Chilean Latest (San Pedro de Atacama, Chile)

So a speedy update... The rest of my time in smoggy Santiago was good. It´s a rather bland city as they go, but distracting Ryan from his graduate studies, watching DVDs, and visiting every mall in town made for a good vacation from traveling. The Pablo Neruda house there is fantastic with its brightly painted walls, secret passageways, and myriad colorful artistic bits and pieces. When I finally mustered the strength, and something resembling a sorry excuse for an equiped backpack, I headed up to nearby Valparaiso for a night. It´s a port city well past its prime, but charming in its crumblyness. The buildings are painted bold colors and everything but the central downtown is built into the hills that overlook the bay. When I say built into the hills, I mean, HILLS. Hills to such a degree that there is actually a series of pedestrian elevators that go from the center up into the various neighborhoods. It´s quite picturesque. Plus, over lunch I saw a man have his wallet stolen and then chase the thief and then yell for police and so on and so forth. Being South America this seems to be truly authentic lunchtime entertainment.

From Valpo, if you will, I caught a bus to La Serena, a beach town further north. Apparently it´s bustling in summer, but being the dead of winter, besides the massive HerbalLife meeting at the local convention center, it was empty. I ran along the beachfront bike path in beautiful sun and total peace; it wasn´t until I had to cross a busy central park that a group of approximately 200 uniformed high school boys started chanting and yelling at me to run faster. From La Serena an overnight bus got me and many many miners to the mining center of Calama and a local bus got me and many many tourists to San Pedro de Atacama, a tiny dusty village in the middle of the Atacama desert that has abandoned nearly all semblance of normal life in favor of an economy of mass tourism. Chileans and foreigners alike flock to what is apparently the driest place on Earth to see the surreal surrounding naural landscapes of sand dunes, bizarre mineral formations, salt flats, and the towering Andes. Today after a most delicious fresh baked cheese and tomato empanada, I went to watch the sunset at Valle de la Luna, so called because it supposedly looks like the moon. I don´t know what the moon looks like but the valley was pretty damn unreal.

Tomorrow, if all goes as planned I´ll be climbing into a jeep bound for Bolivia via the Salar de Uyuni and all kinds of apparently amazing natural attractions like colored lakes and Dali-inspiring rocks. It´s apparently the coldest trip ever so I bought an overpriced alpaca sweater to replace stolen toasty Patagonia-wear. Ryan donated his flannel sleep sack to the cause. Wish me luck! Love, D.