Hidrospeed, Norte a Santiago de Chile

After we returned to our hostel from ziplining, we were met by our guide, Valentin, for Hidrospeed the next day, who had shown up to make sure we were okay with a time change. He told us that it would be cold, but seemed like a competent guy, so we were happy with that after the volcano guide. The next morning the guide came by with wetsuits for us to put on, and, seeing my shorts, asked ¨What the hell, you think we in Cancun or something?¨ This set the morning off on a good note, and our guide continued to be better than any guide we had had before. He owns all the gear and is contracted through tour agencies, works with smaller groups than most guides, and has been Hidrospeeding for years. The Hidrospeed is something of a laughingstock of the river in a way. It neither has a plastic hull like a kayak nor an inflatable hull like a raft. Instead, it´s pretty much a glorified foam kickboard that you ride down the river, steered only by fins on your feet. Our guide had run Class V water and had even done a 25 foot waterfall on Hidrospeed! The water we were going to was freezing cold, but not too bad with the wetsuit, except for the ungloved hands, and the rain on your face. After a brief course in Hidrospeed control, including the kickboard version of the Eskimo roll, we set off down the river. All I can say is that it´s a blast. You hit the rapids face-first, bobbing and getting tossed around a little, but still maintaining a pretty good sense of control. The blast of cold water to the face was a little shocking at first, but the whole experience was awesome, though a little tiring from all the kicking. Afterwards we headed back to the Termas los Pozones, and soaked for awhile. We discovered that, sadly, Hidrospeed cannot be found in the US due to insurance regulations. Our guide had been asked by a US company to guide there, but was unable to because of our stringent insurance, most likely because the guidee controls their own craft in the river.

It also should be noted here that Pucon may have been smiled upon by nature, but it rains 7 months a year. Hmmmm.

After the hot springs, we headed back to the hostel to get our stuff, and went for dinner, where I ordered an individual size bottle of wine. This bottle turned out to be only 50 ml short of a normal bottle of wine, but we had a few hours to kill before our bus, so what the heck, wine is cheap here. We got on the bus at 2130, and rode in Salon Cama, with a little bit wider seats than the Semi-Cama we´ve been accustomed to, and arrived in Santiago at 0700. We stashed our bags at the bus station after aborting our ride on the metro at rush hour; carrying our backpacks on the crowded trains would have been way too much trouble. Next we got breakfast and decided to head for a winery tour, called the winery, and hopped on a bus towards Talagate.

The bus dropped us at Undurraga winery a bit early, but we found that we were the only 2 people on the tour. The guide took us around the vineyard, the fermentation vats, the cellar, the aging room, and finally to the tasting. Undurraga creates a unique Chardonnay, which uses the skins and seeds of the grapes (normally white wine is only formed from the juice of the grapesm whereas red uses the skins and stems). The Chardonnay was tasty, as were the Carmenere and Cabarnet selections we tried. After the tour we were given the wine glasses, and bought a couple bottles of vino each, and headed back to Santiago to get our bags and find a place to stay.

In Santiago, the accurate and helpful guidebook pointed us to a place that was no longer in business. Luckily, another hostel in the book still exists today, and thus we are able to stay here at Hotel Plaza Londres. That night we made arrangements to go skiing at one of the resorts near Santiago, called ¨El Colorado,¨ figuring that since we´d skied actual Colorado, now we could try El Colorado. We got to the rental place at 0730, got our skis, and were driving away in a van by 0845. Our van driver was possibly the slowest driver on the road to the slopes, even getting passed by much larger minibusses while negotiating the 40 switchbacks up to the ski resort. There are 3 resorts right near Santiago- El Colorado, La Parva, and Valle Nevado. Our van had the choice between La Parva and El Colorado. The driver said that El Colorado was better. He could not have been more wrong. There were two lifts open, that essentially went to the same place, and served only green runs. The mountain above might have supported easy blue runs later in the season. We took a couple runs, but then the wind and snow picked up, and the lifts pretty much stopped operating. We did find a tiny lift, maybe 50 vertical feet of Poma, that served the only steep (and very short) run on the mountain. This little run included a cornice drop and room for 1 or 2 turns in the powder below, and took about a minute from top to lift to top again. After running this 10 times or so, the weather worsened further, and we retreated to the lodge, meeting up with others from our van so as to go back down. However, three passengers couldn´t be found, so we waited about 3 or 4 hours until 2 of them showed up, and headed down. The 90 kilometer drive took 4 hours due to 5 or so accidents on the now snow covered switchbacks. Apparently a crash killed someone who slid off the road the day before. On weekends the road is only open for 1 way traffic in the morning and night- it´s easy to see why. We returned back to Santiago and grabbed dinner.

In Santiago, we made contact with a guy off of a Land Cruiser forum I´m a member of. He was going out to some sand dunes north of Viña del Mar on Saturday, and we were invited to ride along. We met Eduardo in the morning, and went off to meet some other wheelers at a gas station/ McDonalds outside of town. The Chilean version of the egg McMuffin is very delicious, I must say. We set off for the dunes a short while later, now 1 Land Cruiser Prado, 1 Jeep Wrangler, 1 Jeep Cherokee, and 1 Land Rover D90. About an hour drive to the dunes, then a stop for some empanadas was made. A Toyota Hilux had joined us during the drive, and another Wrangler met us at the dune entrance, where everyone aired down. The drive into the dunes was uneventful- and then came the first hill. I´ve never wheeled on dunes before, so the sudden burst of speed was surprising, as Eduardo revved up the Prado and we took off up a huge sand hill. We drove around the dunes for a few hours, up, down, across. It sounds boring but there´s a lot of excitement involved, and a lot of standing around bullshitting as the difficult hills are attempted one at a time. Luckily quite a few of the Chilean wheelers spoke English.

