This weekend was literally the first one in 4 weeks that I have stayed in Santiago. May 21 is a national Chilean holiday that celebrates one of its epic battles during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) where Chile almost doubled its land mass by taking control over Bolivia's coastal region and the bottom third of Peru (an area rich in nitrates - a mineral good for fertilizer). So because we had a long weekend, my friend Tessa (the one I went to Valparaíso with) and I decided to take advantage of it and take a trip down to Chiloé, a large island in the lake district of the south of Chile.
(Chiloé, if you can see -- I know the image is small-- is where the bold letters are below Santiago in the Lake District)
We left on Wednesday night for a long 17-hour bus trip south and arrived at about 11am on Thursday morning to Castro, Chiloé's capital. We walked to the hostel that we had booked (luckily only about 2 blocks from the bus station) and got settled before taking a little walking tour of the city to get lunch and orient ourselves in a new place. It was raining when we arrived, but luckily we came prepared with rainboots, raincoats, and umbrellas, so we didn't get too wet walking around. We ate lunch at a restaurant with views of the water that surround Castro, and then walked around the street fair for a bit and got a feel for what the neighborhoods were like around our hostel. We went grocery shopping to make a simple dinner in the hostel (we made a very cheap, but delicious chicken soup), and went to bed early, so we could wake up and go to Chiloé's national park on Friday.
On Friday, still raining, we left at 9 after a nice breakfast at the hostal to go to the natioal park on the otherside of the island, about 45 minutes on a bus, and we stayed until about 1pm. The park office gave us a map of some different trails that we could do, and because it was cold and raining, we decided to take the shortest trail through a forest, and then another fairly short one to the beach. I was so happy that we had brought our rainboots because the trails got so muddy! The walk through the forest was pretty cool (and we actually stayed pretty dry because of all the trees) because there were a lot of interesting plants to look at. We didn't see any of the animals that our map said lived in the forest, but we assumed that they were all hiding from the rain. Our second walk to the beach was really nice becasue it had finally stopped raining (just in time!). To get there we had to walk through a really flooded part of the trail (basically like a swamp!) but seeing the Pacific Ocean was definitely a nice reward. We felt a little silly being so bundled up at the beach but it was so cold!! That afternoon, after almost missing a bus back to Castro, we had some left over soup for lunch and decided to take a nice nap since we were still really tired from the bus trip and all of our walking, and we wanted to be rested for our last day. When we were eating lunch, a young couple from Chicago, Rita and Dan, who were traveling in the south of Chile arrived to stay, and in the evening after our nap, they invited us to rent a car with them to take a driving tour of the island. Since Tessa and I weren't completely sure of our plans, we decided to take them up on their offer and go with them. And boy was it fun! My Bolivian friend Pablo, who I had met in Santiago and who happened to be staying in the same hostal we were also joined us for our road trip and it ended up being a really good decision. It wasn't as rainy on Saturday and we drove around to a bunch of smaller towns that we definitely would not have been able to see otherwise, and we got to try Chiloé's "curanto," the typical dish of shell fish and different meats all cooked together in a huge pot (very interesting, to say the least). We drove around until 5pm, where we were able to change our clothes and get ready for our bus trip back up to Santiago, where my parents were to be waiting for me!
Here are the pictures of our rainy trip to Chiloé. Over all it was a beautiful trip, although rainy, and I'm really glad I got to see it.
Sunday, May 24th, we arrived back to Santiago at about 10am, and while on the city bus back to my apartment, I got a call from my mom to let me know that she and Nancy had arrived! So after I dropped my bags off at home, I walked to their hotel, which was conveniently about 5 blocks away, and we got to hang out and catch up for a little bit. I took them out to lunch to one of my favorite restaurants, a Peruvian one that's located in el centro, and gave them a little walking tour of the area. Monday through Thursday were filled with continued city tours in between my classes, and early Friday morning, we left for Easter Island!! or Rapa Nui in its native name.
