Entering Bolivia was breathtaking. Literally. The border with Chile, next to the volcano Licancabur (surrounded by mines, by the way) is at 4,500m, higher than than I had ever been and implying going up over 2,000 m. in less than an hour from San Pedro de Atacama. A nice way of preparing us for what was about to come.
We changed cars at the border (Bolivian authorities don't let any commercial vehicle from Chile enter the country; part of the excellent relations between both countries :) and the spectacle began: lagoons of all colors (red, blue, green,...), hundreds of flamingoes, natural hot-springs (where only 3 of us ventured in), daliesque rock-trees, viscachas (a big rabbit with long tails), vicuñas, volcanoes,... and all that spectacle at over 4,000 m!!
The first night we slept at around 4,300 m, in a "refugio" (shelter) with no heating in the rooms, despite the fact that the lowest temperature recorded there was a mild -25°C! It also meant my first encounter with Bolivian toilet facilities: an outdoor bathroom (well, it wasn't outdoor, but you had to walk in the open to reach it) with no light, no toilet paper and no flushing tank.
I don't know exactly what it was. The altitude, the cold, the constant talk about the symptoms of altitude sickness or the fact that some of my five roommates (and a guy from the other car) were already experiencing them. The fact is that my digestive system decided to go for a test-ride of the most basic toilet I had ever seen. In the night. In the middle of the night.
So I tried to find my flash-light and my toilet paper in the dark, and run for the door jumping over all the bag-packs trying not to fall and not to wake up the few of us that had managed to sleep. At least when I went for the bucket of water to flush the toilet it was not frozen, as it was when another person tried the facilities later in the night.
Before entering the Uyuni salt lake, we went through a military control, where they checked our passports again. That was the first sight of the basic conditions that people have in this country, since they offer to buy cigarrettes or fruit from us.
We finally arrived at the hotel where we would spend the night, and the best thing was that it truly looked as a hotel. And a very original one, as it was completely made of salt: the walls, the floor, the tables, the chairs,... Everything was made of salt! Something that also made the use of salt shakers completely unnecesary: simply scratch the walls :)
That night we had a wonderful dinner including quinua soup (a very tasty Altiplano cereal I had never tried before), but half of our group was sick the morning after. More than the food, I blame a group of local kids that appeared after dinner battering their instruments in the hope that some music would eventualy come out of them. It did not happen, but we took some cute (and soundless) pictures of them.
On the third and last day, after visiting some outstanding pre-Incan mommies in the caves where they were found, we finally reached the Salar (salt lake) de Uyuni, the largest in the world (larger than the entire Comunidad de Madrid and 3 times the size of Luxemburg). Truly impressive, although we didn't get to enjoy the waterly reflections it offers when it has rained on the previous days. Even so, driving for over 100 km. without noticing the landscape around you change and losing sight of the horizon in certain directions was quite an experience.
We had lunch at the Isla del Pescado (Fish Island), populated by hundreds of giantic cactuses (some of them over 10m high) and for the first time in our trip we listened to some Western music. I love South-American songs, but I believe that even the most radical "cumbia" fans would agree with me that 3 days in a row listening to the same tape of "Sagrado", an apparently popular Peruvian group, was a bit too intense.
We continued to the old salt hotel, located in the middle of the salt lake and now only allowed to serve food, and then proceeded to the area where salt is being extracted for commercial purposes. According to Juan the salt always regenerates, so it will never run out, but I'm not sure many scientists would agree on that.
After taking some pictures of the pyramids of salt waiting to be loaded on trucks, we headed for Uyuni, the first real Bolivian city I visited. I found 3 things quite surprising about this place:
1-The amount of garbage and plastic bags that covered thousands of square meters on the outskirts of the city.
2-How many people were dressed in traditional clothes.
3-The lack of harassment, as no one approached us to try to sell us anything.
And of course, we had our first taste of the agitated Bolivian politics, witnessing a massive protest of teachers claiming such diverse things as salary increases, the return of the coastal area that Bolivia lost to Chile over 100 years ago and the nationalization of all gas companies.
It was also in Uyuni where I had to confront for the first time the only truly scary aspect of Bolivia: electric showers. Water and electricity are anything but an attractive combination, so when I saw the two electric wires going directly to the device pouring the water over my head, it took me a while to gather the necessary courage to get under it.
