Brandon's Blog

In and Around Djibouti

2012-02-16T06:28:00.000-08:00

waiting for land sailing to begin
Grand Bara panorama
aboard the land yacht
getting started
Camel meat skewer! (aka Broche de Dromedaire)
camel truck
in search of camel at French Beach
French Beach
there's the camel
Driving by stacked rocks
the road to French Beach
near Djibouti City
man on the street
nice houses
abandoned or just low tide?

FJ Cruiser in Djibouti. Why???
Downtown Menelik Square
leaving Menelik

Heavy construction, Djiboutian style

2012-01-27T06:22:00.000-08:00

2011-12-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

enroute to Addis
we took a different, more rural route north than we had taken south 4 months ago
passing is always interesting
entering outer Addis
the first and only concrete truck I saw in 4 months spent in Ethiopia

it looks like the real thing...sort of
it even has the secret menu out in plain sight
the real menu
the kitchen
nuggets+fries
cheeseburger
cattle drive in Addis
longhorns in traffic
biggest construction site going right now
sunset over Addis
Sheraton lobby
felt a bit like Christmas- on the 23rd
more Sheraton Addis

2011-12-22T00:14:00.000-08:00

motorcylces use the bridge too

the Negele airfield!
the terminal/hangar- supposedly built by the British in the 1920s
finished project
using the bridge as a tightrope
this is the best wheelbarrow we had
at the local hardware store

2011-12-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

ribbon cutting day
dedication sign
sign's backside
bridge in completed form

live music
coffee ceremony

the first group of locals crosses after the ribbon was cut

kids love the bridge!

2011-12-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

local auto shop
defender and unknown truck (russian?)
shop
105
61?
45 longbed
nearly finished!

and then came the elevation adjustment...
misery in the form of hand-chipping concrete

completed chipping

finally sitting on the bearing

2011-12-21T23:10:00.000-08:00

kids love to pose for photos

before jacking the bridge down
tibes became a main staple. glad that's over.
one day you bandage a kid's foot. the next day, it's replaced by a plastic bag.
the jobsite toilet shortly before it was demolished
jobsite

kids jumping off of things for fun

2011-12-21T22:50:00.000-08:00

goat feast
bringing the leg of goat in
goat leg
nearing the end
getting closer
almost there
over the pad
view from the excavator
the only climbing for miles
almost done
wish I had climbing shoes
big rock garden
the biggest rock in the greater Negele-Borena area

an old "bridge" on the way to the big rocks

2011-12-21T22:34:00.000-08:00

beer can chicken made with beer put into canned vegetable cans
kids playing in the middle of the road
trash waterfall
mid-height flooding
kids waiting for a bridge
start of construction
Ramadan's goat liked the center pir concrete
progress
giant termite mound
local beehive
large rock
more large rock

2011-12-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

think the last gas station bathroom you stopped at was bad?
praying mantis on the job site
typical post-flood scene
kids playing as a flood recedes

more flooding

2011-11-01T13:11:00.001-07:00

2011-11-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

BAJAJ!
sunset over the lake
small town
donkey cart on an 80 km/h road
more small town
pedestrians!
finally out of town
river crossing
man by the side of the road
wheat/barley
scenic
more scenic
latrine design a la ethiopia
yikes
old latrine
hamburger
false banana
nice view
market
field

2011-10-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

why rig it right when you can rig it wrong? our shipping company offloading containers
climbing into the bed of the dump truck to empty the last rocks
a crowd gathers to watch the conex unloading
this is officially the kitchen for 150 high school students
the OR sterilization room for people to scrub down in. yikes.
the Negele Hospital OR. That light doesn't work.
major surgeries available here. The most expensive, at 350 birr, is still less than 25 dollars!
if you go into surgery, you get wheeled down this corridor, to the OR at the end. All the working lights are on- that is a broken xray machine covered in dust. there is no working xray machine in the region.
changed out for scrubs, juxtaposed with freshly cut gauze for the OR
rainy day
hammer made from pipe and rebar
checking out electrical in the OR
temporary bridge for pedestrians during a rainstorm serves as play structure
this. powers. a. hospital.