A short distance into the dunes we took part in the first recovery operation. A family of 4 had gotten their Chevy pickup stuck in a sand hole, burned the clutch up, and couldn´t get out. After trying to tow it out with one of the jeeps, the truck was finally freed by one of the Jeep drivers in reverse, and the family went on home. The next recovery occured when another Wrangler, this one driven by the American called ¨El Gringo.¨ A quick pull yanked him free, and he proceeded on in his sand-paddled Wrangler flying the American flag the rest of the day. A pretty funny sight to see. A few more additions to the group were made in the dunes: a supercharged Tacoma, another Wrangler, and my favorite, a WWII era Dodge ambulance now powered by a Chevy 454. Another highlight recovery occured when El Gringo decided to attempt a ridiculously sized sand hill, making it about 1/3 of the way up on his first try. Backing down was dangerous with a cliff next to the route, so 5 snatch straps and a winch were used to safely guide the Jeep down for the second attempt, which only resulted in the Jeep making it halfway up the hill. This time El Gringo was winched up and out with little incident. Sometimes the dunes are a bit on the scary side- we almost went over sideways in the Prado once, got high centered once, and saw a few folks come damn near to flipping. It´s especially unnerving at night when one can´t read the dunes and when you can´t see what you´re going down until the car is pointed downhill.

We stayed at the dunes until dark, then headed back to Santiago where Dave and I, very tired for some reason, went to bed at 2130 and slept for 12 hours. We woke up this mornign and ran into a teacher from Detroit who had just come in on Saturday, and went out to Cerro San Cristobal and the Pre-Colombian Art Museum with him. Dave and I went off to get lunch around 330, then milled around the Plaza de Armas looking at some sort of Peruvian gathering in the street, then headed back to the hostel, where we are now, all set to fly back home on Tuesday.

Pucon- The City Smiled Upon by Nature

According to our guidebook, this is what happened to Pucon, making it a sort of outdoor sporting oasis. Set between a lake and a volcano rising 1700 meters above the lake, endowed with a whitewater river and a plethora of hot springs nearby, Pucon serves as the perfect base for explorations of Chile´s Lake District. There´s even a ski resort for the winter and a large beach, La Playa Grande, for the summer, where one can rent jet skis and kayaks, swim, sunbathe, and take in the scenery. Year-round activities include hiking up the volcano, rafting, tubing, zip-line and canopy tours, and hot-spring visits. As such, there is a plethora of guide services available on Av. O´Higgins, the main street here in Pucon. We arrived here at 1630 in the afternoon, and I immediately spied a telemark ski in a window at one of the first guide shops we saw. At this point we didn´t know if the ski area was open or not, so we went in and asked about renting skis. The lady in there told us 2 things: the ski area was closed, and she probably didn´t have a tele boot in my size. We then asked if it was possible to hike and ski the volcano, and she said yes, come back in a couple hours and she would search for a big enough tele boot. We had bad dinner number 1 in Pucon- fettucine without sauce and mashed potatoes without anything, for 6 dollars. Nobody had told us that there would be no sauce, but hey, what can you do. We went back to the guide service, where we signed up for a trip full of excitement and wonder.

At the guide shop, I discovered that, once again, I would be forced to fix my heel. Somebody needs to bring telemark to South America in my opinion. We were then fitted for randonee boots, so that we could at least skin up most of the way, easier in deep snow than booting it uphill. My boots were a half size or so too small (neon pink Koflachs) but they were the biggest available. It was either that or some old rear entry alpine boots that were way too loose. We were given backpacks and told to return at 0700. The woman´s stern statement of the time implied that it was imperative that we were not late in the morning. We got some lunch fixings at the supermarcado, made some sandwiches, asked for a 0630 wakeup call from our hostel host, and went to bed.

The first thing that went slightly awry was that our wakeup call never came. Despite this obstacle, we awoke to the 10 dollar alarm watch bought in Iquique while lunching with James, and showed up at Anden Sport at 0655, ready to go. We were met by our guide, Rudolfo, who was about our age, probably younger, but this was okay, he said he´d made at least a hundred ascents of Volcan Villarrica. Our guide had no randonee skis though, only alpines, and though this was a bit strange, booting shouldn´t be that different a pace than skinning, especially considering our poor current fitness levels. Our guide made sure we had water and food, but still we were not ready to go.

Since there had been some adjustment issues with my skis the day before, Dave decided to check the fit of boots and bindings on his skis. Turns out nobody had adjusted them. This would have been a quick, simple fix, but the Fritschi Damirs did not adjust to a small enough size for Dave´s boot. Thus, a ski change was required, to unshaped old school ATs for Dave. With the ski change came a change in skins- somebody had thoughtfully laid some climbing skins out the day before. We were also provided with ski crampons, though one of the shop operators couldn´t figure out how to install them on my skis (plastic clip, real complex) and spent about 20 minutes fiddling with them before giving up. Then we were handed ice axes and crampons, and told we had everything. We did have everything...everything except a ride. Apparently, we were supposed to catch a shuttle with another guide service, but the ski adjustment problems caused us to miss that. So, another half hour of waiting while the Anden Sport folks frantically made phone calls resulted in a conventional taxi coming to get us. It was pretty tight with Dave, myself, and a guide, and 3 pairs of skis in the compact car. The guide showed Dave a picture of his pregnant girlfriend. The first stop we made was the taxi driver´s house to get some chains for the drive up. These proved necessary not too far up the road to the volcano, after the driver gave up on spinning his tires with virtually no forward progress in the snow for about a full minute.

