San Pedro de Atacama: Day 1

So this past weekend I packed my bags and took a trip up to Northern Chile to San Pedro de Atacama. This is known as the desert of Chile and it's gorgeous.

Here's a map of where it is incase you're wondering.....

San Pedro is the area in the orange and Santiago is 6 regions below that. Looks a lot closer than 20 hours right?

We took a flight there to avoid the 20 hour bus ride. Apparently, Chile is relatively small in size it's just insanely long and it takes forever to get from one end of the country to the other. I would have never imagined it was 20 hours! That's almost the time from NC to CO! Anyway, we hopped on a flight Friday afternoon and got in around 8pm after taking a bus from the airport in to Atacama. We couldn't see much when we arrived, but we wandered the town for a few minutes and then went to bed early.

We woke up at 3:45AM to go on a tour of the El Tatio geysers. It is the 3rd largest geyser field in the world and the 2nd in the highest elevation. So we loaded our small little tour bus and took almost a 2 hour drive up in to the mountains. When we finally got out the sun had just barely started to rise and it was FREEZING!! We knew it was going to be cold, but this was bitter cold with like 4 shirts, 2 jackets, hat gloves and two pairs of pants on. We wandered through the geyser fields for a while and then ate berakfast as the sun came up.

The best part was that it's not like yellowstone where everything is marked and organized. It was so natural, no roads, just open land. There were some stones marking the perimeter to keep you from stepping on a geyser, but it was just so natural.

Charlotte, Jess, me and Elisabeth at the Geysers

After we ate breakfast (and stole extra sandwiches for lunch), some people swam in one of the hot springs. I however chickened out..... I know.... but I couldn't feel my toes or fingers and there was no place to change out of your suit after jumping in and you were not allowed back on the bus in a bathing suit. The other gals went and they said it was nice, but more like a warm bath so I'm ok with my decision. Also, the sun finally came up all the way and it was a gorgeous day!

Elisabeth, Charlotte and Jess in the hot springs

Hot Springs

After swimming and wandering for a bit we loaded up the bus and went to a tiny old mining town. There are only SEVEN people that live in this town in the middle of no where. They were salt miners (or maybe copper....) but now they just welcome the people who come through and sell empanadas, lama meat and there is one woman selling socks. Can you imagine living here? Literally, it is in the middle of nothingness for miles and miles.

Wild animals as we entered the town

The church of the town.

The one woman selling socks and gloves.

Our last stop on the morning tour was to the Cactus Valley.... another gorgeous area to see. We even got to climb up a little mountain...

Sea oats, desert sand and snow covered mountains all in one.

We got back to San Pedro around 2 and took a quick nap before heading out again for our next tour. ( The only way to see all of this is through tour guides because they aren't like national parks in the US. They are really remote and you're pretty much 4 wheeling and not really on a road a lot of time.)

This tour was to Valle de la Luna - Vally of the Moon - again, gorgeous! Think a mix of Moab and the Grand Canyon, but with a lot less people. It's just a gorgeous landscape of red rock formations that really do look like how you would picture the moon and then massive sand dunes.

Valle de la Luna

Can you tell it was a little windy?

Salt rock formations. The white stuff is salt and it expands during the day and shrinks at night when it cools so it's crackling around this time of day.

More salt rock formations

"The Amphitheater"

"The 3 Marias" Do you see how they look like angels praying?

Inside an old miner shack.

The last stop was to the top of mountain to watch the sunset. It was so gorgeous, but unfortunately it was also insanely windy with sand blowing everywhere! It was so windy we could hardly hold our heads up to watch the sunset because your eyes were just pelted with sand. I bascially wrapped my head in my scarf, put on sunglasses and pulled my hood so tight around my head and was THEN able to enjoy it. Gorgeous red rocks, mountains and volcanoes in every direction!

Our view point for the sunset.

Gorgeous volcanoes in the sunset.

After that tour we headed back to town grabbed a quick bite to eat and then crashed in our hostal. It was a long day and we had another big day planned for Sunday! I'll share all about that later!

"Free" Obsession

Since I am now without income I have realized that I have a new obsession with anything loosely considered to be "free". I did not realize how bad it was getting until this weekend.....