Our trip to Rapa Nui was one of my top trips in my book, although I have to say it was really way too short. It was so beautiful and we learned so much about the history of the culture, that I would love to go back and just enjoy being there. A little background information: Rapa Nui was "discovered" by the Dutch on an Easter Sunday in the 17oos (hence the name) and is famous for the colossal moai statues (those giant heads you see in magazines -- which actually include bodies too, normally). All the moai that stand today have been reconstructed to be that way, as they were all found destroyed by the European settlers. According to Rapa Nui tradition, they moai were supposed to represent the ancestors of the people, who were belived to bring good things (rain for the crops, fish close to the shore, etc). The statues were considered to be live parts of the families that lived there, and became alive with the placement of the eyes (made of white coral and obsidian) -- only one reconstructed statue has the eyes placed with it today. As centuries went on, many moai were destroyed with inter-tribal wars, because it was more insulting in the culture to destory the ancestors of the people rather than killing the actual people. Even later, as resources began to deplinish, the people started to lose faith in the powers of the moai, and tribes began to destroy them themselves. There are still tons of moai that are left destroyed, and after seeing so many of the reconstructions, it's pretty sad to see them laying on their faces!
Our 4 days on the island were spent mostly with tours of the different archeological sites, and just hanging out at our wonderful hotel with the owner, Sharon. We got to see a couple of the traditional dance shows, and try the typical dish of meat, potatoes, and other vegetables cooked underground in banana leaves on volcanic rocks. I think my favorite thing that we saw there was the volcanic quarry where the moai were made because it was pretty incredible to see grassy hillsides with these huge statues popping out left and right (unfortunately my camera had run out of batteries when we saw that part, so I will have to share those pictures with you when my mom sends me hers). One of the funny things about our trip was our "adventures" with Marcos, who was this middle-aged chilean man that Nancy had met on the plane. After the first day, when he saw us walking through the island's only town, Hanga Roa, he basically followed us around through the 4 days that we were there. What was funny was that it seemed that just when we would let out a sigh of relive for getting a break from the guy, he would just pop up out of nowhere and invite himself to have coffee with us, or lunch, or what have you. I can safely say that all three of us were pretty happy to hear that Marcos had enjoyed himself so much on the island that he extended his stay for the rest of the week, so he wasn't on our return flight.
Here are most of the pictures from the trip (I will add more when I get them!)
When we returned to Santiago, I had 2 days to go to class, when we left for another trip on the next Friday: to the desert of San Pedro de Atacama, in the north of Chile. A big change in scenery from the tropical climate of Rapa Nui! Again, we had about 3 full days of tours of the area, which is pretty incredible in its landscapes and intense weather extremes. My mother, having not done sufficient research in desert climates, was convinced that it was going to be hot the entire time we were there, so both she and Nancy had only packed fairly small backpacks with light-weight clothes, and left their heavy winter attire back in Santiago, which was a very bad idea! At night it was freezing, and we had one tour to the geysers of the mountains, that left at 5 in the morning for us to experience negative 14 degrees Celcius (0 degrees Ferenheight!!!) I have never been colder in my life!! During our trip, we saw some of the most beautiful land scapes and sunsets that I've ever seen, and we saw the salt flats where populations of flamigos live! We even had some run-ins with some spitting llamas, and Nancy and I went swimming in the hot springs near the geysers, where we experienced extreme temperature changes!! I swear, we got in to boiling water, and we would move a millimeter and be in cold water, move another and get scorched again! It was pretty trippy, as we were both expecting some consistent hot-tub temperature water. The one thing that we didn't really have time to do, but I wish we had, was go sandboarding! Since there are tons of areas with sand dunes, sandboarding is a popular activity for visitors. We got to see a couple of groups enjoying themselves on the dunes, and it looked like so much fun!