We pulled over to the side of the icy road to install the chains. To tension them, the driver pulled a couple bungee cords out of the trunk. The first tensioning effort snapped the first bungee cord in half, but no worries, the driver used the remaining elastic to do the job. The other chain went on without a hitch. As we drove along, the driver would alternatingly sing to himself and grimace when the car bottomed out in the middle of the road. While we had been chaining up, a van full of snowboarders had passed us without chains; we soon came upon them chaining up, dead center in the road, so we waited for 5 minutes while our guide procured a smoke from the other guide and the chains were on the van. We followed them for a bit, until their chains fell off, they stopped in the middle of the road again, we waited again, then we were off until the van lost it´s chains once more. This time, they pulled to the side, we passed them, and our taxi driver borrowed a couple chain tensioners from the van driver, but did not install them. We continued on until we reached a hill which the taxi could not surmount, throwing the passenger side chain in the process and digging a couple trenches in different spots in the hill as the driver made several attempts before giving up. It was at this point, maybe 75 vertical metres below the parking lot, that he turned around, reinstalled the chain with the tensioner this time, and left us to hike upward. The van, meanwhile, passed us once again, making it to the parking lot with little in the way of incident.

We hiked up the road, which led up to the (closed) ski area base, and passed the group of snowboarders on foot, while they received some sort of safety talk (we never got one until later). We went up a little bit, at which point Dave and I were going to don climbing skins and randonee on up the mountain. One problem: Dave´s skins had no adhesive left on them. No stick at all. Our guide sourced some duct tape from the snowboard guide as that group passed us and tried to resolve the problem, but it was to no avail. Thus, I alone went uphill on skis, while Dave and Rudolfo walked, faster than I on the first, groomed section. The hill steepened, and skinning became the better way to go due to the deeper snow. We again passed the snowboarders. At this point we were still climbing below a ski lift. Halfway up the ski resort, Rudolfo decided he had another pair of skins in his pack, and tried these on Dave´s skis, but again, no luck. During this time, the snowboard group of about 10 people passed us once again, and we stopped for a water break. It was at this point that we determined that Rudolfo had not brought any water for himself. Luckily, Dave and I had brought enough that sharing a bit was not a problem. After about 2 more minutes, my skins came off of the skis, and, since the pack I had was not equipped to carry skis, my skis were lashed to the pack with a length of cord, and then we were off. We caught up with the snowboard group at the top of the highest lift, and passed them as we headed up in some softer snow, zigzagging across the slope. While we hiked, our guide said something to me about 4 years, the volcano, and snowblades, then he laughed. Not knowing at all what he said, I laughed too. We continued upwards for a couple more hours, stopping a few times to share our water with our guide.

As we approached the summit, we left our skis about 20 minutes below the top, and headed on up. He told us that we had to be quick, since he did not want to risk our lives, since it would be dark at 530. He also said it would take 2 hours to get down. We figured a more reasonable estimate with skis was 30 minutes. He handed us gas masks, and we headed up. My gas mask had an exhalation valve stuck open. I plugged up since there was another exhalation vent. The climb was more of a hike the entire route- no real reason to have axe or crampons in the conditions we encountered, as there was no ice, only snow. Near the top and the crater, the snow became dirty with ash, since Villarrica is a live volcano. We stayed on top for only about 5 minutes, seeing a little bit of lava and a lot of sulfur smoke. Luckily we didn´t need the gas masks because we were not downwind of the smoke. We descended to our skis quite quickly, glissading on our butts for about half of it. Then, we strapped on skis for the descent, our guide dropping his glove, which went about 800 feet down the mountain. He told us to tell him if we ran across it, and down we went.

The skiing wasn´t the best ever, but it was awesome just the same. Dave found the glove, and we watched from below as our guide slowly picked his way down the first slope. At that point we figured that he was looking for his glove, but, having put it back on, his skiing did not improve one bit. Turns out that that 4 years, snowblades thing meant that he had only been skiing for 4 years, and only on snowblades. He had never been on full length skis before!!!! Very confidence inspiring to say the least. Dave and I easily could have been down the volcano in 30-40 minutes, but we took 2.5 hours in total to descend, our guide glissading some of it, walking some of it, and falling whenever he put on skis. Dave and I did get to explore the mid-mountain cafeteria, which was unlocked and heated, and waved hello to a snow groomer as the sun started to set and we waited for our guide as he skied the last little bit above the cafeteria. Luckily, the rest of the way down was freshly groomed, and our guide (nearly) kept us with our pace to the parking lot. This meant that we would not have to rescue our guide or spend the night in the cafeteria. So we skied down the road, ripping the skis to pieces in the process, meeting the same taxi driver we had in the morning just as he was chaining up to come get us.

So, in summary, we went on a guided ski tour with a guide who couldn´t ski, and didn´t bring his own water, with climbing skins that didn´t work, and we still came out alive.

Today we went zip lining, which was pretty sweet, the longest was nearly a kilometer, spanning a valley with views of the volcano. Later today, we were reading a complaints log at the tourism office, and found that the people we ziplined with had a lot of complaints about them...we seem to pick guides pretty poorly. Tomorrow we are going ¨hidrospeeding¨ which is like tubing with fins and specially shaped tubes. We are going with a different guide service. It should be interesting.

Esquiar a Bariloche!!!!!!!!!!

I should note that the last week or so has been an interesting experience as far as food goes. In Valparaiso, we ordered an unknown dish, the chorillano, which we ordered for 2, as a side dish for the 3 of us. Before it came, we speculated as to what it might be. Richard guessed that maybe, for its low price, it was "probably a steaming pile of shit." It arrived, and for all intensive purposes, Richard was almost correct. It was a concoction made of french fries, eggs, a little cheese, onions, mystery meat hot dog, and a meat that may or may not have been beef. I don´t know for sure, but it may have been cat or dog meat in the mystery sausages. We did not finish the chorillano.