Free Obsession Moment #1:
I went to the desert for a long weekend this past weekend and left the hogar at around 1:45 to meet my friends at the metro stop for the airport. Before I left I made sure I got my lunch for the day. Then I saw a bowl of oranges by the door (for dessert) and wanted to grab 5 for the whole trip..... I didn't. I restrained myself from taking fruit from an orphanage, but that feeling did not last long.

Free Obsession Moment #2:
While in the airport I wanted to buy some water and a snack for the plane...... I saw this shelf in a store of little candies that were like chocolate covered fruit bits. They had a bowl of samples.... so I tried 1, then 2 and then wandered for a moment and came back and took 2 more.

I checked out with a bottle of water and a small bag of the candies that I sampled. The water was SIX DOLLARS. I didn't realize that and so then I went back to the sample bowl and took all of the ones that were left.

Free Obsession Moment #3:
We took a flight to the desert. It was 2 hours, left at 4 and landed at 6ish. Well when we boarded the plane there was a woman with a bowl of hard candy. I took one, I wanted more, but again I stopped myself.

Then we were all settled in the seats when the drink cart came around and I realized it was a food cart. Yes, we were getting a free meal for a two hour trip that was not near meal times. Needless to say, I was VERY happy. (And I realize I paid for it in the flight, but it was a sunk cost so this was a "free"
bonus) AND the food was good! We had a ham and cheese sandwich on a crossiant, another little piece of bread with turkey,  fruit salad and a chocolate moose tart. Way better than food on American airlines. We were all so excited we ate every bite and then I sadly watched them clear away plates and saw people did not touch thier dessert.... I wanted to take.... again I did not act on this.

Free Obsession Moment #4-5:
We took tours for everthing in the desert because you pretty much can't get around any other way. All of the tours either provided you with breakfast or some kind of snack for afternoon tours. Breakfast consisted of a sandwich with ham and cheese, cookies, brownies and cake... very healthy. On both of our morning tours we ate all of our food and then stole the sandwiches the other people didn't eat so that we could have them for lunch. We also stole any leftover cookies, crakcers anything we could get our hands on. It was pretty sad..... but in our defense the town was a big tourist spot so food was expensive.

Needless to say, I realize I have a problem hoarding free stuff. We also got a meal on the flight back.... it wasn't as good, but still amazingly free.

Here's a sneak peak at the photos from this weekend.... maybe one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I'll write all about it later!

Tear Gas & Water Cannons

So today marked the 37th week that students have been protesting in Santiago. They are protesting the privatized education system and asking the goverment to make some changes. It's very expense to go to school here so there has been protests every week and sometimes more than once a week. A lot of the schools are also closed right now... some of the older girls in the hogar only go to school once a week because of everything going on right now.

Today they decided to march and last night they pulled out of talks with the government so we knew it was going to be a big one.... but not this big. Luckily I wasn't feeling good today so I stayed in sick, but at least half of my room mates couldn't go to work today because of everything.

So we live near Plaza Italia -- think Hillsboro in Raleigh - a big main street where lots of things happen after big events or elections, etc. So we are right in the thick of the protests, but we live at least 6 blocks away from the Plaza. All day all we heard was drums, screaming, chanting followed by sirens and police. Then there were loud booms and just crazy noise all day! The police here shoot tear gas if they get out of control and they have been shooting it for at least 7 hours today. The students throw things at the tankers and the police and then the spray them with water cannons. It's just crazy!!

This is a picture from my friend's window who lives right in Plaza Italia....

Tear gas on a 2nd level apartment

We all had stinging nosises and couldn't open the windows today in my house. It's been over for about 4 hours, but I stil can't walk to the grocery store because of the gas in the air.

Here are a few photos from today..... It's just crazy that this is all going on here and scary! The only things that is ok is that we know before it happnens and they put it in the papers.

Apparently if I am ever caught in something like this all I have to do is run up to a policeman and tell him that I am a gringa and need to get home and they will help me. The police are VERY nice, especially to people from other countries.

Tear Gas tankers that have been attacked by students

Water cannon tankers

Crazy right??
Small bit of irony.... I googled the protests to find some pictures and what do you know... all of these photos are from a story in the Denver Post :)

My Hogar

So I haven't blogged much about what I am actually doing everyday..... mostly because it is very overwhelming and a little stressful so after a long day I don't really want to write about it, but here you go.

