(A little picture preview of my last 2 months)
(Clockwise from top left: My cousins and I from the look-out hill in Bariloche; my friend Sophia and I on a boat tour of the Valparaíso bay; the plane Cari and I took to the Bolivian jungle; Cari and I on our river tour in the jungle; me on our unsuccessful anaconda search; Cari and I in front of the "árbol de piedra" or "rock tree" in the Salt Flats)
Ok, please, please, please forgive me for not writing to you all in 2 months!!! I've ever since my parents left I have been super busy finishing my first semester, moving apartments, and travelling. In fact, I changed apartments at the beginning of July and I feel like I've barely spent any time here! But let me first start where I left off.
I finished my first semester with good grades (they haven't officially come in yet, but I feel very confident) at the end of June. Starting that weekend, I started packing my things up in my old apartment to move. I ended up deciding to move out because all of my international roommates were going to be going back to their respective homes in Europe and New York, and I felt like I was going to miss them too much if I stayed in that same apartment. At the end of my stay, I was also having trouble getting along with my chilean roommates (not to say anything too negative about them). Also, I felt like I needed a change of pace for my second semester, so I moved from the more commercial area of Providencia, to a more tranquil area of El Centro, to a little neighborhood near Bellas Artes that is full of little cafés, restaurants, and museums. The other good thing about my new neighborhood is that I can walk to 2 of my three classes, and I am a lot closer to the metro and other busses to take me around. In my new apartment, I took the place of one of my friends from my program that went home after the first semester, so it was a very easy transition since I already knew the people that lived here and was familiar with the area. I now live with 2 other girls from my program, Rachel (from UC Santa Cruz) and Sophie (from UC Berkeley), a South African guy, Christoff, who works as a Chemical Engineer, and a chilean guy, David, who also works. We all get along really well, and I'm really happy I made the change.
I packed everything up and moved all of my things into my new apartment by July 12th, and that same night, I left on a bus to go down to Bariloche to visit my mom's cousin Mariana and her family until the 20th. To tell you the truth, I don't have too much to say about my
visit, because we didn't do much! It was really cold outside, so we spent our days sleeping in, and hanging around the house during the day in our pajamas playing games, cooking, and watching movies. We did go into town a couple of times, and once we took a skilift type thing to the top of one of Bariloche's many hills and took pictures of all the lakes we could see, which was beautiful! A couple of nights I went out with my cousin Daniela and her friends, but we mostly spent our time at home. It was so nice not to have to worry about anything all week and just be able to relax at homeby the fire while it was raining outside. One thing I can say, though, was that the bus ride there and back was incredibly beautiful. Bariloche is in the lake district of Patagonia, and the landscapes after we got over the snowy mountain pass were breath taking. At the Chile/Argentina border, the bus driver let us all get out and take pictures in the snow. It was really cool because within 20 minutes we were out of the snow and in the forest next to a lake! Here are somepictures from the trip:
After my relaxing week away from Santiago, I came back o
n the bus and arrived really early in the morning on July 21st, where I unpacked all of my stuff and got as organized as possible in my new room, because on the morning of the 22nd, my friend Sophia arrived! She stayed with me for 2 weeks, and we had a blast together. The first dayshe was here, I gave her a little tour of the area and we went to buy tickets to go to Mendoza the next day for the weekend. Mendoza is a little city in Argentina just on the other side of the mountains from Santiago, only about 6 hours on the bus. We had such a great time there! Since it's in the wine country, one of our days was spent on a tour of the vineyards... on bicicles!! It was so fun! We rented bikes and were able to visit 2 places and taste their wines, before it got dark. What was really incredible about that trip was how cheap it was! For our 4-day trip, eating most meals in restaurants (we cooked one night), staying in hostels for 3 nights, transportation, and wine tasting, and a couple souvenirs, we only spent about $90 each! It was pretty incredible.
(Sophia and I on our early morning bus to Mendoza)
We got back from Mendoza that Sunday, and on Monday was my first day of classes for my 2nd semester at the University of Chile. It was really annoying that I had to go to class that week, because Sophia was still here, and all I wanted to do was hang out with her and show her around! It was nice that she ended up getting along really well with my roommates and our friends, because while I was in class she had people to hang out with until I got back, so I didn't feel too guilty leaving her by herself during the day. Her second weekend we went off again to Valparaíso, that beautiful city on the coast that I went to back in April. We stayed the night there this time, so for me, it was really nice to stay longer than just one day and explore different places that I hadn't yet seen. Sophia loved it as well, so it was nice to share that experience together. When we were there, we met up with a couple of my friends, Pablo and Nathan, which was fun because both of them were more familiar with the city than we were, so we were able to see a bunch of cool things that we wouldn't have otherwise. We returned to Santiago on Sunday and we only had 3 days left together before she was going to head back to the States, so we packed our days doing things that we hadn't done yet, like walking up Cerro San Cristobal so she could see Santiago in its entirety, and taking last trips to the cent
ral and artisan markets for last-minute souvenirs. Overall, we had an amazing time together, getting to catch up on old times (since we hadn't really seen eachother since before I left for Santiago), and getting to go visit new places, and just hang out like we used to.