In Bariloche, we faced another set of issues. Spaghetti could be had for fairly cheap-but you had to buy sauce; this fact was not advertised very well. We did find the finest 4 dollar hamburgers for miles though, they were huge and slathered in onions, sweet peppers, lettuce, and juicy juicy tomatoes. The hamburger and a beer made for a fine meal at night. We also endeavored to taste a bit of home by going to an ¨authentic¨ Mexican restaurant, the Dias de Zapata. Dave ordered burritos cordoba, and I ordered fajitas. We had some chips and salsa first; the salsa tasted like marinara sauce, but they were able to grasp the concept of nachos (chips and cheese, not real hard). We also ordered margaritas and were presented with drinks that did not display that comforting green, but were instead yellow and tasted of lemon. When the meal arrived, Dave´s burritos were square and almost flat...very strange. My fajita chicken tasted like chinese chicken, and so did the veggies, the only thing they got right was the rice and guacamole, and I believe that they refried the wrong kind of beans. To add to this authentic Mexican experience, the sound system in the restaurant played American music from the 60s. Still, it was a tasty meal.

The next morning we made it up to the resort at Bariloche bright and early so as to get gear and hop on one of the first chairs up the mountain. The Argentinans running the place had other ideas. We were at the mountain at 8 AM, and nothing was open- there was not even an open lodge. The signs on almost every rental shop and the ticket windows said that opening time was at 9, but 9 came and went without any result. During our hour and a half (nothing actually opened unti 0930), we met another American, a Canadian, and an Australian equally frustrated with the resort. Finally, however, we were able to procure skis, only to wait 25 minutes in the ticket line. The info people did serve cafe con leche and some little chocolates while we waited though.

After the ticket line came the lift line. The lift didn´t go online at 0930, it was 15 minutes late, so we had a bit of a wait to get on it. The ´Sextuplet´high speed six person lift is not very fast, we found out, and served only the strangest groomed runs imaginable. Once we hit the groomers (the only runs open besides green roads in the morning), we suffered the result of there being no Argentine Mountain College. It was at this point that I came to realize how grateful we should all be to the Colorado Mountain College. Were it not for its snow groomer operations program, our Colorado slopes would suffer the same fate as those in Bariloche. Not only could one distinctly tell where each groomer went, we as skiers had to dodge 1 foot deep troughs cut vertically down the slope by the errant groomer operators. I think that a pro from Copper Mountain could do better with a bobcat than these groomers. Barring that, it was still skiing- in June! We had a decent time of the bottom slopes, then broke for lunch. While we were at lunch, the Sextuplet lift also broke for lunch, we noticed. During the course of the day, it probably ceased operations 5 or 6 times for 10 minutes or more. Seems like nobody thought to test it out pre-season.

A lack of preparation and poor grooming for the season were not the only problems we faced in Bariloche; we were also confronted with the craziest lift lines I could envision. I am used to orderly lift lines, with multiple lanes of people alternating and then alternating again (per the instructions on signs) as the many lanes funnel into one. In Bariloche, there is only 1 lane, but it is wide enough for maybe 8 people. It didn´t matter if it was the 6 person chair or a 2 person lift, the line was the same width. In that 8 person-wide line, 12 or so people tried to push forward in a teeming mass of ski humanity, with little regard for politeness or order. The lifts at Bariloche are only first-come, first-served once you actually get to the chair itself. People passed us right and left as we were unwilling to cut others off to get ahead in line. Craziness. There is also a strange order to the ski area. Instead of one lift to the top of the mountain, there are 2 places where there are instead 3 lifts in a row. It´s almost as if no planning went into it, and after building one lift the resort decided it had to go higher, so another lift was installed above it. There are also a couple lifts that go basically nowhere, almost as if the resort was trying to pad their lift count for advertising purposes. Perhaps the most bizarre lift, however, is the lift that alternates 4 person open chairs with enclosed 2 person chairs up near the top of the mountain. We couldn´t figure out how, when in line, how one determines which chair they´ll get so as to plan for the right number of people. Perhaps Bariloche, though described as the 2nd most important ski center in South America, is one of the worst-planned and laid-out resorts in either North or South America. I bet in mid-winter the snow is awesome, and some of the terrain looks great though.

After lunch the skiing higher on the mountain was opened up, so up we went. The snow up there was much better, not having been touched by the grooming crew. Typical early season skiing, with rocks and all, but some pretty good snow for opening day, maybe 6 inches of white and fluffy. We skied until last chair at the top, then headed back down to town, ate some giant burgers at the 4 dollar place, then checked the bus schedule and went to bed. Woke up for a 0700 bus back across the border, then caught another bus at Osorno to head north for Pucon.

Bariloche!

The bus ride from Puerto Montt took us 2 hours directly north to the town of Osorno, then east across the Andes into Argentina. The drive is spectacular, passing through green cow pastures, lakes, volcanoes, treed mountains, lush forests reminiscient of western Oregon and Washington, snowcapped peaks, Andean summits, and a fair bit of snow on the road. The border crossing was uneventful, especially with only 6 passengers on the bus. We arrived in Bariloche around 2030, got some dinner, and went to bed.

We discovered that Bariloche is sort of an expensive place, with food costing us at least twice what we had been paying in Chile. The town is pretty much a resort town, so there´s a lot of money, and it is not possible that it represents much of a cross-section of Argentinians either. There´s not really any non-upscale places to go and eat, and only a couple bars (the pool hall and South Bar) are anything near inexpensive. Wednesday we woke up and discovered that ski season starts on Saturday, so there was some time to kill. Wednesday was somewhat filled with going up the cable car to the top of Cerro Otto, overlooking the city, which is perched on a lake and surrounded by mountains. We had lunch at the top, in the rotating restaurant. Richard had decided to go back home on Wednesday night, and he headed off to the bus station around 6 or so. Dave and I headed off in search of telemark rental skis. When we returned to the hostel a couple hours later, Richard had returned, unable to head back until Thursday morning, so we set off for dinner, then went to a pool hall and played some foosball and pool, got some food at a gas station, and went to bed.