Electric showers are extremely popular in Bolivia, ironical in a country that produces more gas than it can consume. Most electricity in Bolivia is produced in gas plants, so it seems quite inefficient (and expensive) to use gas to produce electricity to warm the water when you can use gas directly for that purpose. But one of the first things you learn in Bolivia is the futility of trying to find a logical explanation to many things that occur in this country.
But other than experimenting with the electric showers, there wasn't much to do or see in Uyuni, a rather shabby place, so I decided to take a bus to Potosí the next morning.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Monday, June 21, 2004
Chile, the different South America
I found Chile to be quite different from most other countries in South America. It's true that each country is different on its own, but it's very hard to find any similarities between Chile and any of the other countries I've visited.
Chileans, unlike most other South-Americans, are very reserved and serious and the society is still shockingly conservative. Also unlike most other South-Americans, I found Chileans to be quite work-oriented, spending long hours in their jobs and being very professional and very trustworthy when it comes to business. Chileans are the only South-Americans I've met who don't blame other countries for their own problems and who seem to face their own challenges. And, in my opinion, this unusual lack of victimism is one of the reasons why this country is one of the most stable and developed economies in the continent.
Another unexpected difference was the language and the Chilean accent. Unlike we think in Spain, Chilean accent is completely different from Argentinian, and people here talk very fast, they cut the words (specially "s") and they use a lot of slang and different words than we use in Spain, making it the most difficult country to communicate both for Spanish and non-Spanish speakers. When traveling in the south with truck drivers, sometimes I couldn't understand a single word of what they told me and when going to a restaurant I frequently had to look at the English version of the menu to know what I was ordering.
To illustrate the differences in vocabulary, here are a few examples (a few of them also apply in other South American countries):
ENGLISH CHILE SPAIN
Beans Porotos Judías
Avocado Palta Aguacate
Peas Arvejas Guisantes
Peach Durazno Melocotón
Apricot Damasco Albaricoque
Strawberry Frutilla Fresa
Butt Poto Culo
OK Ya Vale
Understand? ¿Cachai? ¿Entiendes?
Baby Guagua Bebé
Boyfriend Pololo Novio
Pay/Charge Cancelar Pagar/Cobrar
Regarding the political situation, it was very surprising as well to discover how many Chileans have a good image of Pinochet, and not only people of certain social classes or political ideology. In the south, for example, people were quite grateful to Pinochet for having built the Carretera Austral because these regions had been completely ignored by all previous governments.
It was also quite surprising to learn that Allende was not simply a socialist president (as we think in Spain), but that in reality he started a communist regime in Chile, a fact that seems to have been intentionaly obscured by certain ideologies . Many people had their houses and their land expropiated by the goverment, and most goods were distributed via rationing books, just like in Cuba or the old Soviet Union.
In the present time Chile maintains very good relations with the US and that, together with the wars they won against their neighbors in the past, has led the country to become quite isolated. Peruvians and specially Bolivians still complain about the territories they lost to Chile in the Pacific wars at the end of the XIX century, and the conditions imposed by Bolivia to Argentina, restraining this country from selling gas to Chile, hasn't helped to improve the relationship with the neighbor from across the Andes.
But enough about politics. The landscape of Chile is spectacular and extremely varied, as you could expect from a country over 5,000 km long. The Andes create a metereological barrier that makes Southern Chile rainy and green, very different from the dry and desertic Argentinian Patagonia. Once you reach Santiago, the scenery changes drastically, and the desert is the star, becoming truly spectacular in the north of the country, near the Peruvian and Bolivian borders. Unfortunately, I couldn't visit the fiords on the far south, but that's another different landscape that I've heard it's truly amazing.
Well, that's been Chile for me. One of the longest countries in the world, with beautiful (many still luckily underdeveloped) landscapes and very different from the rest of the continent. Chile was also the first place in my trip where I could enjoy that "like home" feeling both in Santiago and Reñaca and, traveling as a backpacker, it's specially appreciated.
Well, I still have to visit one last area of Chile, the exotic and mysterious Easter Island, but that's so different from the rest of the country, that I don't think it will alter my image of it.