(Sophia and I in Valparaíso)
So, 2 days after Sophia left, I headed out for Bolivia with my friend Cari-Lynne! (Like I said, my life has literally been non-stop since my first semester ended). We flew from Santiago to La Paz on Friday morning, and made it to our hostel, which was actually our friend Pablo's grandmother's place (nice to support family businesses) and that afternoon, we walked down to find a tour company to plan our trip: for Saturday and Sunday, we were going to take a bus to Copacabana, a city right on the edge of Lake Titicaca, and stay the night on the Isla del Sol (the birthplace of the Incas) and then on Sunday head back to La Paz for the night. Monday we were to fly up to the jungle town of Rurrenabaque and take a tour of the Pampas (basically a river tour) until Friday, and that night, take an over-night bus down to Uyuni and visit the biggest salt flat in the world until the next Monday night, and then head back to La Paz for the day and fly back to Santiago on Wednesday. Fewf!! It was going to be a packed trip and it was! Full of extraordinarily rough transportation trips (Bolivia is definitely not known for its paved roads-- there are none!) we had the most fabulous time.
Lake Titicaca was so incredibly beautiful I didn't want to leave after just the weekend. On Isla del Sol, we hiked up the Inca stairs to our hostel, which was really hard because of the high altitude (12,500 feet above sea level!!) -
- we felt really light headed, and felt almost constant headaches becasue ot it, but the gorgeous landscapes made it all worth it.
(Lake Titicaca from la Isla del Sol)
We got back to La Paz and re-packed our bags for the jungle! We were all set to leave on Monday afternoon, but when we got to the airport our flight had been cancelled because the
runway in Rurrenabaque was wet, and since it's made out of dirt, our plane wouldn't be able to land! So we had to wait for it to dry, luckily only until Tuesday morning. We arrived to the jungle and immediately were picked up for our tour! We took the roughest jeep ride I've ever been on (not that I've been on a lot of jeep rides in my life) because the road was really dusty, and had all these huge rocks that made us bounce and jerk all around. By the time we finally got to the river, we looked tan since we were covered in dirt. It was pretty gross. It was so hot up there!! It was a nice change from the cold winter of Santiago and the high altitudes of La Paz. I got to wear t-shirts and tank tops and flip-flops the whole time! On the tour we saw so many animals:
tons of alligators, birds (especially birds of paradise), pink dolphins (yes! they were pink colored), and we even went fishing for piranhas! I didn't catch one, but Cari-Lynne did! We also went on a trek searching for anacondas, but we had no luck in finding one. (Picture: Our view
from the front of the boat, and the piranha that Cari caught.)
After another terrible 3 hour jeep ride back to the city, we stayed one night in an amazing hostel before leaving back to La Paz to catch our night bus to Uyuni, to visit the salt flats. We had an extreme temperature change here, going from the humidity of the jungle to the dry, freezing wind of the salt flats, but they were incredible. I had seen some of the flats from the Chilean side in San Pedro de Atacama when I went with my parents, but these ones seemed so much more massive!! In Chile, there were always mountains that seemed really close by, but the ones in Bolivia seemed to go on for ever. Just white ground and blue, cloudless skies. The
ground was crunchy and there were piles of salt everywhere. There was even a market of handicrafts made out of salt! It was pretty cool. We also visited the geysers around there, waking up again at 5
in the morning to negative 15ºC weather (like we did in Atacama) to see the geysers and the hot springs in the area. We didn't go swimming this time, though, because we had forgotten our swimming suits (not to mention it was negative degrees ouside!!) That day we also visited some beautiful lagoons set between colored mountains and saw plenty of flamingoes. It was a good trip in Uyuni, just freezing cold at night! (Picture: Cari and I on the Salt Flat!)
Getting back to La Paz we spent our last day picking up some last-minute gifts (I definitely got a lot of holiday shopping done!) and in the afternoon we were able to see our friend Pablo who had just gotten back home from Santiago. It was nice to see him in his home town.
Picasa, the website I use to make photoalbums for you all to see hasn't let me upload any more pictures because I've used too much space! So here a link to the album I made on Facebook from Bolivia so you all can see some more pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2400948&id=3627260&l=3140b3e204
The next day, Wednesday we took an afternoon flight back to Santiago, which took a really long time since the plane had to stop in 2 other cities in the north of Chile on the way to pick people up and do customs and stuff, but we got back safely around 7pm, and I got home to a lot of happy roommates, which was nice, who had made me some dinner for my homecoming.
Now I've had 2 full weeks of my school routine since I've been back. I'm taking a Midieval Spanish Literature class, a Chilean history class, and an international film class. On the side, I am still teaching English with the teacher I worked with last semester once a week. To keep busy, since school hasn't been too challenging, I've also started working at a home for infants (0-2 years) that are either orphans, or have been taken away from their families by the government for neglect reasons, and I've also started working at a preschool! So I'm definitely getting in my baby and little kid fix this semester =). I will be putting up pictures of those kiddies soon so you can see how cute they are.
Well I hope everyone is enjoying the last months of summer, as we're still trying to get through the winter down here! I'm just looking forward to spending some quality time in Santiago and taking a break from all this travelling! I'm exhausted!
Again, I hope this post wasn't too painfully long for you to read, I really will try to keep you updated more often! Hoping to talk to you all soon!
Un beso,
Amara