The restaurants here in Bariloche are mostly similar, and almost all filled with tourists. By this time, we´ve spent 3 days walking up and down the streets of Bariloche, and cannot find economical food. This town is easy to get tired of, especially in the dead of winter when there isn´t all that much to do until the ski area opens. People also aren´t as friendly as in the non-touristy towns we´ve visited, but that´s to be expected.

Thursday morning Richard left for Santiago, and arrived there this morning at 7 AM. He flies out at 830 tonight for the States.

Thursday day, Dave and I went up to the ski area proper to continue the quest for tele gear. For almost 3 hours, we went from rental shop to rental shop, without success. We had lunch, which strangely didn´t cost any more than lunch down in town, and kept looking. Finally, at the last shop at the resort (we visited all of them), we were given the name of a place to go in the town center. This was sketchy, since each rental shop directed us to another rental shop, who would then in turn do the same, with no end result. We rode the bus back down into down, found the shop, waited a half hour for siesta to end, then found 1 pair of tele skis for sale. However, this shop doesn´t rent any kind of equipment. Thus, we are stuck with renting alpine gear. This will be the first time in almost 4 years that my heel will be locked down. It should be weird. We ended up playing some more pool and foosball tonight, losing a couple beers to some locals in a friendly bet (we suck at pool).

Today we tried to do part of the Circuito Chico, a bus/hiking combo along the lakeshore. One attraction along the way is the chairlift up Cerro Campanario. We missed that stop and got kicked off the bus a ways down the road (you pay by destination), so we wandered around a small ritzy neighborhood sort of in the middle of nowhere for awhile, found another bus with a nicer driver who told us where our stop was, rode the lift, took in the view, and came back down. The view was quite good, 360 degrees of lake, mountains, etc. Dave tried unsuccessfully to roll a couple huge snowballs down the mountain, and this apparently tired him out so much that he is currently passed out in the hostel common room draped over a table.

BUT TOMORROW WE SKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Valparaiso, Santiago, South, North, East

Valparaiso is famous for being built up the hills surrounding a natural harbor, and not much else. We arrived at night and went to pretty much the first hostel we saw, got some dinner and went to bed. Valpo is a port city, so there´s not much sense being out at night in a city filled with, according to the guidebook, ¨drunken sailors, prostitutes, and the highest rate of AIDS in Chile.¨ We awoke the next mornign, got some pastries and sandwiches from a panaderia, then went to find one of the Ascensors (sort of incline elevators) that were built between 1883 and 1916. Unfortunately, none of the 3 we visited were in operation, so we hiked uphill under our own power, took a few pictures, then headed back to the bus station and got on a bus to Santiago.

In Santiago we decided to take a train for the first part of our journey south. It was somewhat miserable-though it wasn´t near full, the seats weren´t comfortable and the sandwich sales guy and the snack trolley guy kept coming by every 5 minutes. We were so bored during the 5 hour trip that we used cookies we had brought along to play checkers, drawing a checkerboard on a grocery bag. That was the only highlight of the trip, and even Richard wasn´t able to sleep on the train. We got into the the train station, walked 5 blocks to the bus, then caught a 2240 bus south to Temuco. We got into Temuco at 2 AM, then decided to buy tickets further south (on the same bus) to Puerto Montt, arriving there at 7 AM. There wasn´t too much to do there- it was cold and humid, and nothign was open til 9 or so. We visited the small waterfront, the artisan craft market, and the fish market, then got on another bus headed north and east across the Argentinian border to San Carlos de Bariloche.

La Serena and the elusive Screwdriver

We arrived in La Serena in late morning. It is a relatively quiet town, the 2nd oldest in Chile. When we got there, we were accosted, as the guidebook said, by a lady who ¨takes unsuspecting tourists¨to her residencial, which is quite nice and inexpensive, and not far from the bus terminal. We had seen a mall next to the bus terminal, and Dave needed a screwdriver to fix his sand-damaged camera, so off we went to the mall to find an eyeglass size screwdriver. Each optical shop sent us to another, which in turn would lead to another, with no success. For two hours we plied the mall´s floors, Richard and myself hoping that it would end soon. However, it did not. We were even sent about a kilometer away to the ¨Easy¨, the Chilean version of Home Depot. Despite having 3 employees helping us, there was no small screwdriver to be found there, so we went back to the mall. Our only notable accomplishment there was to eat at a McDonalds. There we found the happiest, most friendly McDonalds employees we had ever seen. You can even get coffee brought to you at your table for post-meal enjoyment! However, a meal there costs almost twice as much as typical Chilean fast food.

After the mall we went back to the hotel, and Dave went to the main city plaza, finding a screwdriver at the first place he inquired (80 cents for a set of tiny screwdrivers). We then lazed around for awhile watching whatever we could find in English with Spanish subtitles on tv, which turned out to be some really stupid D-list movies, got dinner, then lazed around some more. I was tired and passed out in front of a boring movie about Cole Palmer (who knows if he´s real, dave and richard were apparently captivated). Dave and Richard decided to hit the bars, but I decided to go to bed. At the bars, they procured several pitchers of beer, but little else. They also walked around the bar area, and Richard gave some girls an undisclosed sum of money to a.) have his picture taken with them (which did not occur despite the payment) and b.) to raise one of their arms to approximately 35 degrees above the horizontal to hail a taxi to return Dave and Richard to the hotel. It was quite possibly the dumbest payment since James, only one day prior. Clearly, in Chile, one must pay a consultant to do anything from getting a hotel to getting a taxi. Also, Dave got his hair cut, for twice as much as Richard and I did in Arica, by a woman named Lali who told him she is about to retire. Clearly, La Serena was not a very exciting place to be, so in the morning we decided to go to Valparaiso.