So I am working at Hogar San Francisco, this is a Catholic home for girls who have been sexually abused and have been removed, by the courts, from their families and their homes. Currently there are 30 girls living at the Hogar (this is the term for home or orphanage in Spanish). They range from 3 years old to 20 years old. I was working for 8 hours, 4 days a week, but it was so overwhelming with the girls and with my Spanish that I now work 8 hours on 2 days and then 4.5 hours for the remaining 3 which will help my sanity SO much.

So a typical day..... for the 8 hour shift...
I will get there around 10 and find the 3 and 4 year  old unsupervised playing in the big open patio. The whole hogar is huge, big buildings with lots of gates. You can't see the outside expect for some windows on the second floor, but in the middle there is a big patio with tables, chairs, some grass and an old slide and an old rusted seesaw. There is a swing set, but it casued too many fights so the swings have been removed.

The 3 and 4 year old are sisters... I can't use their names so we'll call them Little V and Pammy. They have underdeveloped speech so even if I could understand spanish, I couldn't really understand them. No one can... can you imagine how frustrating that must be for them? So we "play" for about 3 hours with the 2 kids until the rest of the girls get home from school. There is a "salla de juegos" which is a room of toys, but it's locked and they are only allowed to play with the toys in the room. So some days we color for a while on the patio and then ask to go play in the room. Of course, once we're in the room all they want to do is take the toys out of the room.

These 2 girls are one of the most frustrating parts of my day. They are so stinking cute, adorable little kids, but because they've lived in hogars and they can't really talk well they are really tough. They hit, spit, fight, use cuss words and will push you to the limit. But then the next morning when I get there Little V will come running up to me as fast as she can give me a HUGE hug and kisses. It's so sad because if we weren't there then no one would really be playing with them or talking to them. They shouldn't be living in this hogar it's for older girls, but for some reason they were placed here. And the older girls do help out A LOT with them, but they just don't know right from wrong, they don't really have anyone but each other or anyone to look up to.

Right now we're trying to teach them how to count.... they could care less, but sometimes, just sometimes, they listen and we count to 10 together.

The other big thing that we have been trying to do AND HAVE HAD A TINY BIT OF SUCCESS is saying please and thank you. Because they don't know! They just take things from each other or from me. Yesterday, I asked one of them if she wanted the blue pencil and she actually said " Yes, please" on her on!!!! Without me saying "say please tia". It's the smallest things that make my day a little bit better.

The little one - Pammy- also loves when I sing Twinkle, Twinkly little star and now walking around singing it and making up her own words..... it's so cute.

I will elaborate on the 2nd half of the day later.... it's spent with a lot of the older kids.

Ciao!

Valparaiso

So Valparaiso - also known as Valpo to the locals - is the second largest city in Chile and was once the largest port city in Chile. So Elisabeth and I's adventures continued with a trip to the city to see more of the ocean and check out some of the sites after checking off of list of things to do with the trusty guide books of course.

Just in case you were wondering, here is a hand little map to show where Valpo is in relation to Santiago.

Elisabeth and I with our tour books on the bus.... such tourists.

Getting of the bus in this city was an entirely different process. We got off in to the middle of downtown and in the middle of the outdoor market area. However, it was not the cute, artsy outdoor market area. It was more like stolen goods laid out on trash bags and food. So lots of socks for sale and jeggings. Then lots of street food and fish. Needless to say it smelled bad and we stuck out pretty bad with a slightly scared and lost look on our faces and backpacks on.

Once we escaped the madness we walked about 25 blocks to find this great fresh seafood restaurant that our books had recommend. Cheap and fresh and good for lunch - exactly what we were looking for! We pretty much walked the whole length of the city to find out that it had closed a while ago.....

So plan b was to find the nearest place and that turned out to be seafood as well! So we got a table and got some fresh and delicious food. Since I don't really eat seafood I had a cheese and shrimp empanada, fries and a coke. Elisabeth had a crab empanda and some type of white fried fish and it was all delicious!

My yummy shrimp and cheese empanada

Cheesin with my cheesey empanada!!! I was just a little exhausted and punchy at this point....

