see no road, no guard rails. only what looked like a thick, thick fog. Presumably our driver could see NOTHING but white.

I was utterly terrified.

I started to think about the last time I had talked to my parents, and wondered if I would ever talk to them again. I kept imagining what it would be like if our front right wheel didn´t clear the cliff: I imagined what it would feel like and sound like when we started going off the cliff. I wondered too why our driver wasn´t going any slower. I wondered about the other people on our bus: they have families and loved ones, too! They have lives that I´m sure they want to keep! Would we make it out of the cloud zone??

Well, since I´m writing this, it´s no surprise that we survived. But not without me sobbing audibly on a bus full of people (most of whom, by the way, didn´t look all that concerned. Peruvians must be used to this). Fortunately the trip is one-way, if I had to go back that way again, I´d take a plane.

One last experience is more humorous than life threatening, although the scared-y cat in me admittedly takes it kind of seriously. You might have experienced on a plane flight the option to watch a movie. This usually involved a headphone jack: if you want to hear the movie, you put your headphones in. If you don´t, you don´t put your headphones in, and you hear no sound. Very simple. Not in South America. In every country (except Brazil where no movies played at all), a movie in constantly playing for the majority of the bus journey, and the sound in not optional. it comes out of the speakers above your seats, and it´s usually very LOUD. No headphone jack, and no option to turn it off, as it is playing on a TV abovehead, not on the back of your seat.

This is bad enough, of course, but this isn´t even the problem I´m addressing. The problem with these non-optional movies is the movie choice. People of all ages ride these buses, including many children, and yet the most disgusting, terrifying, and offensive movies are considered appropriate to play in a bus where people have no choice but to see and hear whatever is playing. Although this has happened many times, one particularly memorable movie from Mendoza, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, was ¨Machete¨, an American movie that I don´t believe I as a mature adult was even able to sit through without being thoroughly offended.

If you haven´t seen it, which I hope you haven´t, the movie involves a man killing people left and right with a machete, sleeping with multiple girls at one time, and includes countless incidents of nudity, exposure, and graphic bloodshed. Had I seen this movie as I child, I would have been scarred for life. But no one in South America ever really seems to mind.

Just today we watched the movie ¨Blood Diamond.¨ The movie centers around the rebels and government in Africa, and I saw countless murders and even limbs chopped off. You know, perfectly appropriate for children of all ages.

Perhaps despite these three anecdotes, you still find yourself confused about the nature of the great South American bus ride. Perhaps you are unfortunate enough never to have taken a long-distance bus in South America (notice the sarcasm in this statement). To help you understand better, I present to you my top 7 least favorite things on a bus.

Top 7 Most Annoying Things on a Bus

7. Crying kids. Actually, just children in general.

I don´t much like to be around kids as a general rule. Some of them, I like. But the ones I don´t know, I´d prefer not to be on my bus crying, pooping, chatting on and on. Although some adults (no matter what country they´re from, I might add) act like children, I just find it more pleasant when it´s just us adults riding the bus. Can´t you leave that kid with grandma or something?

6. When someone vomits, passes gas, craps themselves, or just plain smells bad.

One of the many advantages of traveling in a pair is that I never have to worry about who I might sit by. Like it or not, I´m always sitting by Drew. There are times, however, when even people you aren´t sitting by cause problems for the whole bus. On our longest bus ride yet, 26 hours from Rio to Iguazu Falls in Brazil, someone in the back of the bus vomitted and stunk up the whole bus. There were no windows that could be opened. On our last bus from Cuzco to Ica, Peru, a 4-year-old boy crapped his pants, and the whole bus suffered as a result. The bus driver´s assistant ended up spraying an unidentified disinfecting/deodorizing substance all over the bus which just made it worse. And as you may know from, well, LIFE, some people just don´t smell that great.

5. A bumpy ride.

Although the bumpiness usually doesn´t make me sick, (although one exception, from Sucre to La Paz, had me hanging my face out the window in 50 degree weather at 2 in the morning) the irritation with bumpiness is in the fact that, as mentioned before, it prevents me from reading, my favorite bus activity to pass the time. Can´t fall asleep, either. You just have to sit there until your iPod dies listening to reruns of Radio Lab podcasts and wishing you would get there already. Oh yeah, there´s one more issue with them. The lack of a paved roads makes what should be an 8-hour trip turn into a 12-hour trip.

