reluctant traveller

El Bolson is a tiny gem of a town tucked away in the valley. I am so glad I came here instead of Bariloche. I flew from Buenos Aires to Bariloche and was goign to spend the night there and come to El Bolson later. Bariloche was beautiful with the lake and all but the city was lacking something. It reminded me of Niagra city and I took the next bus out of there to El Bolson. Its a small town with a really small center and mostly just campgrounds and cabins and with easy access to the rivers and lakes and mountains in the area.
Staying at Refugio Patagonico and I love it here. It´s in a campground close to the hills and they have a really nice large kitchen which inspired me to cook some type of lentil and eggplant last night. Turned out so well am going to cook again tonight. Going paragliding in a bit.. we´ll see how that turns out. It´s so beautiful out here I cant stop repeating myself : )
Tomorrow I will raft or boat down Rio Azul... its going to be awesome. I wish I could stay here longer but have to make my way down to El Calafate.

update: the paragliding was pleasant in a very surprising way. as much as I enjoyed the ride, I dont think I would go again. Like my land too much. water too. the rafting was Awesome. Rio Azul didnt have too many large rapids but was interesting enough and extremely pretty. I also got to snorkel which was really cool even if it was only for all of 10 seconds. Floating rocks. : )

Valparaiso is an interesting coastal town with many colourful buildings. There's a small port but I am not sure how much business it brings in, I think most of the business is from tourism but it's not enough. The town looks like it was abandoned and has been decaying for many years now.

We stayed at Hostel Caracol which was recommended by folks at Andes Hostel. The hostel is up on a hill, a bit difficult to get to but is this beautiful house/bungalow turned into a hostel with a sweet patio, kitchen and living room.

Pablo Neruda's house was only up the street but I forgot to visit it. We didn't visit anything specific but explored the interesting neighborhoods. Cerro has the colorful buildings, some interesting graffiti and local artists selling their goods.

Plenty of uphill walking but much easier when not at 3000m. The lifts/acensories are kinda cute but not really required. We also visited the port and the area around there.

Also made a half day trip to Vina del mar which is about 15m (by bus) north of Valparaiso. It is a much more modern town with the beach. Valparaiso itself doesn't have a beach - only a port.

The 24 hour bus ride (Tur Bus $80) from San Pedro to Santiago seemed to last forever. The bus took the Panamerican which is a single lane highway through the desert. The desert is so dry you dont see a single plant on the ground or a cloud in the sky. We passed through a few coastal cities which made me think Chile was one big California - packed between the mountains and the ocean with people for some reason reminding me of Californians. I dont know if it was something I ate or the journey itself but I was pretty sick (nausea) by the end of it and for a day after.

We reached Santiago on 13th morning around 9 AM (bus 1.5 hr late) and took a taxi (10000 pesos) to the Andes hostel. Thankfully the hostel was great (very clean and nice space in a great part of town) and I just slept for the rest of the day. Hostel a bit modern (=less cozy) for my liking but comfortable and nice people. Large group (=20) of Americans here for a 2 week orientation as part of their teach english in chile program. So kinda crowded with folks on their laptops : ) but all nice.

Santiago seems like a regular cosmo city... nothing specifically to see/do in the city but seems like a nice city in hang out in. Decent public transport, taxis not cheap and tons of pharmacies for some reason. Been taking it easy and not doing very much. Saw sweeney todd yesterday (finally!) with a couple of people from the hostel.. was fantastic but rather crazy ending. Sugar coated popcorn is very popular here.

Santiago highlights (for me)
- bella vista and anothe nearby neighborhood ... lot of neat graffiti
- fish market... ooh stank... but huge fish market with restaurants in it
- the metro... huge stations
- banco de chile building... most beautiful (and hugest) bank building i have ever been in
- the pizza and snack place near the hostel... awesomest chilli sauce
- watching sweeny todd in cine hoyts
- hostel drama : )

Ready to leave for Valparaiso tomorrow. About an hour from here and supposedly very beautiful. It´s about 15 min from the coast. Was a little bored today. Prolly my first bored day on this trip. Prolly should have gotten out more but was very hot in the afternoon and not feeling like much at night.

The Uyuni trip ended around 10 AM this (11th) morning. Everybody else was making the 8 hour journey straight back to Uyuni while Chinni and I took the transfer bus to San Pedro (2 hours away).