Chileans, unlike most other South-Americans, are very reserved and serious and the society is still shockingly conservative. Also unlike most other South-Americans, I found Chileans to be quite work-oriented, spending long hours in their jobs and being very professional and very trustworthy when it comes to business. Chileans are the only South-Americans I've met who don't blame other countries for their own problems and who seem to face their own challenges. And, in my opinion, this unusual lack of victimism is one of the reasons why this country is one of the most stable and developed economies in the continent.
Another unexpected difference was the language and the Chilean accent. Unlike we think in Spain, Chilean accent is completely different from Argentinian, and people here talk very fast, they cut the words (specially "s") and they use a lot of slang and different words than we use in Spain, making it the most difficult country to communicate both for Spanish and non-Spanish speakers. When traveling in the south with truck drivers, sometimes I couldn't understand a single word of what they told me and when going to a restaurant I frequently had to look at the English version of the menu to know what I was ordering.
To illustrate the differences in vocabulary, here are a few examples (a few of them also apply in other South American countries):
ENGLISH CHILE SPAIN
Beans Porotos Judías
Avocado Palta Aguacate
Peas Arvejas Guisantes
Peach Durazno Melocotón
Apricot Damasco Albaricoque
Strawberry Frutilla Fresa
Butt Poto Culo
OK Ya Vale
Understand? ¿Cachai? ¿Entiendes?
Baby Guagua Bebé
Boyfriend Pololo Novio
Pay/Charge Cancelar Pagar/Cobrar
Regarding the political situation, it was very surprising as well to discover how many Chileans have a good image of Pinochet, and not only people of certain social classes or political ideology. In the south, for example, people were quite grateful to Pinochet for having built the Carretera Austral because these regions had been completely ignored by all previous governments.
It was also quite surprising to learn that Allende was not simply a socialist president (as we think in Spain), but that in reality he started a communist regime in Chile, a fact that seems to have been intentionaly obscured by certain ideologies . Many people had their houses and their land expropiated by the goverment, and most goods were distributed via rationing books, just like in Cuba or the old Soviet Union.
In the present time Chile maintains very good relations with the US and that, together with the wars they won against their neighbors in the past, has led the country to become quite isolated. Peruvians and specially Bolivians still complain about the territories they lost to Chile in the Pacific wars at the end of the XIX century, and the conditions imposed by Bolivia to Argentina, restraining this country from selling gas to Chile, hasn't helped to improve the relationship with the neighbor from across the Andes.
But enough about politics. The landscape of Chile is spectacular and extremely varied, as you could expect from a country over 5,000 km long. The Andes create a metereological barrier that makes Southern Chile rainy and green, very different from the dry and desertic Argentinian Patagonia. Once you reach Santiago, the scenery changes drastically, and the desert is the star, becoming truly spectacular in the north of the country, near the Peruvian and Bolivian borders. Unfortunately, I couldn't visit the fiords on the far south, but that's another different landscape that I've heard it's truly amazing.
Well, that's been Chile for me. One of the longest countries in the world, with beautiful (many still luckily underdeveloped) landscapes and very different from the rest of the continent. Chile was also the first place in my trip where I could enjoy that "like home" feeling both in Santiago and Reñaca and, traveling as a backpacker, it's specially appreciated.
Well, I still have to visit one last area of Chile, the exotic and mysterious Easter Island, but that's so different from the rest of the country, that I don't think it will alter my image of it.
Monday, June 14, 2004
The Atacama desert
I felt it was really taking me a lot of time to get closer to Bolivia, so I decided to fly from Santiago to Calama in order to avoid running into any other "attractions" that would slow me down even more.
I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama that same night and the city was nothing like I expected (yes, I know this is becoming the standard on my trip :) It was quite dark, with unpaved streets and all houses were made of "adobe". Certainly not something you would expect from one of Chile's most touristry cities. However, under the sun light it turns out to be quite a cute place, the adobe houses are very nice and the fact that they haven't constructed any modern looking building is certainly a plus.