2011-10-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

The rut left by a stuck truck
Negele rush hour
rock truck tried to go through a ditch- FAIL!
night placement
more night work
dance at the millenium dam party
more millenium dam party
kids posing at the site
more posing

2011-10-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

Local assistance with gabions
getting a hand...or 10!
the crowd that assembles when the excavator runs
safety first! the new septic tank for the hotel's washing machine
yes, it's a hammer made from 2 bolts. not ours.
this is a stick turned shovel handle. this is ours after the original handle broke; the stick was bought for 5 birr from a local kid
gabions nearing completion on the north abutment

Through 13 September

2011-09-15T10:47:00.001-07:00

Not a lot of posts recently, though quite a bit has transpired.

By today we have set the forms for 100% of the south abutment and center pier, and have set the main body of the north abutment. A fair amount of fill remains for the north side, but it shouldn't take too long.

Beyond the work progressing very well, there have been some neat opportunities afforded by the local community.

The first was the goat roast with the village elders. This was a good time- we had an outdoor feast consisting of bread, goat, and Coca-Cola. I still don't know exactly how the goat was prepared; since we had told the elders that we didn't know what to do with a live goat, they took care of all the prep work. However they did it, it was delicious, and was served in copious quantities. With the bread, the meal turned into goat sandwiches, which proved mighty tasty. It was the first meal in a while that has been of a definite composition; at the restaurant it's anybody's guess as to what meat is being served at any given time.

Soccer games have continued; the crew replaced the rebar goals with improved wood and chicken wire assemblies. The only problem now is that soccer balls usually only last a game or two on the street, but at only 40 birr (about $2), it's not a big problem.

Another sad event was the drowning of a donkey in the stagnant pond that remains from last week's rains. I have already mentioned the steep slopes entering and exiting the wadi, and how much the animals seem to dislike it. Last week, the trip down proved more than unpleasant; indeed it became fatal for one donkey. During our off hours, a donkey cart was heading down into the wadi to get water (people are still drawing water out for washing, cooking, and even drinking), when the cart lost control and ended up in the water. Though the water is less than a foot deep now, the donkey had become flipped around in its harness, and its head was held under the surface. Despite a large amount of human assistance, the donkey could not be saved. The locals elected to leave the carcass in place for the hyenas; when we arrived onsite the next morning, we were greeted by a fly-covered carcass. Most of the animal had been removed, but to prevent the carcass from becoming a disease vector, we burned it with the addition of diesel fuel, which eliminated the flies. The next evening, the hyenas took the rest.

We were also treated to the experience of the Ethiopian New Year. It is now 2004! Because of a 13-month calendar, you can become 7 years younger just by crossing into Ethiopia. For the new year, which starts at 6 AM (Ethiopian midnight), the eve was filled with party-goers, fireworks, sporadic celebratory Kalashnikov fire, and general noise. Nobody slept that night- the goings-on around were much too loud! We were treated to a new year's meal of anjeira wot, which pleasantly came with chicken and hard-boiled eggs. Similar to the goat which appeared in the hotel courtyard one day, then appeared on dinner plates following the Orthodox fast, 3 roosters had made their appearance well known during new year's eve night, but did not make it through new year's day. An interesting economic note- the rooster seems to be the traditional new year's fare. During the days leading up to the new year, the price of a rooster escalated from 40-50 birr to 150 birr, while the price of a hen remained 30-40 birr.