4. no climate control.

I don´t know what South America has against it, but if you ask me, when 40 or more people are stuck together in essentially in a large metal box for 8 hours or more, the temperature is bound to be uncomfortable if it isn´t regulated. If it really does use up that much energy or gasoline or whatever, there´s no way you could argue that it wouldn´t be energy well spent. Please use the heat and air conditioner. I shouldn´t need to wear my winter coat and gloves.

3. no bathroom.

Apart from what I consider just rediculous things (such as numbers 2 and 3), this is the number one problem I have on buses. I tend to drink a lot of water, and I hate depriving myself of water all day on a bus just so I won´t have to use the bathroom. Probably because my mother diagnoses every symptom of sickness with, ¨you´re probably just dehydrated!,¨ I firmly believe that not drinking enough water is very unhealthy and can weaken your immune system. Buses with no bathroom never stop enough, and I spend the whole bus ride uncomfortable.

2. People sitting in the isles.

Only in Bolivia is this allowed. Buses are claustrophobic enough without people crowding the isles. I guess I should be glad that I could afford to buy a seat, and that I don´t have to stand for the full 12 hour ride. But buses are not meant for people to sit in the isles. If they were, there would be seats there.

1. Mothers whose children sit on their laps.

This is my pet peeve. Although most common in Bolivia, this happens occasionally in every South American country. This once happened to me and my friends in a train compartment on an overnight train to Venice, Italy. It meant that where there were only supposed to be 6 bodies, there were 7. It takes away personal space from everyone in the compartment, not just the mother, space that each person paid for. Likewise, when women put their children (often much older than 2 or 3) on their laps on a bus, they may think that it is their decision, but it is one which effects everyone on the bus. If all the seats are full, that means there is another body on a bus that was meant for only so many bodies. It´s inconsiderate, and it shouldn´t be allowed.

I hope this rather long entry has helped you understand a little better the very unique experience of riding the infamous South American bus. I just have a few left, and you never know: perhaps I will miss them one day.

Or, maybe not.

One of the main things on Drew´s ¨must-see¨list for South America was the Amazon Rainforest. I admit, it´s one of the most amazing parts of South America. But even so, I was a little weary of heading into the jungle. Although we were to see tons of wild animals, they didn´t really scare me too much. What I was worried about, however, was being so far from a big city where I could receive medical care should something happen to me or Drew. Also, I was aware of Bolivia´s tourism safety standards (um, THERE ARE NONE), and Bolivia´s way of dealing with a crisis is a little different from mine. Since I have worst case scenario syndrome (or WCSS as I like to call it), I was sure one of us would come down with Malaria with only an unreliable boat to get us to some help. Despite my concerns, however, we proceeded.

We decided to do our tour of the Amazon out of Bolivia. Bolivia offers a great Pampas Tour, a wildlife-spotting tour that mostly takes place in the marsh-like swamp lands of the Amazon. The 3-day, 2-night tour begins in Rurrenabaque, a small town at the edge of the Amazon about 250 miles from the capital city of La Paz. From this city, all of the Amazon trips in Bolivia embark. However, despite the short distance, the harsh mountain terrain, bad roads, and social protests in the towns along the way prevent bus travel between La Paz and Rurrenabaque from being a safe option. In fact, we heard that it sometimes took the bus 3 or 4 days to finally make it to Rurrenabaque because the dirt roads become mud roads when it rains and the buses regularly get stuck. We even heard that some of the buses never make it at all. eek! needless to say, we and most of the other tourists prefer the safe option of the 40-minute flight.

The flight, which held only 20 people and landed on a runway that did not attach to any airport, was an adventure in itself. But when we landed in Rurrenabaque, I felt like we had just landed in Jurassic Park. Contrary to the 50-60 degree temperatures and 11,000-foot altitude of La Paz, we were now in 85 degree heat, 100% humidity, and about 500 feet altitude. It was only a 40-minute flight, but we were in another world.

The next morning, we were off to the Amazon. We had a motley crew of 7: me and Drew, plus a young Dutch couple, then a group of 3 from rural Australia consisting of a couple and their friend that had come to join them for a few weeks. The plan was to take a 3-hour jeep ride to the river, then have lunch. After lunch, we would load all our bags into our motorized conoe, then take a scenic 2-hour trip to the lodge where we would be spending the next two nights. The lodge can only be accessed by boat.