I found San Pedro night life to be quite less happening than everybody had led me to believe, as there are no bars and people just seem to simply have a few drinks at the table where they ate. However, I found the city's restaurants to be very attractive, specially my favorite one: La Estaka. They are rustic but with a modern design, sort of like a mix between Catalan modernism and Castillian austerity (sorry for those of you who don't know these wonderful regions). And they served some of the best food I've had in Chile, being both delicious and creative.
There are lots of things you can do at San Pedro, being the most typical ones visiting the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), the Tatio Geysers and the Atacama salt lake (third largest in the world after the one in Uyuni, Bolivia, and the one in Salt Lake City, USA). Since I was going to see geysers on my way to Uyuni and the ones at el Tatio were not at their peak (not to mention you had to wake up at 4 am and endure temperatures of several degrees below zero) I decided to skip them. Somebody told me later that it was a mistake, but now I have a good reason to return some day to San Pedro :)
I combined a visit to Valle de la Luna with a initiation to sand-boarding on the Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley). Sand-boarding turned out to be easier than I expected and a lot of fun, but one of the most tiring sports I've ever tried (specially walking up the dune after having surfing it down).
Both the Valle de la Luna and the Valle de la Muerte were spectacular. They are formed by salt covered by clay, creating surreal shapes. Apparently, the name of Valle de la Muerte is due to a communication misunderstanding, when the Belgian priest Father le Paige tried to say that the valley reminded him of Marte (Mars) and the locals understood Muerte (Death). I must say that even the Valle de la Luna also reminds me a lot more of Mars than the Moon. Anyway, seeing the Valle de la Muerte and all the volcanoes and mountains that surround it turn red during sunset was something truly unforgetable.
I visited also the Atacama salt lake, together with some some beautiful "Altiplanic" lagoons and other some other smaller salt lakes at over 4,000 m. Along the way we saw a lot of animals: foxes, ñandús (a big bird like an ostrich) and vicuñas (a sort of wild llama, similar to the guanacos in Argentina). The Atacama salt lake was quite different from most others salt lakes, as its salt has been mixed with mud and clay from the surrounding mountains creating a rough, wrinkled and brown surface. The thickness of the salt layer varies between 20 and 80 cm. and, to my surprise, there is water underneath.
Although part of the salt lake is a national park, most of it remains unprotected. In fact, in some areas salt is being extracted, specially to obtain lithium for the batteries.
At the Chaxa Lagoon, within the Atacama salt lake, we saw quite a few flamingoes (not as many as we would see in Bolivia) belonging to tree of the five species that exist in the world. They eat micro-algaes and other micro-organisms, some of which are responsible for their pink color (when they are young, flamingoes are white).
On the way back to San Pedro, or "San Perro" (Saint Dog), as some locals call it due to the large number of stray dogs that live in the city, we stopped at Toconao, a village whose only interest is that all houses are made of volcanic stones. Actually my highlight there was feeding and playing with some llamas that a local handycrafter had in his yard. They make this funny noises to call your attention and get more food. Very cute animals.
My last day on San Pedro I decided to bicycle back to the Valle de la Luna to see some salt tunnels that we were not able to visit the first time. Unfortunately we had to wipe out the mud from the walls to actually see the salt (we learn that afterwards), so we couldn't find them and went back to the city.
And to complete the day, one of the guys that worked in our hostel had offered himself to take us in a tour to the laguna Céjar, a lagoon that few people know (only a couple agencies talk about it) where you can float, as in the Dead Sea. We told more people to share the costs and at the end it we were six people squeezed into this guy's pick up truck (funny enough, two of the people we recruited were recent graduates of USC, the university I attended in Los Angeles).
Our improvised guide had never been there (or at least didn't remember the way), so we spent 1 and a half hours trying different paths (some of them very rough) and pushing the car when it got stuck in the sand. And just when we beginning to lose all hope, we got there.
It was spectacular, this blue lagoon surrounded by white salt and absolutely no one else. After enjoying the weightless sensation of floating there, we faced the tough part: getting out of it. The walls around the lagoon were quite steep and the top of the salt layer was very strong, sharp and cutting, so our feet (and many parts of our body) looked as if we had been walking on a bed of needles. And I don't need to tell you how pleasant it is to have bleeding wounds all over your body when at the same time you are covered in salt. Ouch!