Another 3 days of class in Santiago, and we shoot off again on our last trip together to La Serena, a coastal city about 6 bus hours north of Santiago. We stayed only 2 days (one night) since I wanted to get back to Santiago for my birthday, which was on Sunday. It was actually a really nice trip and we were able to see a lot in the time we had! We left at midnight on Thursday night, and arrived, very sleepily, at 6 in the morning on Friday. Luckily, they had a room ready for us when we arrived at our hotel, and we were able to sleep for a couple of hours before starting our adventures. When we finally got ourselved together, we called a tour company to see if we could some how get a tour of the Elqui Valley (most of them had left earlier that morning), and luckily, an hour later we got picked up by Jorge, our guide, and went off to see the valley. It was beautiful! We got to tour a Pisco factory (Chile and Peru's signature alcohol) and we ate lunch at a restaurant that cooks all of its dishes in solar-powered ovens, which was really cool to see. That night we went up to an observatory to look at some stars and constellations, which was really intersting (we saw Saturn and its rings!!) and we learned about new constellations that I have never heard of before since they are in the southern hemisphere. It was so beautiful to see so many stars!
On Saturday, we went with Jorge again on a full day tour of the wildlife off the coast of La Serena. We took a boat tour with 15 people in total, and we saw so many animals! We saw penguins, dolphins, humpbacked wales, sea otters, sea lions, and about 5 different types of sea birds!! I felt so lucky, too, because we got to see all the animals that were listed at the beginning, even the whales who don't swim to the surface very often! It was definitley a fun day. When we got back to the main part of town, we had to kill about 4 hours before we had to head over to the bus station to go back to Santiago, so we sat a café and hung out there until it was time to go. I'm sorry to say that I don't have any pictures of La Serena because my camera was completely maxed out of space and I did't have any time to upload pictures to my computer before hand, but I'll get some from my mom soon!
Eventhough I woke up on a bus on my birthday, I had a really nice day. We got back to my parents' hotel and got to sleep for a couple of hours as we did when we arrived to La Serena. When we woke up, I opened some presents, and got some surprises from people at home! To those who sent something down with my parents, thank you so much! It really helped make my birthday special being so far away from home. Unfortunately, the rain in Santiago started that day, and it hasn't really stopped since. But we managed! We walked a little and had lunch nearby, and then returned to hang out some more before dinner. It was my kind of day, being really lazy and just haning out with my parents on their last day in Chile. We went out to dinner later, where I had my first Cosmopolitain with some sushi (yummy!) and then when I got back to my apartment that night, my roommates threw me a little bit of a party and had gotten a cake and stuff, so I got to celebrate a with them a little, too. My mom and Nancy left on Monday afternoon, after I got to hang out with them for a couple of hours, and Now I'm almost back into my normal routine. It was really nice for my parents to come at the half-way point of my year abroad, and the trips we went on were unforgettable. We had amazing guides on all three trips (Karen in Rapa Nui, Alex in the desert, and Jorge in La Serena) that were so helpful in teaching us about the areas!
I finish my semester this week (on Thrusday to be exact) and I have about a month of freedom before my next set of classes start! After a terrifying in-class dissertation (I had to speak in Spanish for 15 mintues in front of my whole class!!) in my Theater class last Thrusday, I have one more test this week before I'm done. For my Neruda class, we have one more essay to turn in on Tuesday, and a 2-minute oral final on Thursday, too, so I will be done with those classes for good by Thrusday. In other news, my friend, Sophia, from high school has decided to come visit me at the end of July for 2 whole weeks! I'm so excited, too, because I wasn't expecting any of my friend to be able to come visit me at all, so it should be really fun. In August I have plans to go to one last big trip to Bolivia with my friend Cari-Lynne from my program, and after that, I have no idea how I will be speding the rest of my time here. Most of my friends in my program are leaving sometime in mid-July, which will be sad, but I know my next 6 months will fly by, just as the first 6 months have (it's kinda freaky for me to think about how fast things have gone).
Well I hope this post hasn't been too painful for you to read (I know it was a long one) and I hope to be more regular with my updates in the future!