San Pedro de Atacama

The town of San Pedro is a dusty little town in the middle of a huge, dry geological basin at around 3000 metres elevation. It´s full of white people, mostly Europeans, and we only saw/met a couple Americans. The town itself might be fairly interesting if not for this tourist influx, as every business there caters to tourists and prices are set accordingly, with each restaurant setting a promoter outside to draw in more patrons. Our one highlight of the town center was the chicken sandwich guy. He had kind of a creepy smile and was the promoter for a somewhat upscale restaurant/bar just a block or two away from our hostel, set smack dab in the middle of the tourist quarter. Every time we would go by, he would ask if ¨would you like a chicken sandwich? 21 kinds!¨ with a sort of a creepy yet goofy smile. We probably got asked this question 10 times while we were there. Around dinnertime, he would add that ¨happy hour...and the women naked,¨ which was absurd because you could see into the entire restaurant and sure enough, everyone had clothes on. Good for a laugh every time though, but we never did try the chicken sandwich.

The first thing we did after ditching James was to sign up for a tour of El Tatio geysers and a tour of the Valle de la Luna the next day. We then went back to Axim Adventures to rent some sandboards for the following day. A couple doors down from Axim was a place advertising astronomy tours, with the tour in English, so we signed up for that night at 9, then went to dinner at the French chef´s pizza place. We talked a little bit to the lady at the astronomy place, and somehow the topic of James arose. As we told our story, the lady´s face alternated between laughing and horror, concluding with an ¨oh no!¨when we mentioned the name Atacama Connection. We all had a good laugh at that one.

The astronomy tour started with a 15 minute bus ride out to the house of a French astronomer (academic type) named Alain. Our bus was filled with a bunch of Germans and 2 Brasilians. The Germans were true Germans, and had brought bottles of beer to the event. When we arrived, we were met by Alain´s wife, who immediately set up some telescopes for us to look through. It was pretty amazing- they have the largest telescope a tourist can look through in South America. We were able to make out the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, and see countless stars. The clear skies in the desert made it ideal for stargazing, and Alain provided helpful ways to learn the constellations, and included explanations of how and why the sky appears to rotate as it does. We were also treated to a brief history of astronomy and the fallacies of astrology, all given in Alain´s funny French accent. He even included a few jokes, claiming that the large group of Germans signalled ¨another invasion.¨ At the end of the tour we were even treated to hot chocolate to fend off the bitter cold (when the Brasilian girl got cold, Alain joked that ¨
I thought that zee Brazilian women were supposed to be hot.¨) This astronomy tour turned out to be the highlight of San Pedro for me.

After returning to the hostel around midnight, we hit the hay for a little less than 4 hours of sleep, getting picked up at 4:00 AM by the tour company to head up to the El Tatio geysers. The road was so bumpy that even Richard could not sleep in the 2 hour van ride up. When we got there, it was roughly 20 degrees fahrenheit, and we couldn´t see any geysers, just steaming fumaroles. This was to be the case the entire time; the highest geyser we saw spat water to the lofty height of maybe 3 feet. It was pretty much a letdown, especially when we were shown the El Tatio version of Old Faithful, spouting about 1 foot into the air every 90 seconds. The breakfast we were given was pretty mediocre too. The guide did heat milk for coffee in a non-spouting geyser though, that was pretty cool.

After the geyser field, we drove down to a Termas (hot spring) where, with only about 50 other tourists, we bathed in the thermal waters that alternated hot and cold. Enjoyable nonetheless, and it was our 5th Termas of the journey. Then we drove down to a small village, where the 3 of us decided that we would pet a llama. We walked 3 or 4 kilometres, and of the probably 200 llamas we attempted to pet, none would yield. We tried slow approaches, fast approaches, nothign worked, as the llamas were too smart. After our failure with the llamas, we returned to San Pedro around noon, with a tour of the Valle de la Luna at 3, so we couldn´t very well sleep. We had lunch then headed off for that tour.

The Valle de la Luna tour included the Valle de la Muerte as well. Together, they form a fascinating landscape of bizarrely eroded desert, sand dunes, salt flats, salt caves, salt crystal canyons that combine to give an appearance of a moonscape. The NASA Mars lander was actually tested in this region due to the terrain similarities between Mars and the Moon Valley. (maybe it should be called Valle de Mars?) The tour included some sand dune hiking and concluded with a view of a pretty good sunset from atop a sand dune. By the end, running on empty with little sleep, we had dinner and went to bed.

In the morning, we woke up, had some breakfast, then rented bikes and sandboards. We made the 8 km ride out to the sand dune in the Valle de Muerte without incident, then started with our somewhat pathetic attempts at sand boarding. Though I have never snowboarded, I am content to refer to sandboarding as snowboarding´s bastard cousin. (my judgement is severly clouded due to my lack of skill with either). The board is about the size of a large longboard, and you don´t really turn, it´s either straight down or somewhat across the slope. Running down the dunes turned out to be faster, and resulted in less sand being flung everywhere on one´s person. Dave´s camera also filled partially with sand, necessitating a tricky cleanup in order to restore operation to the lens cover. Richard, however, seemed to get the hang of it pretty well rather quickly, and he was the only one who escaped without a face full of sand. We returned to San Pedro to return our stuff, then bought bus tickets to La Serena, a coastal town a fair ways south. It was an overnight journey and we slept on the bus.