After the lagoon, we drove (while taking care of our wounds) to the Jere gorge, an amazing oasis created by a river on the bottom of a small canyon. In this oasis locals were growing lots of differen fruits, and it was an impressive contrast to see all those trees on this gorge in the middle of the desert.
And well, that was my last sight of Chile (until I go to Easter Island), because the next morning I entered a very different country: Bolivia.
I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama that same night and the city was nothing like I expected (yes, I know this is becoming the standard on my trip :) It was quite dark, with unpaved streets and all houses were made of "adobe". Certainly not something you would expect from one of Chile's most touristry cities. However, under the sun light it turns out to be quite a cute place, the adobe houses are very nice and the fact that they haven't constructed any modern looking building is certainly a plus.
I found San Pedro night life to be quite less happening than everybody had led me to believe, as there are no bars and people just seem to simply have a few drinks at the table where they ate. However, I found the city's restaurants to be very attractive, specially my favorite one: La Estaka. They are rustic but with a modern design, sort of like a mix between Catalan modernism and Castillian austerity (sorry for those of you who don't know these wonderful regions). And they served some of the best food I've had in Chile, being both delicious and creative.
There are lots of things you can do at San Pedro, being the most typical ones visiting the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), the Tatio Geysers and the Atacama salt lake (third largest in the world after the one in Uyuni, Bolivia, and the one in Salt Lake City, USA). Since I was going to see geysers on my way to Uyuni and the ones at el Tatio were not at their peak (not to mention you had to wake up at 4 am and endure temperatures of several degrees below zero) I decided to skip them. Somebody told me later that it was a mistake, but now I have a good reason to return some day to San Pedro :)
I combined a visit to Valle de la Luna with a initiation to sand-boarding on the Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley). Sand-boarding turned out to be easier than I expected and a lot of fun, but one of the most tiring sports I've ever tried (specially walking up the dune after having surfing it down).
Both the Valle de la Luna and the Valle de la Muerte were spectacular. They are formed by salt covered by clay, creating surreal shapes. Apparently, the name of Valle de la Muerte is due to a communication misunderstanding, when the Belgian priest Father le Paige tried to say that the valley reminded him of Marte (Mars) and the locals understood Muerte (Death). I must say that even the Valle de la Luna also reminds me a lot more of Mars than the Moon. Anyway, seeing the Valle de la Muerte and all the volcanoes and mountains that surround it turn red during sunset was something truly unforgetable.
I visited also the Atacama salt lake, together with some some beautiful "Altiplanic" lagoons and other some other smaller salt lakes at over 4,000 m. Along the way we saw a lot of animals: foxes, ñandús (a big bird like an ostrich) and vicuñas (a sort of wild llama, similar to the guanacos in Argentina). The Atacama salt lake was quite different from most others salt lakes, as its salt has been mixed with mud and clay from the surrounding mountains creating a rough, wrinkled and brown surface. The thickness of the salt layer varies between 20 and 80 cm. and, to my surprise, there is water underneath.
Although part of the salt lake is a national park, most of it remains unprotected. In fact, in some areas salt is being extracted, specially to obtain lithium for the batteries.
At the Chaxa Lagoon, within the Atacama salt lake, we saw quite a few flamingoes (not as many as we would see in Bolivia) belonging to tree of the five species that exist in the world. They eat micro-algaes and other micro-organisms, some of which are responsible for their pink color (when they are young, flamingoes are white).
On the way back to San Pedro, or "San Perro" (Saint Dog), as some locals call it due to the large number of stray dogs that live in the city, we stopped at Toconao, a village whose only interest is that all houses are made of volcanic stones. Actually my highlight there was feeding and playing with some llamas that a local handycrafter had in his yard. They make this funny noises to call your attention and get more food. Very cute animals.
My last day on San Pedro I decided to bicycle back to the Valle de la Luna to see some salt tunnels that we were not able to visit the first time. Unfortunately we had to wipe out the mud from the walls to actually see the salt (we learn that afterwards), so we couldn't find them and went back to the city.
And to complete the day, one of the guys that worked in our hostel had offered himself to take us in a tour to the laguna Céjar, a lagoon that few people know (only a couple agencies talk about it) where you can float, as in the Dead Sea. We told more people to share the costs and at the end it we were six people squeezed into this guy's pick up truck (funny enough, two of the people we recruited were recent graduates of USC, the university I attended in Los Angeles).