San Pedro is exploding with tourists (Chileans and non chileans), no taxis or public transport (its too tiny for anything) but looked like renting bikes was very popular here, everything is expensive with not enough nice places to stay and the food all italian or french or something stupid like that. Super hot during the day and didnt look like any place here had air conditioning or fans... so everybodys out sitting under a tree on the street or in their hostel patios. The whole place has this mud and hay village feel to it. I think the guide books describe it as Spanish-India. bah. Atacama means desert in Spanish and San Pedro is one of the driest deserts in the world (according to a Chilean kid i went sandboarding with). I think most tourists come here to check out the weird and beautiful desert landscape but we got plenty over the last couple of days. Plus I didnt like anything about San Pedro. So we got tickets to Santiago leaving the next morning (expensive at $80).

But we did take a sandboarding trip ($30 ish) this evening which was really fun. You can just rent a sandboard instead if you have done it before. I was being my lazy self and went only a few times (walking up the sand dune before boarding down was too much effort) and fell down all times. I had more fun just sitting on it and going down. But Chinni was at it like a pro within a few times. But just being up there on a dune with very crazy wind was fun enough for me.

Tomorrow we board the bus to Santiago which really Santiago a whole day later. I dont think I have ever been on a bus that long and am curious to see how it goes.

p.s. chilean currency is weid. they dont have a concept of 100 smaller parts (like cents) making the basic unit. so all the currency is in large denominations. So food is 3000 pesos and room is 32000 pesos etc. i´ll prolly be out of the country before i get a feel for it. 1 USD=460 chilean pesos

The train ride from Oruro to Uyuni was hot and dusty (movie playing was chinese with spanish subtitles) but the landscape outside was beautiful and just the beginning of what were about to see for the next few days. We reached Uyuni close to midnight and checked out a few hotels and hostels before deciding on the HI there.

Didnt really explore Uyuni but looked like there wasnt much to do other than begin the Uyuni trips here. I got some goodies at the art store and I should have also gotten the gringo pants (light cotton pants in bright colors popular with the tourists) but didnt. Sitting pretty in Chile now and wishing that I had. Getting back to Uyuni, the city only gets water in the morning or something so we had to wait till 8 AM before we could take a shower the next day. Then got expensive breakfast for 20 Bs where the little boy wanted me to pay 3 Bs extra for the onion in my normally onionless scrambled eggs and finally let go because I said he could have the banana back instead.

Trip day 1:
The tour (booked in La Paz) began around 11 AM with 5 others. Our tour like most tours would last for 3 days in a 4WD jeep with 7 ppl plus our driver, Edward who would also be our guide and food procurer. Rest of group included an annoying retired Japanese guy who refused to flush once and was mostly just repeating himself, a brazilian couple, a kid from Canada and a Californian on this way to Mendoza to work in the vineries there.

We first stopped at a deserted railway and then visited the Salar de Uyuni which is this vast expanse of salt flats (6 m deep with salt according to my guide) that looked like an artic ice field. Being the wet season, there was about 2-4 inches of water. blindingly white and unreal. there was also a hotel out here made with salt bricks. smelled of salt inside. obviously. : )

Spent the night at small village where we were subjected to watching replays of jackie chan action scenes by the daughter/sister of the woman who owned the place while we waited for dinner.

day 2:
Drove through a stretch with some crazy rock from the wind erosion, stopped at a few lakes with flamingoes, and finally laguna colorado where we also spent the night (hostel in the park)

day 3:
woke up super early (was freeeezing!) to visit the geysers. was cool to be able to walk through them. the ground felt a little light like it could crack any time in some places and the whole place did smell of sulphur and you could hear the bubbling. we then stopped at some hot springs nearby and last stop a laguna verde before driving to the Chilean border where Chinni and I boarded a bus to San pedro de atacama, Chile

The journey from Puno, Peru to La Paz, Bolivia took us almost the whole day. Though we made sure we had a very good bus leaving Peru we forgot to ask if there was a change involved. We had to change buses in Copacabana (Bolivia) right after crossing the border. We wasted an hour there and then had to get on a super crappy bus : (
There is a fun part to the journey though... a part where we have to get off the bus to cross Titicaca on a boat while the bus is transported on a barge.
We checked into the Adventure Brew hostel... ok rooms and clean and seemed like a really fun place though we didnt stay long enough.

La Paz! What shall I say... city of a million, city in the valley and growing up the mountains (the new city is called El Alto), Bolivia´s capital, somewhat crowded, plenty of taxis but still hard to get one, mini buses and micro buses make up the public transportation, plenty of street food, and most noticeable of all - a line for everything : line for food, line for money (outside banks), line for taxi, line for gas (cylinders), lines for things I couldnt understand. And some great wollen clothes.
I didn´t really find the much talked about witches market but I did see a few stalls with dried llama foetuses while shopping for Uyuni tours. Must have been the witches market.
The whole city stops working from around noon to 2 or 3 which is siesta time. So spent most of day trying to get train tickets to Uyuni (our next destination) only to find that the tickets are sold only a day in advance so had to come back the next day and that they sold out fast so had to come early. (none of this made much sense to me either).
We did watch a soccer match between Bolivia and Peru.. so that was kinda exciting. The game wasnt all that but the experience was fun.
Also visited some super pre inca (1500 BC?) ruins near a village called Tiwanaku some 70 odd km outside La Paz. There wasnt much there but our guide made an interesting half day tour out of it. Chinni had some errands to run so he couldnt make the guided tour but visited them himself taking the public buses.
We didnt manage to find very many good food places here but that could also be because we were here only for a few days.
I would have liked staying a bit longer here but didnt as I was running short of time.