Which brings me to fried chicken. A couple members of the team have been working on improving the abysmal cuisine, and have been working small miracles with the limited resources available here. One of the recent victories was fried chicken. Using the drawing shown below and a 100-birr note, one of the team negotiated with children to go get 3 hens from the market. After the children ran away in the opposite direction with the 100-birr note, we started to write it off as a loss. However, they returned shortly, only after the lady next door to the project scolded us for not consulting her advice on the chicken purchase. She said that no good hen could be had for that price, and that we would only get skinny chickens. She was, in the end, correct. The chickens arrived, quite scrawny ("well-exercised"), and were handed off to the hotel cooks for preparation. Following the plucking, etc., the pieces were battered and fried, which came out very well. Unfortunately, the lean, tough chicken meat left something to be desired. Next time, roosters it is.

Then there was the water line break. The service line for the two houses nearest the project site runs, as it turns out, about 6 inches under our aggregate stockpile. This turned out to be most unfortunate; as some aggregate was being taken out of the pile, water started bubbling out of the ground. With water so scarce as in Negele, the loss of so much water(filling our 1000L tanks takes about 2 hours, so about 100 gallons or so per hour) attracted a lot of attention. Due to the number of people crowding around the now growing excavation, we had to rope off the area while we dug the broken line out and called the water department. After about half an hour, during which attempts were made to plug the pipe with wood and rags, the plumber arrived (on a bicycle) with a shutoff valve, screwed it on, and the leak was stopped.

We then turned our attentions to fixing the line. The existing line was rigid pipe with threaded unions at each segment. The threaded ends were not damaged, but the pipe was damaged, and so it had to be replaced. PVC was the attractive solution, and we could have effected the repairs ourselves, but the water authority wanted to undertake the repairs, so we bought the parts and delivered them to the water authority office. After some hemming and hawing, they offered a price for the repair effort, which was a bit steep. Upon further examination of the document, we were being charged for "excavation." As we were doing the digging and filling, we were able, after half an hour of negotiations, to cut the price by 60%. During this time, we were also offered labor from a prison warden, who said that we could use his prisoners for free! We politely declined. Which brings us to an interesting note on the prison system here:

In the US, prisons are decidedly unpleasant places; however, they do often possess such niceties as cable television, hot meals, soap, beds...the list goes on when compared to Ethiopian prison. Here in Negele, 450 prisoners, overseen by 10 guards, sleep on the floor, eat only anjeira, can shower but can't have soap, are available as laborers, and are shot if they try to escape. If they have families, the families can bring other food, as long as it contains no meat. Certainly not a very pleasant existence.

Back to the waterline...

In the US, if you take somebody's water away for the better part of a day, they become quite angry. With the families next door, we experienced the exact opposite. The men insisted on helping with the repairs, and the lady from next door brought out tea and biscuits at the conclusion of the fix! One neat thing about plumbing here- there is no teflon tape to be found, so, instead, rope fibers (maybe hemp, maybe jute or twine?) are used. When installed, they swell and prevent leaks. Certainly effective!

2011-09-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

Goat feast prepared by town elders

HJ-45 abandoned at the Water Authority, where prisoner labor was offered to the bridge project.

how one of the team negotiated with children for the purchase of 3 chickens

a typical residential or commercial electric panel

wedding convoy in Negele

rebar cage waiting for concrete

after a rainstorm- this is some nasty water!

Some Pics from Days Past

2011-09-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

Rebar chairs waiting for the cage
how socks come back from the laundry
the kids love to pose for photos!
the unique "geology." Per expert analysis, this is a "post-holocene deposit"
The post-ramadan feast of Anjeira Wot. The anjeira is the pancake, the wot is the stew, in this case chicken based
the wayward tortoise
one day I will learn to hold my camera straight....
turbo!
a large herd passing the laydown yard
homemade rebar rakes...heavy!
looking past the total station
tibes (meat) eaten with anjeira
more kids
in one pic-60, 105, 78, 200, hilux. around the corner was an 81.
main street Negele, bajaj (taxi)
the jobsite toilet. High tech!
Groundbreaking crowd
a local welder
typical mud building framing
donkey taxi bringing speakers for the ceremony