Our improvised guide had never been there (or at least didn't remember the way), so we spent 1 and a half hours trying different paths (some of them very rough) and pushing the car when it got stuck in the sand. And just when we beginning to lose all hope, we got there.
It was spectacular, this blue lagoon surrounded by white salt and absolutely no one else. After enjoying the weightless sensation of floating there, we faced the tough part: getting out of it. The walls around the lagoon were quite steep and the top of the salt layer was very strong, sharp and cutting, so our feet (and many parts of our body) looked as if we had been walking on a bed of needles. And I don't need to tell you how pleasant it is to have bleeding wounds all over your body when at the same time you are covered in salt. Ouch!
After the lagoon, we drove (while taking care of our wounds) to the Jere gorge, an amazing oasis created by a river on the bottom of a small canyon. In this oasis locals were growing lots of differen fruits, and it was an impressive contrast to see all those trees on this gorge in the middle of the desert.
And well, that was my last sight of Chile (until I go to Easter Island), because the next morning I entered a very different country: Bolivia.
Relaxing at the Chilean summer resorts (who cares it's Fall :)
One of my very good friends insisted a lot on me about visiting her aunt, who lives in Reñaca, near Viña del Mar. So, eventhough I was really lagging behind my planned schedule, I thought my friend's comments on her aunt were reason enough to try to visit her. And I'm certainly glad I did.
Reñaca and Viña del Mar are the typical summer resorts that are quite lively during the summer but where ther isn't much to do the rest of the year (the water is too cold to go swimming and there isn't many people). However, spending three days with Mónica (my friend's aunt) and her family was a wonderful experience. They have a beautiful house on a hill overlooking Reñaca from where you can also see Valparaíso, and they treated me like another member of the family. I felt as if I was home again, which was great after 3 and a half months of traveling.
I had a lot of fun and lot of laughs with her and her son Lucho, learned a lot about Chilean history (Lucho's uncle turned out to be a very interesting person to talk to), drank excellent pisco sours, ate delicious food and visited very nice places nearby. Who could ask for anything more!
One of the places we visited that I really liked is Horcón, a lovely fishermen village where horses are used to pull the boats from the water, which turns into a hippie hang-out site in the summer. However, my favorite spot was Con Con, just north of Reñaca, where you can see truly spectacular rock formations on the coast. Not to mention all the wildlife you can spot on those rocks, including sealions and lots of pelicans, one of my favorite birds.
The highlight of my stay with Monica's family (in addition to having my own private room with cable TV, a luxury I hadn't enjoy since my days as a consultant :) was going sand-duning (is that correct English?) with Lucho and his jeep. It was a lot of fun and a bit scary because we went up some vertical dunes and across some side slopes that really seemed impossible to do in a car. But since that's one of Lucho's favorite hobbies and he's run several times the Atacama Rally, I guess I was in good hands. Well, at least I have no incidents to report :)
So, eventhough I didn't get to enjoy the nice beaches of Viña del Mar or Reñaca or its wild summer night life, my stay with Monica, Lucho and the rest of the family was truly memorable.
¡Muchas gracias a todos por haberme cuidado tan bien!
Reñaca and Viña del Mar are the typical summer resorts that are quite lively during the summer but where ther isn't much to do the rest of the year (the water is too cold to go swimming and there isn't many people). However, spending three days with Mónica (my friend's aunt) and her family was a wonderful experience. They have a beautiful house on a hill overlooking Reñaca from where you can also see Valparaíso, and they treated me like another member of the family. I felt as if I was home again, which was great after 3 and a half months of traveling.
I had a lot of fun and lot of laughs with her and her son Lucho, learned a lot about Chilean history (Lucho's uncle turned out to be a very interesting person to talk to), drank excellent pisco sours, ate delicious food and visited very nice places nearby. Who could ask for anything more!
One of the places we visited that I really liked is Horcón, a lovely fishermen village where horses are used to pull the boats from the water, which turns into a hippie hang-out site in the summer. However, my favorite spot was Con Con, just north of Reñaca, where you can see truly spectacular rock formations on the coast. Not to mention all the wildlife you can spot on those rocks, including sealions and lots of pelicans, one of my favorite birds.