I was a little nervous about being on the boat the whole time; knowing what I know about Bolivian safety standards, I was worried we might run out of gas or that the conoe might malfunction. So I figured that the jeep ride the first morning would be a nice way to ease into the trip a little bit. Boy, was I wrong.

About an hour into the jeep ride, the road was lined with a dozen or so delivery trucks, about the size of U-hauls, clearly making deliveries into town. We soon figured out why they were all stopped: because of heavy rains the night before, one part of the road was so muddy and covered with water, they couldn´t get through. One of the trucks had tried, and was turned on it´s side, it´s load of red onions scattered all over the ground. Other vehicles had tried and failed as well: a double-decker bus coming from La Paz (they had probably been on the road now for days) was stuck in the mud, with no sign of being unstuck anytime soon. A jeep four by four was also stuck. Our jeep driver was waiting, trying to see if perhaps another jeep would would make it through the mud, and then we´d follow their path. We waited for almost an hour before our driver felt like he had a reliable path to take. I had to cover my eyes as we moved forward into the mud, but we finally made it to the other side.

So much for a leisurley morning drive.

These are what all the motorized conoes look like!

After lunch, we arrived at the river and rode the 2 hours to our lodge, which was deep in the jungle and only accessible by boat. On the way, we saw numerous kinds of tropical birds (including some tucan!) and some adorable squirrel monkeys (there were tons of them!). By then, it was late in the day, and we were all tired.

Our first activity the next morning was to go hiking through tall grass and marshlands looking for an anaconda. I´m not making this stuff up. We all wore tall rubber boots provided by the tour company and off we went into the tall grass looking for a killer snake. About 15 minutes in, though, the hiking started getting harder and harder and my boots kept getting stuck in the mud. It was about this time that I realized that the last thing I wanted to see was an anaconda (or a crocodile, which a member of our group later accidentally stepped on! he wasn´t harmed), and I turned back with no regrets. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) for the group, they did not encounter an anaconda that day. According to our guide, it was too cloudy and cold.

We spent the afternoon fishing for pirhanas with raw meat. Again, I´m not making this up. We had these crude fishing poles which consisted of fishing line wrapped around a paddle-like piece of wood just big of enough to hold on to. I didn´t catch any fish, but Drew caught one, as well as a few of the other people in our group. Our guide caught 2, plus a catfish! They were pretty hard to catch; They had gotten pretty good at avoiding being caught by inexperienced tourists.

Imagine seeing this guy up close!

That night after dinner was my favorite part of the trip, one which I almost decided against joining because I was scared: we were going on a short boat trip in the dark, shining our flashlights onto the river looking for alligators and crocodiles. I´m so glad I mustered the courage to join the group that night, because we saw 6 or 8 different ones! Whenever someone spotted one (usually it was our experienced guide), we would turn the boat around, turn the motor on low, and and ride right next to it, sometimes within inches! The animals weren´t really dangerous, and most of them just ran away eventually (¨they´re more scared of you than you are of them!¨), but just to be sure, I traded places with Drew on the boat so I´d be a little further away from them! It was amazing to see the alligators´and crocodiles´red eyes glowing in the night. It was one of the most memorable moments of the trip.

The next day, the sun had finally come out and it was a beautiful day! We spend the morning out looking for wildlife, especially pink river dolphins. We saw several, but they were so fleeting and difficult to get a good look at. Our guide also showed us a sloth, some howler and squirrel monkeys, some more crocodiles, birds, and tons of turtles out enjoying the sunshine.

A pink river dolphin

After lunch, it was time to head back to Rurrenabaque. I have to say, as a city girl, I was pretty relieved and proud that I had successfully survived the Amazon. I would be glad to head back to La Paz the next day and be back in ¨civilization.¨But it was an incredible adventure nonetheless, one I will never forget!

The standard 4-day, 3-night jeep tour of the salt flats of Bolivia is a must for every backpacker visiting Bolivia. The traditional tour begins in Uyuni, a city on the edge of the famous salt flats by the same name. The city probably wouldn´t even exist if it weren´t for backpackers visiting the salt flats. It pretty much consists of hostels and hotels, restaurants geared toward tourists, and most of all, tour companies.