Took the bus to Oruro on the 7th and then the train from Oruro to Uyuni.

I only spent one evening in Puno so I dont have much to say about it. Puno (3800 m) is a small town in the mountains and the central area (main square, bus station, port etc) is small enough that you can walk everywhere. Cheap taxis or tricycle rickshaws are also available. It mainly serves as an access point to some of the islands in this side of Titicaca. (The other half of the lake is in Bolivia.)

Got to Puno late 2nd night. Was nice to get off the ultra crappy bus. Given how terrible my living and travelling conditions were the last couple of days (wasnt all that bad, but you know me), decided to stay at a nicer place. So went to a 3 star hotel, Plaza Mayor and being the low season we got a room for $30. we could have probably gotten it for $25. Staff was incredibly helpful.

Lago Titicaca islands (2 D/IN trip):

Lake Titicaca at 3800 m is the higest navigable lake and is part in Peru and part in Bolivia. Most do a 2 day 1 night trip to either Amantani or Taquile or both islands, stopping in Uros along the way. There are no hotels or hostels and you would normally stay with one of the families on the islands.

The Lonely planet said I should arrange my own trip and travel using local boats (instead of using a tour agency) so the islanders can see most of the money. Plus I had gotten in too late the previous night to book a tour. So I went down to the docks and paid for a trip to Amantani. The captain was supposed to take us (me and other passengers on the boat) to Taquile and then back to Puno the next day (thats another story). Chinni decided to stay in the city and watch the festival celebrations and visit the islands the next day.

day 1-
We stopped at Uros (floating reed islands) for a half hour on our way. Is a fascinating island made from totora reeds that grow in the lake. As the lower layers rot away, they just add new layers to the top! So felt a little funy to walk on. The natives belong to the Uros tribe and speak Ayamara. Some of them also spoke Spanish I guess as they seemed to understand what I was saying. Same with the natives on the other islands. They are all pre Inca tribes.
I also got to ride on one of the reed boats. I could have been on it all day but the capitan was in a hurry to get to Amanti and didnt let us stay too long. I had to use all the Spanish I knew to plead with the capitaan and the boat islander to even get a ride.

We reached Amantani after a super bumpy 4 hour ride during which we also picked up 2 other people from the nowhere on a tiny boat. The lady whose family runs the lodge I was going to stay in was there to receive me and show me the way to the lodge. There are roads on these islands, but no maps or vehicles. The book said they spoke only Quechua but they seemed to understand my Spanish just fine. After a lunch of sopa de quinoa and rice and cheese I feel asleep. The nice lady woke me up to take me to the main squire to view the festival celebrations. After a bit, I decided to walk up to some ancient ruins Pachumama and Pachutata. After the climb up, I was tired enough to sleep really well.

day 2-
woke up to be told by the nice lady that there were no boats to Taquile that day (usually there is one at 8 and there's all the boats for preorged tours) and there was only a boat going back to Puno (disaster!!!!). I kept insisting that I had to go to Taquile and she kept saying there was no boat. We went to the port anyway (different from the one going to Puno) and found more than one boat going to Puno. The tour boats wont take us because we didnt come there with them but there was local boat willing to take us to Taquile and then to Puno for 10s.

So reached Taquile at 9 and we had 3 hours on the island before the boat left to Puno according to the capitaan. I followed the others (a couple and a middle aged lady) up the hill and down through the village to the main square. Once we got back, the capitan refused to leave till we got a few more tourists. Again I had to use all the spanish I knew to get us to leave and we left an hour later only to stop a couple of hours later. We were rescued by the tour boat (i had to hear the operator talk about how local boats were unreliable and how he really couldnt give us ride because he couldnt take responsibility for us grr). We then found out that the capitaan had the same trouble the day before. I felt really bad for him because the others who got off the boat didnt pay him, not even for the Amantani to Taquile part.

In all, I loved being on the islands and riding on the blueee waters on lake titicaca. definitely a trip highlight for me.

Next stop: La Paz, Bolivia. 7:30 AM bus from Puno today.