The Story of James (Part II)

We had lunch at a restaurant upstairs in a small market. As we ate, different vendors hawked their wares - watches, perfumes, fake MP3 players. Since we needed an alarm clock, a ¨Swiss Movement,¨watch was bought for $10. Luckily, it works. Richard looked at a sony MP3 player, but declared it fake, and James at first refused the perfumes. However, the perfume man soon returned, and James started sampling the various colognes. SUddenly, with 30 minutes left before our bus departed for Calama, Dave and James got up and left with the cologne guy, not telling Richard or me where they were going. Dave said they´d be right back. In the next 15 minutes, we got our third lunch course, but no Dave or James. Finally, with 15 minutes before our bust left (our bags still at the hostal), they reappeared without the cologne salesman. James said that the cologne was fake, Dave said he gave James $100, the ¨first installment¨of our ¨tour payment.¨ James had told Dave that he was going to buy the cologne to resell in San Pedro, but that he needed the cash to buy it and thus we could pay him part of the $150 then. They went to two ATMs before Dave withdrew 50,000 pesos, at which point James told Dave that the cologne was fake, but that he should get the pesos for our tour payment. Dave did not receive a receopt, which, in retrospect should have been a red flag, as Chile has a mandatory receipt law for any transaction. Nonetheless, James now had $100 of ours as we boarded the bus to Calama with seconds to spare.

En route to Calama, at the passport/bag checkpoint south of Iquique, James was taken off the bus by the Carabineros (police) and questioned for five minutes about a driving-without-a-license ticket he had received in Santiago. The matter was cleared up, however, apparently he had paid it but it wasn´t entered in the computer correctly. Still...the carabineros didn´t pull anyone else aside. On the bus, James also told us that he could get us into the Cuquicamata copper mine for a tour (open to the public), and that he a.) studied architecture in Florense, b.) had an 18 year old son doing the same, and c.) had an 8 year old son, a horse, and a house in San Pedro. Also, it should be mentionied that he had a fairly worn coat and shoes, dirty pants, and somewhat long, unkempt hair. However, he was a friend of the car rental lady, had taken us paragliding, and had $100 of our money, so we stayed in the same run-down hotel with him inn a run-down area near the Calama red-light district. He had told us he knew a good secure place to stay in Calama, but I don´t think we were at it. He also wasn´t afraid to pay only half of the fare the cab driver asked for, upsetting the cabbie something awful. The 3 of us were tired and went straight to bed; as I was brushing my teeth (communal bathrooms), James went out to ¨make some phone calls.¨With strip clubs and probably transvestite hookers just around the corner (our ever-helpful friend called them homosexuals in our taxi-ride to the hotel), God only knows what was meant by ¨phone calls.¨

So with our money probably safely in the hands of transgendered individuals of the night, we (with James) boarded a ¨Frontera del Norte¨bus to San Pedro de Atacama. It was only 3 bucks/ticket, but was the worst bus we had been on to date, broken armrests and worn seats abounded. We boarded the bus along with the same Swiss woman we saw in Putre, still with her bike. She´d ridden many miles since then!The bus was running when we boarded it, and left the bus station just fine. Our first stop was a gas station, where the driver wasted only 5 minutes before being arrested by the Carabineros filling up their Toyota Hilux at the pump next to ours. According to the carabineros, it is illegal to pump gas with the passengers on board the bus. Still, this would ahve been a minor issuse if it wasn´t also illegal to drive the bus without a driver´s lñicense (or any other minor documents like wehicle registration) or to operate a bus considered unfit for travel. Thus, under the careful supervision of the Carabineros (who, it seems to me are polite, competent and well-liked by most Chileans), our bus was relocated to a spot directly in front of the gas station, then our driver was placed in a ¨Reten Movil¨or mobile detention van.

The bus had been shut off; we were told another bus had been sent (from where it was sent was never made clear, this was at the half hour mark of the supposedly hour and a half journey). Then our bus had to be moved away from the bus station, but when the driver, temporarily released, tried to fire up the bus, it would not start, so the driver went and fixed the bus, finally starting it with the help of a Caribinero. We then drove about 20 meters to the other side of the pump island to wait for our new bus. (another hour, putting us at our supposed arrival time in San Pedro). After another half an hour at our new, improved parking spot, the driver was released once again, and we drove away, complete with a police escort, to meet our new bus. Luckily, the new bus was nicer than the non-roadworthy bus, and we were allowed to procede to San Pedro with a fully licensed driver! While enroute, James reiterated his promise that our lodging in San Pedro would enable us to sleep very well. When we arrived in San Pedro, having taken 4.5 hours for a 1.5 hour journey, James walked into the first hostel we saw and ¨negotiated¨the student rate for our room, telling us we had received a special price. Very helpful, and it saved us having to show our student IDs.

We then set off to get lunch. James knew of a cheap place to eat that turned out to be more expensive than a place we had seen right near the hostel. On the way there, we were introduced to Michelle, a skinny French-Canadian slinking around in a beanie, coat, and warm-up pants in the 75 degree weather. This whiny-voiced Quebecois told us he could arrange a tour for us, $140 US for 3 people, all day long. We sat for lunch while Michelle nervously fiddled with a few well-wrinkled brochures and told us our guide would arrive soon. When Dave got up to use the baño, the lady running the place was sitting behind a beaded curtain, watching us furtively, and when Dave asked what she meant when she pointed to her eyes, she said ¨you have to watch out¨a phrase of unclear meaning to us at the time (Dave thought it meant ¨he has many eyes¨ at the time). Our guide arrived and told us he had an excursion the next day to go hiking, bouldering, and petroglyph viewing with 2 other Americans. We didn´t want to do any of this, but he and Michelle kept telling us, in alternating fashion, that the geyser tours were full of people throwing up from altitude sickness, lowering the tour price from 140, and offering his services for 2 days later for a custom tour at the bargain price of $240 dollars. We turned this down as well and Michelle and the guide left.