There are literally hundreds of tour companies offering nearly the exact same standard tour. The only difference? quality. The standard tour started out as this, the true standard of quality: a driver, a cook, and 4 people on the tour. However, in an effort to cut corners and make more money, tour companies have started packing more and more people into the jeeps. One tour we ran into had 7 people on the tour, no cook, and the driver. 8 people in a jeep, driving about 10 hours a day for 3 days! In addition, there have been stories about drivers drinking, jeeps breaking down, and drivers getting lost on the tricky, ¨white out¨conditions of the salt flats. Needless to say, I was a little nervous.

We had done our research though, and it had been recommended to us by some other backpackers to start in a different town in Bolivia, Tupiza, and that there was a wonderful tour company out of that city that still put customers´safety first. My concerns were put to rest when I met our wonderful driver and cook. Also, there were indeed only 4 other people in the vehicle, which is becoming more and more rare on these tours. The other two people on the tour besides me and Drew were Luke and Cara from London. These 21-year-olds are recent college grads who decided to travel together. We couldn´t have had better tour mates for the trip. We all had so much fun together, and somehow immediately felt comfortable around them.

But wait. What ARE salt flats?

I´m glad you asked. The Salar de Uyuni (salt flats of Uyuni) is the largest salt flat in the world, covering 4,086 square miles at an incredible elevation of nearly 12,000 feet. The flats consist of natural salt several meters deep, and incredibly flat: over the entire flat, the variation of elevation is only within one meter. So how in the world did all that salt get there? Well, about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, it used to be a massive prehistoric salt water lake. Over time (ehem, a LOT of time!) and with terrain change, the water evaporated, but the salt remained.

The tours of course are called ¨Salt Flats Tours¨, but in all four days of the tour, only the last is dedicated to exploring the salt flats. The other three days are spent traveling the slow-going, windy, and bumpy roads between sights that include tons of llamas, mountains, and small indiginous sites and villages.

To break it down, the first day we mostly just covering some ground. we did see some incredible sights that day, including the beautiful snow-capped mountains that cover Bolivia, as well as a few small mining villages, one of which consisted of only about 80 families. We were also introduced to our cook´s delicious cooking. It was pretty amazing having our own personal cook for every meal! Days two and three was when things really started getting interesting. We entered the Reserva National de Fauna Andina Eduardo Awaroa in the very southern tip of Bolivia. This incredible national reserve contained some incredible natural gems. We saw volcanoes, high-altitude lagoons, guysers, and flamingos. We even got to soak for a bit in a natural hot spring in the national park!

Our accomodations on the trip were pretty primitive. We weren´t camping, but it was probably just one step above, since the places didn´t even have kitchen facilities, including a refrigerator, outlets, or even showers (we didn´t get to shower until the third night of the tour, and even then we had to pay a little for it!). We traveled with our own gas burner and gas tank for cooking, and even our own gasoline on top of the car (no gas stations on the side of the dirt road in the middle of nowhere!) The nights were so cold, I slept in my fleece jacket and winter hat.

On the second night of our tour, our driver asked if we could go over the itinerary for the next day. He only spoke Spanish, but this is what we got out of it: all the other tours (and there were dozens and dozens of them going on at the same time as us) were taking an alternative route to the usual, and returning to Uyuni (the town) to spend the night there, then venturing out the next day onto the salt flats from the east instead of the normal way, from the west. But our driver said that the best way was to go the normal route, from the west, and continue the loop we had already started. We had no idea at the time why the other groups were going around, although our driver did say in Spanish something about ¨a little bit of water.¨ It sounded like a no-brainer: continue our route and visit the great places the other tour groups would miss.

The next day, we had a beautiful scenic drive, and left the national reserve. We stopped in a small town where we got to visit a museum about the culture of the indiginous people of Bolivia (called the Quechua), and we got to see an old Quechuan cemetary in which bodies were simply put in small caves. We could only see the bones. That night, we got an awesome surprise: we were going to stay in a salt motel! There are a few of them along the track toward the salt flats, and they are extremely popular for tourists to stay in. Ours was actually made of stones on the outside, but the walls inside were lined with bricks made of salt, the floor was salt, even the tables and chairs at dinner were made of salt.

That night at dinner, we started talking with our driver, and I finally learned what was really happening: the reason why none of the other jeeps were taking the same path as us was because the wet season had just finished, and the western-most portion of the flats were covered in water. The next morning, at 5am, we were going to treck through 6-12 inches of water, blocking the view of where the road is, for about an hour before reaching the dry part of the flats.