Through Sep 4th

2011-09-05T00:43:00.001-07:00

04 September 2011

By now the center pier has both formwork and rebar set. Now we must wait for the engineer's mix design, and we'll be ready to place concrete! The south abutment also has the formwork set, and rebar has been prefabbed. Progress is good! Today was another lunch at a local's house. This time it was a banker who wanted to have us over and discuss the Ethiopian banking system. Here, unless you have collateral, you cannot get a loan! Without the ability to own land, that boils down to buildings or machinery, no money from the bank.

01 September 2011

0530- as my alarm goes off, acrid smoke from the kitchen starts filtering into my open window. Upon gaining consciousness, I become more aware of the sounds of Negele- the roosters, the competing Muslim and Orthodox prayers over loudspeaker, the occasional donkey, the loud talking next door, the pounding noises associated with making anjeira, a cat on the roof- the journalist who wrote something called "The Peace of Negele" must have been wearing earplugs the entire time! Sleep here is constantly interrupted- to get 4 straight hours is a luxury none are able to afford- there is no way to purchase quiet anyhow.

Today marked the first setting of the forms. Most of my morning was spent on the phone with one of our suppliers and with the engineer who is doing our mix design. Thankfully they both speak decent English so I am able to talk to them directly. Our interpreter is great, but it's still easier to talk shop in English. It's impressive that the contractors are able to speak the trade lingo in English despite Amharic being their primary language.

During the phone sessions, the crew was hard at work building up the formwork for the center pier, and starting construction of the bracing. This is a particular challenge, since we only have rudimentary dimensional lumber. Since most of the formwork, etc. here is done with unmilled tree trunks, dimensional lumber is exceptionally rare. The wood requested was 2x4s; instead, we have 1x6s- which presents a bit of a headache when constructing formwork. To work around it, 2 1x6s are nailed face to face, then are put on edge against the plywood form, to act as a quasi-2x6. It is a tedious process, to be sure.

The nailing brings up another difficulty. While nailing by hand is, by nature, a relatively slow process, the quality of the nails provided adds another layer of effort. Some boxes are good, others, terrible. The nails often come pre-bent, come in differing lengths and thicknesses, and often are very soft and easily bent. To add to the pain, the inner plies of the plywood were exposed when a piece split apart- the outer veneers cover inner plies that are chock full of knots! It certainly adds to the time required for construction.

Anyhow, the form for the center pier is nearly set.

More entertaining than the simple struggles are the interactions with the local people. This morning, a group of village elders approached the jobsite. They seemed a bit on the solemn side as they walked up. Our interpreter started translating- the first thing said was that the elders were sorry about the children, and that the town would improve efforts to keep them away from the worksite! Currently, there is a roving patrol to keep kids away from the site, but, truth be told, we all enjoy the kids. After telling the elders this, they seemed to relax, and brought up the next item of business: the goat. They were offering us the choice of a small, medium, or large goat, which we could then slaughter and eat. Due to legal issues and a complete lack of goat-slaughtering/cooking knowledge, we settled on the elders inviting us to feast with them instead. No date has been set, but it promises to be an enjoyable experience.

After that, a group approached us asking or help lifting the reaping part of a combine into the back of a truck. It is quite the sight to see a combine driving through a town of few cars! With the excavator and a lot of coordination through our interpreter, we were able to help hoist the part into the truck, as a crowd of about 50 people gathered to watch. I'm still not sure how they intend to get the part out of the truck at the next destination.

In the afternoon, a group of kids, led by Ramadan, who lives across from the laydown yard, brought a tortoise by; they had found it in the riverbed and wanted to sell it to us. After seeing the kids pick up and drop the frightened tortoise, our Hilux driver scolded the kids, picked up the tortoise, and plopped it on the sand pile in our laydown yard. It was still there when we left for the day, but it had gotten out of its shell and moved around a bit. It should be noted that Ramadan is also the one who loves to put chickens on his head, and was also seen throwing a chicken into the air, upon which it laid an egg mid-flight- Ramadan caught the egg!

