Change of pace, change of blog

Our scenery has been changing rapidly. From Santiago north, through La Serena, on to Antofagasta, and finally to San Pedro de Atacama where we are currently relaxing and working, the past few weeks have flown by. We will leave the car here and travel Friday for Bolivia where we will stay a couple weeks before heading into Peru. Our route and logistics have changed, but as we say, it’s all part of the journey.

We are changing the look of our blog and changing its domain name. Andres wants to contribute more and wanted to change the look of the site. Our future updates can be found on the new site.

We hope you will stay with us during our travels and beyond and visit us.

http://rgbstudios.net/southamerica

Shaking Earth

The last earthquake that Chile felt was in 1985. It’s epicenter was close to the middle of the country in Valparaiso and was felt through most of the land. It registered 8 on the Richter scale and caused a lot of structural damage. Although it was immense, only 177 people were killed, but thousands were injured and many more structures were destroyed. The biggest earthquake ever recorded on earth occurred here in 1960, registering a 9.5. It caused tsunamis that reached Hawaii, the Philippines and Australia. Areas in the south dropped 9 feet during the quake and coastal villages were washed away. They say any day now they expect another as they used to experience them about every 7 years.

This is Antofagasta’s landmark. It smells a bit like birds.

Hard at work in this barren land.

Land of No Rain

“When was the last rain?” We asked, half expecting it to have been many months ago. “2005, and before that 1995. It seems to rain here every 10 years.” This explained the dust. And the smell of dirt and birds that filled the air, but didn’t really explain the lack of things to see, or maybe it did. Here we were in Antofagasta, the land of miners, over priced goods and little to do. We took the car to the Hyundai shop to see if they could figure out the electrical problem and began our waiting. The hours crawled by. We found a mall and spent days there. We drank $5 juices, which amounted to little more than water. We went to the movies. We counted the time until we would leave. We didn’t know when that would be. Hyundai told us they’d call us so we kept calling them. Luckily we had family, cousins to stay with. We slept in the 14 year old, Camila’s bed and bought her pink slippers to say thank-you. We waited. During our wait we decided after the desert we’d head to Argentina, go see Salta and then on to Tucuman. We couldn’t afford much more in this land of desert and we really liked rain. That is one of the reasons we were going to settle in the south of Chile, in one of the rainiest areas in this land of 2,700 miles. Hopefully tomorrow we will leave. I feel dusty.

Road Side

After sort of fixing our car (we were told we’d probably be ok if we took it at no more than 55 mph) and leaving Vicuna we headed to Pan de Azucar, a national park 150 miles from la Serena. We pulled into our camp site just before 6 and relaxed watching the sunset. Atacama is the driest desert on earth. Parts of it have never recorded rain and the rest gets about 1 inch of rain a year.

We headed on north and encountered hours and hours of barren nothingness. Every couple miles or so the roads are marked with memorials. Some are just wooden crosses with plastic flowers, while others were elaborate concrete structures including sculptures. We stopped at one to check it out. In 1974 17 people were killed in an accident there. The woman this was memorializing a 48 year old woman who lost her life there. Her remains lie 100 miles north in Copiapo.

We got friendly with the giant hand outside of Antofagasta, a sculpture 3 stories tall. You could envision the rest of the body spread out under this barren land.

We cooked black beans and watched BBC documentaries and slept peacefully. We woke to a busload of kids taking pictures of us. I don’t know what amused them more, the hand or the 2 crazy people camping by it.

We headed on north, to more barren land, more desert, more unknown.

Car….no….hostel….si

Although this is disappointing because it happened so soon after departing, our attitude toward trouble is somewhat positive because we know it’s part of the journey. After leaving La Serena driving toward Valle del Elqui we heard a thud and the car abruptly stalled. We pulled over to the side and saw that our coolant was empty. We found this a bit strange as we had filled it days prior, but filled it just the same and kept going. From that point on we had to stop every 10 minutes or so to fill with water as we overheated on each incline. Not an easy situation given the high temperatures in this arid region but the landscapes around us compensated for the inconvenience. We spent the night in Pisco, where the sky never ended and enjoyed the quiet the town had to offer. The following morning we made our way back to a moderately sized town called Vicuna where we found a trustworthy mechanic and a clean hostel. Although the mechanic’s advice was that we should have gone with a simpler machine he is confident that he will get us on the road once again. We do not know where our next days will take us, but we will embrace them and will take them as they come. We hope our next stop will be the national park Pan de Azucar, where we want to camp for at least a week. This journey is not about how far we get, but about the attitude we have while we get there.

The Mobile Home

I am finally getting around to sharing pictures of our vehicle/home for the next 6 months. We bought a Hyundai Galloper, 2001. It is 4×4 and big enough for us to sleep. We removed the seats and left them with family in Santiago and installed a bed in the back. We also put the box on top for extra storage. We have spent 2 nights there so far and were very comfortable. We are happy with our purchase and hope that it will treat us well on our trip.

Sitio Numero 1

We left Santiago and began our journey north. We drove for 3 hours before stopping for the best seafood empanadas we have ever eaten in a town called Los Vilos. They were incredible. We drove another 2 hours and stopped at a national park called Fray Jorge. We arrived at 8 pm to locked gates so we began to make camp just outside the park. About 2o minutes into our setup a truck pulled up and the rangers allowed us to enter the park to camp. Andres cooked mushroom, pepper sandwiches while I worked on our bed. We ate, made a fire, relaxed and went to bed. The next day we recuperated from our time in the city and spent the day reading, walking and cooking. We saw only 2 people the entire day. Around 3pm that day we were visited by the rangers who informed us that as of 2 years ago there is no camping in the park. None of their tourist information has been updated with this and we got the feeling that we were the first people to ask since it closed. They said it was no problem for us to stay another night. We enjoyed the peace and solitude.

This morning we got back on the highway heading north. Just minutes into our trip we were pulled over by Chilean police. It was our first stop and everything went great. We were very grateful to have the international license (thanks Dad). Hopefully all the police we meet on our journey will be this nice.

Today we will spend some time in La Serena and then head a little north for some more camping and hopefully a fire. I am sure we smell like campfire.

Couchsurfing rocks again

We were warmly welcomed into the home of Eduardo and Claudio in Santiago. We stayed with them 3 nights in their beautiful home and were given great food and excellent conversation. They took us to a birthday party for a Spanish friend of theirs, Eva where we met a great group of people. They treated us just like old friends and we were extremely grateful. We know that we will be able to return the favor when they come visit us in the south.

Mexican and French in the heart of Chile

We hung out with a friend close by yesterday evening. Eduardo (see last picture) graduated from culinary arts school in France with Rodrigo, Andres’ brother. He is from Mexico, but has been living in Santiago for the past 15 months. He lives in a cool place full of international students. The place must be a constant party. We got together with 10-15 people there for 6 hours of drinks and good conversation. The party was a farewell for one of the French students named Constance. Constance and Laurence gave me some good laughs with their incredible dancing skills. 

Being the only North American there I made sure to represent. 

You can always find a trucker USA hat.

The hardest part of buying a car…not having a car

Santiago is no little city. With it’s spread of metros and barrios it seems to go on for days, that is when you are covering it by foot. Seeing 2 or 3 cars a day seems like such an accomplishment when there’s 2 metros and a bus between each. One of the hardest part of buying a car must be not having a car for the search. It’s a vicious cycle. If you had a car to help you look you could see more cars, but if we had a car we wouldn’t be looking. 

We’ve checked out at least 15 cars. We finally made our decision and purchased one. More on that in a later post. Our metro days are coming to an end. 

This is one of the many we did not buy.