I was terrified.

The next morning, we all ventured out in the dark, and it wasn´t long before we reached the dreaded water-covered part of the flats. Our driver stopped on the dry salt, looking out on what looked like an endless, indefinitely deep sea of water, as if he was gathering the concentration or will. There was no end to it in sight. Then we drove into the water.

Within just a few minutes, it began to get light outside as the sun rose. Our jeep was producing light ripples onto the otherwise perfectly still water. There were no other jeeps around; only us. As the sun came up, the sky was full of so many colors. The sunrise was beautiful.

This was just what we did.

I, of course, was paralyzed in fear, huddled in a featle position in the back jeep seat. But the sunrise was unbelievable. The water more and more shallow, and finally was so shallow that our jeep was barely making ripples in the water, only splashes as you would through a small puddle. Little by little, we emerged from the water, and were finally on dry ground. The sun was up. We were the only vehicle we could see in a sea of white salt. The driver stopped the jeep. It was 7:00am, and it was time for breakfast.

We stopped literally in the middle of nowhere and ate some delicous lemon cake, yogurt, and coffee (our cook had brought a thermos of hot water) out of the back of our truck (which is, by the way, how we ate many of our meals on the trip). Because we were the only jeep that had gone the other way around the salt flats, we were the only jeep in sight. Our driver really only knew which direction he was going because of the sun on that clear day (it´s the not-so-clear days that present problems with getting lost, so I learned, especially during the rainy season, December to March). We spend a couple of hours having fun with ¨perspective pictures¨on the flats. That´s what everyone does because the background of the flats is so uniform, it is easy to create optical illusions. (I will post these as soon as I can!) Then, we were on our way back into Uyuni. Very shortly after we stopped to take pictures, we caught up with all the other jeeps on our way back into town.

One girl´s perspective pic. I´ve got plenty of these that I can´t wait to show you!

Completing this tour was one of my prouder accomplishments in life (many of the others, come to think of it, are somewhere in this blog!). Only one shower in 4 days? sleeping in salt hotels and riding along in a bumpy jeep for 10 hours a day? Incredible. What an adventure!

Pisco Elqui

Even though I´m a city girl through and through, one of the things Drew and I decided before the trip was that we would not only visit the big cities, but we would also try whenever we could to visit small towns. In doing so, one is able to see what living somewhere is really like. It is also often quite cheaper in small towns compared with the big cities. So we decided to visit Pisco Elqui, one of many small towns on the edge of the beautiful Elqui Valley.

We took a 2-hour bus out of a town called La Serena. The further we got from town, the more sparsely populated the towns looked. We passed town after town, and each one was smaller than the last. I looked at Drew: I didn´t know how I would do in such a small, secluded (and wifi-free) place. But then we finally arrived. Pisco Eliqui, population 1,200.

From the main plaza, we made the hike through the hilly town and made it to our hostel on the edge of town in 5 minutes. We had a very nice surprise, though, when we arrived at our hostel: we would have our very own little cabin with its own kitchen! When traveling, it´s so nice not to have to share a kitchen with dozens of other people. Pisco Elqui is not the kind of place where you meet tons of other backpackers and where night time is always a party. People visit here because it is on of the best places in the Southern Hemisphere to see the stars. Pisco Elqui is in the desert, so there´s hardly ever even a cloud in the sky, so the nights are incredibly clear, perfect for star gazing. The town is also so small, that there is very little light pollution. I have never in my life seen as many stars as I did those nights in Pisco Elqui. We could see them perfectly well from our little cabin, and spent the whole evening just gazing at the stars from our own little porch.

As with many other towns in the north of Chile, most of the tourism and activities available to tourists are excursions outside of the town to go hiking, biking, or an excursion of some kind. Since we had plans to do that in other locations, we ended up getting a tip from the owner of our hostel and took ourselves on a hike. From the mountainside hike, we could see the whole Elqui Valley. It was beautiful! it turned out the small town of Pisco Elqui wasn´t so bad afterall. In fact, it was a total treat!

A few weeks ago, we completed our time in Chile. Its always hard leaving a country on this trip, knowing that I may very well never be back in the country, and that I could be saying goodbye forever. But alas, one must always move on.