30 August

The 29^th was the last day of the Ramadan fast, and so the night turned loud rather quickly. It meant that no work would happen (by the locals) on the 30^th, meaning we got to keep the total station another day. We made good use of it, burning up both of the batteries.

Of more interest, the family that lives next to the site invited us to eat an early lunch- anjeira wot, or teff flatbread with chicken stew. We crowded into their home and were presented with anjeira upon anjeira, with wot to match. The flavor was excellent, but spicy! I started sweating bullets shortly after the meal commenced, but kept eating anyhow. At the end of the meal, they invited us to attend the afternoon coffee ceremony, which a few of us went to. The coffee here continues to be sublime; thick and rich, it is taken with sugar only, but there is little bitterness, as the freshly roasted beans always seem to be expertly prepared. I will surely miss the daily coffee ceremony here in Negele when I leave.

23-28 August

Nothing major during this time- the kids continue to be very motivating- they're always smiling and shouting "you, you!" while waving as we drive down to work each morning.

The food at the Blue Nile Hotel has been one of the biggest morale challenges faced by the team here so far. Faced with a 4-item menu (rice, pasta, meat, eggs) that has been extremely hard on both the team's collective palates and stomachs, two crewmembers have been working with our interpreter to partner with the hotel cooks and improve the food. Since their efforts began, the restaurant has begun to incorporate new ingredients and recipes, finally producing meals that the team can look forward to. Better yet, the cooks are excited to learn how to make some American cuisine and plan to use the new recipes in the future!

22 August

Today marked the groundbreaking ceremony. We showed up to the jobsite to find a tent, benches and chairs, and a growing crowd of people. A few minutes later, a keyboard, speakers, and a few people clad in ceremonial garb appeared. Another few minutes went by, and a coffee ceremony was set up in a corner of the tent! This was certainly more than anticipated! A half hour before the ceremony, the live music began, with dancing shortly thereafter. I was invited to sit in the VIP section of the tent, and did so. The mayor and village elders spoke to the crowd, which probably numbered in the 100s, and I was afforded the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Seabees as well. It was by far the most enjoyable groundbreaking that I have ever attended- live music and dancing served as intermissions between speakers, and coffee, bread, popcorn, and tea were served in the midst of everything. I shall look forward to the ribbon cutting!

Following the ceremony, the city provided us with lunch of tibes at the restaurant next to the hotel. It was quite good- this particular restaurant only serves tibes, and had been closed throughout the Orthodox fast, which was concurrent with the Ramadan fast for 16 days.

21 August

Sunday is the normal day off, and would normally equate to sleeping in. Here in Negele, this is an impossibility; the morning din of roosters, donkeys, trucks, the pounding noises associated with anjeira cooking, and the morning prayers make Sunday an early day like any other. As such, I woke at 630 and went to breakfast, having the usual (and only) selection of eggs…and eggs. Tea is the breakfast drink of choice at the restaurant, since the restaurant coffee is far inferior to the coffee ceremony brew. The tea is taken with a large amount of sugar, and costs only 1 birr (1/17 of a dollar).

Following breakfast, I set off for the market, with the intention of buying a belt. I prepared mentally for fierce negotiations, but when the price of 25 birr (about $1.50) was offered, I gave up all thoughts of negotiation. Thus, a belt was procured.

At the market I also picked up some ketchup, jam, NuCrema (like Nutella, but Greek), and some mango puree to take back to the hotel. I couldn't eat dinner- it is disgusting. I planned to eat only popcorn or bread at the coffee ceremony, but the hotel owner had other ideas. I had sat down across from him, and when his platter of anjeira and sauces came out, he kept saying "eat, eat." The taste was excellent; however, I have finally gotten sick from the food here.