At this point we asked James what we had given him $100 for, and at this point his English, which had been quite good, faltered to the point of non-communication as he pretended not to understand anything we said. So we walked with him to Axim Adventures across from the restaurant where he proceeded to negotiate the brochure list price for a geyser tour 2 days later. I then asked why we were there if he worked for Atacama Connection, and he responded ¨Si, Si, we go now Atacama Connection.¨ It was at this point that the poor guy working at Axim started trying to translate for us, but we said we were sorry and took James out into the street. There we told him we were unsatisfied and wanted part of our $50,000 pesos back. He claimed to never have sold us tours and that we had paid for his price-negotiation ¨skills.¨ The rat-bastard´s beady eyes told a different tale, as he told us he didn´t have the money with him (probably true due to his night-time expenses in Calama) and that we should meet with his associate Natalia in an hour to talk things over. With little in the way of options, we returned at 6 to find no sign of Natalia. We then returned at 8 per James´ instructions with little hope, and instead found Natalia. James had told her that he didn´t owe us any money since he had paid for our hotel (not true). Natalia, seeming nice, said she would look into the matter. By now we clearly would believe anything, so we accepted this statement and left.

We were, however, left with one kernel of useless information from James. He had told us that he would find us good pizza, and with his disappearance, the acquisition of said pizza seemed unlikely. However, in our nightly amble in search of food, we happened to run into just the restaurant described by our good friend James! There actually was a French chef who did make some really good pizza! The pesto pizza was in fact the best pesto pizza I have ever had. There was also some live music, and I bought a cd for 10 bucks. Dinner for the three of us came to about 20 dollars, a steal for pizza of that caliber. Thus ends the story of James.

The Story of James (our epic trip to San Pedro)

As we sat in the rental place, we met the friend, a man named James wearing a Ford hat. When we asked when he was going to San Pedro, he said he didn´t know, but soon. He instead said let´s go to get some coffee. On the way to get the coffee, he then decided we should go to get some pizza. He told us that Iquique didn´t have good pizza, but that he knew a good place in Iquique, and flagged down a taxi to take us there. We drove from the city center to the beach area, which is quite nice, then went into Telepizza, the ubiquitous Chilean version of Pizza Hut but worse, and delivered with motor scooters. There were no tables, so our new ¨guide¨ had the pizza people bring out some chairs that we used to make a table. We then ate our 2 fairly mediocre pizzas and got in another taxi, this one riced out something awful, with a female driver that James was hitting on, and went for coffee, right back where we started, just around the corner from, hot damn, another Telepizza! (this one with tables). We had some coffee at a place that only seemed to cater to white people, with Americans and German speakers at the other tables.

While we took our ¨good¨ coffee, James explained that it was a bad idea to head for San Pedro that night because one must stop in Calama, which is a bad town (mining town, home to the 9000 employees of the Chuquicamata copper mine). While eating, homeless hippies, which frequent the streets of Iquique, approached us and offered hard goods for sale. One enterprising young individual even offered to sell us a pink lace bra. We refused and he headed to the German table, where one large german guy mocked trying it on, saying it didn´t fit. When the hippy responded that he needed the money, the awesome german guy replied with ¨Get work,¨ which finally scared the hippy away. After coffee, we wandered around Iquique a bit more, buying some towels and getting, from our new friend James, a brochure describing the highlights of San Pedro (from his hotel). It was at this point that he told us he was a guide for the Atacama Connection, and knew a lot of people in San Pedro, ¨his town.¨ We were excited to have such a friendly guide. He told us that for 150 bucks, he would provide us lodging, food, and tours of the local attractions, including a pizza, ¨the best in the world, too much¨ from his French chef friend. We thought that it sounded like a fine idea, and stupidly agreed to it. We went back to Hostal Jose Luis, which, at this point, we didn´t know was the house of hookers. James helpfully told us after we had reserved the room for another night. We also bought some bus tickets for the following day, unfortunately none were available until 1445 hours, so we had some time to kill in the morning; we decided that paragliding ¨parapente¨was the way to go. James, ever helpful, told us he knew a French guy that ran a parapente operation. He was unable to get hold of him that night, but he said that he´d meet us at 830 AM and we´d go then. We did not get hold of the parapente guy at first, so we took a taxi to the hill where the parapentes fly from, and nobody was there, so we had the taxi take us to breakfast, where James disappeared for awhile to make some calls, eventually returning to tell us that our pilots would meet us at 11. Then it was 1115, then they werent there until 1130. A bunch of people were flying, some students, some solo flyers, some tandems (like us). Our pilots arrived, and we were glad to note that one of them was the Chilean long distance record holder, and the other was his flying buddy, so we were in good hands. Around 1230 the winds were good, and Dave and I took to the air (Richard opted out of flying and went to the landing zone with James). Paragliding is amazing; I´ve been in a fixed wing glider and there is no comparison. Iquique experiences favorable winds that blow constantly up an 800 metre high sand hill, so landing spots and steady winds are present year round. We were soon high above the takeoff zone, me following Dave as we soared above the city below. It is very calm in the sky, with oonly a gentle whooshing sound to accompany you. After about half an hour we had gained sufficient altitude to make the beach landing zone, and headed out over the city and then over the sea. To drop altitude, we experienced a series of tight spiralling turns, the most fun part of the flight in my opinion, then touched gently down on the sand.

James and Richard met us there and we boarded a Mitsubishi Delica minivan (4wd diesel) and headed out to the Flightpark, where we met the french guy, Phillip, who does in fact run quite a nice flight school out of a sort of Legoland made of conex shipping containers. After that we headed back downtown to go to lunch, where the interesting stuff started...