We have accomplished a lot since leaving Santiago, the last time I wrote about our travels. I´ll give you the highlights.

Valparaiso

One of the most unique cities in the world, Valparaiso is one of the oldest cities in Chile and the main port cities. Situated on the coast, the city consists of a main center surrounded by hills, or carros, where most residents live. Valparaiso is famous for the many colorful houses that scatter all the hills. In most cities I have visited, names are given to different districts or boroughs to divide the city. But in Valparaiso, instead of telling someone which burough you lived in, you would tell them which hill you live on.

The hills are quite steep. QUITE steep, let me tell ya. (You should have seen us try to climb ours with our massive backpacks on.) This has theoretically been remedied with the installation of ascensores, cable car elevators, at the bottom of most of the hills, but they are more often in disrepair than in working condition, and ours was broken, so we had to climb. We didn´t mind, though, because the view of our city and the ocean from anywhere on the hill was amazing.

an ascensore in Valparaiso

Down in the valley between all the mostly residential hills was the busling city center, including all the restaurants, grocery stores, banks, shops, and bars. Although the city of Valparaiso is indeed on the ocean, there is curiously (to me, anyway) no beach. I guess I´m of the opinion that wherever there´s coast, there should be a beach to hang out on. But it turns out there are numerous other uses for a coastline than a beach, including import and export into the country. That is mostly what goes on in Valparaiso.

We actually spent two of the 4 days we had in Valpo (as Chileans call it) visiting two MORE of the homes of Pablo Neruda. Let me explain a little.

Pablo Neruda

OK, here´s the 411 about visiting the houses of Pablo Neruda. There are indeed 3 of them, all of which you can tour with a personal guide or audio tour. One, we already visited in Santiago, which was originally only built as a hideout essentially for Neruda´s mistress Matilde, while he was still married to his second wife. (yes, Matilde was eventually his third wife. He was quite the romantic, but a little too romantic in my opinion, if you know what I mean...) He later moved in there with her. He also had a house in Valparaiso, high on one of the hills, and it is beautiful with an incredible view of the ocean and city. He lived and worked there as his primary house for many years. The third is in what would have been an incredible sparsely populated area at the time Neruda bought the house there, in a placed called Isla Negra (despite its name, it is not an island.) Now, it has sprung up with some businesses almost solely because of all the tourism his house brings in. Isla Negra is about an hour and a half by bus from either Valparaiso or Santiago, and this secluded house was Neruda´s most favorite. It is said to be the ¨don´t miss¨ Neruda house because it houses several of his collections, and because it was the house he lived in with his most famous lover, Matilde, in the last years of his life.

Neruda´s house in Valparaiso on Cerro Florida

All of the houses share very similar characteristics. First, all the houses contain things that he collected. Neruda owned more stuff than almost anyone I´ve ever heard of (besides those hoarders on that TV show. Actually, he may have been a hoarder, he had so much stuff!). Also, as I said in a previous post, he was obsessed with the ocean, and therefore all of his houses resemble boats in several ways. First, he collected furniture from ships and put them in his houses (you can tell which furniture is from a ship because the corners have protective metal caps on them). In addition, two of the houses have a small room at the very top of the house from which Pablo would work that was built specifically to resemble a captain´s lookout deck.

Neruda´s bottle collection

Neruda collected many different things. And he didn´t just have a passing interest, but he really, really collected a lot of things. Most of the things he collected are at his largest house in Isla Negra. His collections there include: pipes, bottles, masks from all over the world, hats, art from all over the world, shells (he collected more than 6,000), maps, miniature ships in bottles, musical instruments, insects, butterflys, and many many more things. Isla Negra was simply packed with all that he collected. This is why touring his houses is so interesting. There are countless late poets and artists of other kinds, and surely many of their houses are available for visits by tourists. But I can´t imagine any of them are nearly as interesting the eccentric houses of Neruda.

There is one more characteristic of all of his houses that shows where his priorities are: each of his houses has at least one (often two) areas for entertaining many guests. Each space includes a bar, because Neruda loved to drink with his friends, and our tour of his house in Valparaiso sid that he had his friends over to his house every day. EVERY day, for lunch, and then again at night for drinks and parties. He was a man who truly loved to be around other people and to share his life and happiness with others. I believe he has and will always inspire visitors to his house to enjoy life, to cherish your friends, and to use your imagination.