That's right, reading the books in the restaurant.

After lunch, we consulted our books and headed out to find. Muelle Prat Wharf. It is the main point of entry for the port and also it's where you can walk in to the water and go out on boats as well. An interesting thing we found out about Valpo.... there are no beaches and it's not really a thing to have homes or property on the waterfront. It was mostly just for the ports and shipping. Kind of weird.

Once we found the wharf we bartered in our broken spanish for the price of a boat ride on the water and hopped aboard. We didn't really know what we were getting in to since Elisabeth and I's Spanish isn't exactly top notch, but it turned out to be so much fun!!

Valpo tour tug boats

Muelle Prat Wharf

On our tour boat with our awesomely horrible life vests.

Views of the city from the boat

We were just bumping along and all of the sudden we were right next to sea lions. A little close in my opinion.... I thought they might fall in to the boat, but our captian did not seem to mind.

Once we got back we took an "ascensor" which is like a little trolley car up into the hills of Valpo. So the city consists of the port and the 4 or 5 main streets that look like a normal city and then it's made up of 42 hills that rise straight up from the water. Think San Francisco style hills with driving up crazy steep streets.

Views of the city from the hills above

Artsy little paintings and colorful steps are through out the whole city

This area is very bohemain with lots of little galleries, coffee shops and bright colored homes. We wandered around for a bit. Found some cool stores and pretty buildings. Unfortunately, our trip was cut a little short (we were planning on staying the night), but I was feeling pretty sick so we headed back. Everyone in our volunteer class got sick with a little cold when we first got here and it finally hit me then. We hopped back on the bus and by the time we pulled in to Santiago I could hardly speak my throat hurt so bad.

All in all it was a great day! We had so much, saw lots of great sites and most importantaly took our first trip and figured out everyone on our own! I was quite proud of our day.

Isla Negra & Pablo Neruda

So I'm a little behind on the blogging, but here's what I've been doing lately.....

Two weekends ago, my friend Elisabeth and I took our first trip in Chile. We went down to Isla Negra and Valparaiso on the coast of Chile. Isla Negra is a tiny little beach town. When we got off the bus there were hardly any people in sight - and it was so great!!! Santiago is so big and crowded so it was nice to get out of that for a bit.


There's not much in Isla Negra, just beaches with huge gorgeous rocks and then little houses and kind of a main area with a few corner store style restaurants. The main atraction is the 2nd house of Chilean's famous poet, Pablo Neruda. He's a pretty big deal around here and his 3 homes are now museums. They are all very different and all built to have the feeling of being on a ship because he loved boats and loved the water. So they are kind of odd layouts with small doors and skinny stairs. One room is completely decorated with statues from the front of ships from all over the world. Unfortunately, I could not take any photos inside, but got to take a lot outside.

This is a shot of his house from the oceanside. It's kind of weird looking, but a lot bigger than this and in a lot more sections.

This is one of my favorite pictures. It's in his "backyard" and I believe it is an old anchor that he bought some where. He was actually a hoarder in life and collected like 50 different things from all over the world.

Views from the backyard. Don't you wish you lived here?
And it was quite windy that day....

Another favorite picture. A boat on land that he sat in and had drinks, because he was actually scared of the water.

Another favorite. I have no idea what this bell tower type thing is, but I thought it was quite interesting and pretty.

Another random sculpture he collected. I love it.

The beach at Isla Negra. After the tour we walked down to the water for a while.

I can't even explain how good to felt to feel salt water splashing on my face! It was freezing and I think it will stay freezing in to the summer, but still so nice to be near water.

Elisabeth and I. The story behind the pineapple is that we came down to Isla with 3 other girls from VE who were just hanging on the beach all day. One of them had brought this pineapple with her to three different places hoping people would eat it and they still had not so she was like the crazy lady with a pineapple at all times. Hence the need to take photos with it, obviously.

Isla Negra is gorgeous..... so far one of my favorite places because it's small and just naturally beautiful. We only stayed for a few hours, but we will definitely be returning soon for the day.
I'll share more on the trip to Valpo tomorrow..... in the mean time here is a little poem by Pablo Neruda called love... and translated in to English.

Amor
Pablo Neruda
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands; how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks, the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting stars, falling objects.