The highlight of my stay with Monica's family (in addition to having my own private room with cable TV, a luxury I hadn't enjoy since my days as a consultant :) was going sand-duning (is that correct English?) with Lucho and his jeep. It was a lot of fun and a bit scary because we went up some vertical dunes and across some side slopes that really seemed impossible to do in a car. But since that's one of Lucho's favorite hobbies and he's run several times the Atacama Rally, I guess I was in good hands. Well, at least I have no incidents to report :)
So, eventhough I didn't get to enjoy the nice beaches of Viña del Mar or Reñaca or its wild summer night life, my stay with Monica, Lucho and the rest of the family was truly memorable.
¡Muchas gracias a todos por haberme cuidado tan bien!
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Bohemian Chile
Or at least that's what I thought of Valparaiso.
This city, which used to be one of the most important ports in the continent (before the opening of the Panama Canal), is a unique blend of old buildings, bohemian houses and truly dangerous slums. Located in natural bay harbour and surrounded by house-crowded hills on which it's impossible to find any green spot, Valparaiso has managed to retain most of its charm.
One of the most distinctive features of the city are its "ascensores" (funicular railways), most of them built at the end of the XIX century. 15 of them are still working today, and the inclination of some of them is really spectacular (over 50% slopes). Unsurprisingly, this ancient mechanical wonders have been declared World Heritage Monuments by UNESCO.
My favorite area in Valparaiso are the Cerros (hills) Alegre and Concepción, where all the bohemian atmosphere of the city is concentrated. On these hills, old mansions have been converted into museums and abandoned houses have been restored attracting many students and artists that now live on them. There are nice restaurants, cozy cafés and chaotic bars, some of them with great views over the bay.
Unfortunately, Valparaiso also has the worst slums I've seen in Chile and, outside Cerros Alegre and Concepción, can be quite dangerous at night. I walked across some areas where I didn't even dare to take out my camera and in others I decided to leave instantly after entering them. High unemployment rate, following the city's decaying economy, and lack of police control are to blame for this situation. But even so, I had heard so many stories about Valparaíso being such a dangerous city that I had gone there prepared for the worst and, fortunately, I managed to avoid all troubles.
Although most of the people I met that had visited Valparaíso didn't seem to like the place, I found it very appealing and ended up spending there more time than I initially planned (as it's becoming the standard for my trip :) In fact, I think Valparaiso, being so different from the rest of the country, is probably one of the most interesting places to visit in Chile.
This city, which used to be one of the most important ports in the continent (before the opening of the Panama Canal), is a unique blend of old buildings, bohemian houses and truly dangerous slums. Located in natural bay harbour and surrounded by house-crowded hills on which it's impossible to find any green spot, Valparaiso has managed to retain most of its charm.
One of the most distinctive features of the city are its "ascensores" (funicular railways), most of them built at the end of the XIX century. 15 of them are still working today, and the inclination of some of them is really spectacular (over 50% slopes). Unsurprisingly, this ancient mechanical wonders have been declared World Heritage Monuments by UNESCO.
My favorite area in Valparaiso are the Cerros (hills) Alegre and Concepción, where all the bohemian atmosphere of the city is concentrated. On these hills, old mansions have been converted into museums and abandoned houses have been restored attracting many students and artists that now live on them. There are nice restaurants, cozy cafés and chaotic bars, some of them with great views over the bay.
Unfortunately, Valparaiso also has the worst slums I've seen in Chile and, outside Cerros Alegre and Concepción, can be quite dangerous at night. I walked across some areas where I didn't even dare to take out my camera and in others I decided to leave instantly after entering them. High unemployment rate, following the city's decaying economy, and lack of police control are to blame for this situation. But even so, I had heard so many stories about Valparaíso being such a dangerous city that I had gone there prepared for the worst and, fortunately, I managed to avoid all troubles.
Although most of the people I met that had visited Valparaíso didn't seem to like the place, I found it very appealing and ended up spending there more time than I initially planned (as it's becoming the standard for my trip :) In fact, I think Valparaiso, being so different from the rest of the country, is probably one of the most interesting places to visit in Chile.
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