20 August

We quasi-started work on layout today. Since we have no survey equipment of our own, save for a tripod, we went to the city manager and asked if they had a transit we could use. No transit was to be found; instead, they offered use of their total station and prisms. It was a great stroke of luck- without this we would be left with only rudimentary leveling capabilities.

The need for survey gear comes from the bridge abutment placement. Since the two ends must be at the same elevation and the center pier slightly lower, it is important to accurately place the concrete forms at the correct elevations. With a single span bridge and an allowable slope of 3%, we would have over 5 feet of allowable error. The addition of the center pier eliminates the option for that kind of error. To make things more critical, the drawings that detail the existing elevations of the wadi we are bridging are not accurate, nor do they indicate the exact placement of the bridge. One of the crewmembers had used a tape and eyeball to estimate the location of the piers, but until the survey profile was completed, the amount of cutting and filling could not be determined.

After acquiring the total station, we set out to mark the bridge centerline, and get an elevation profile for it. Based on the span distances and elevations, we were able to site the abutments and piers, and establish cut and fill requirements. The amount of earthwork is significantly greater than anticipated, but is well within capabilities here. On a side note, the center points that the crewmember laid out by tape and eye were almost exactly in the position they needed to be following the survey!

Today was also full of rebar cutting. Since we are without an acetylene torch or sawzalls, everything is being cut by hacksaws. The smaller bar can be cut with a rebar cutter, but not the larger diameters. Fortunately, a few locals saw the hacksawing, and stepped in to help. With local assistance, great headway has been made.

Preparations for the town's groundbreaking ceremony also started today. The town has requested that we wait to break ground until the ceremony is completed. It promises to be quite the experience- the town even requested to set a ceremonial cornerstone! After we informed the bridge council that we would be digging in the cornerstone area, and it would be better to wait until we could set a stone in concrete, they decided to construct a temporary ceremonial pier! When it was described to us, it seemed as though it would be a simple stone set on the ground. After a couple donkey carts dumped large stones at the site and local masons showed up, it became apparent that it would be a bit more than just a stone. The masons worked all afternoon, breaking rocks and mixing mortar. Now complete, the pier extends a foot underground and sits almost 3 feet high. It is a shame that it is a temporary structure- we will try and salvage it if possible.

Since formal excavation could not start until after the ceremony, the crew constructed soccer goals out of rebar and chicken wire, then set out to play some of the locals in a match. A large crowd gathered to watch, often cheering and laughing when a donkey cart, camel, or bajaj (taxi) interrupted play. Cattle and goats also interfered!

Today the rebar high chair problem noted in an earlier photo was solved. After talking to the contractor, we will be receiving concrete blocks, which will work fine for our application.

The most important realization today was the reason for the bridge. A large portion of the town, including the hospital and all the schools, sits to the south of the wadi. The population north of the wadi is currently inconvenienced by having to descend into the ford, to be sure, but at first it seemed to be just that, an amount of additional effort to get into town. However, after watching the donkey carts descend at breakneck speed, then painfully climb the uphill side with drivers helping to push, it is apparent that it will greatly ease transport. To add to this, and perhaps more important, is the fact that, when the rains come, the wadi floods with 20 feet of water. According to the locals, lives have been lost, both to floodwaters and a lack of medical services on the north side. Children cannot get to school, sometimes for weeks at a time!

In an hour's time, several hundred people transit the ford through the wadi; I would estimate at least 100 livestock as well. During the rainy season this number is forced to zero when the floods come; the bridge will significantly impact the populace here.

18 August Continued

2011-08-22T11:51:00.001-07:00

Finally started work on the bridge (sort of) today. Had a breakfast of eggs and tea- the tea costs one birr and is quite good. After eating, the crew went to the jobsite, while myself and a couple others went on a town tour. We met with the mayor, the city manager, the chief of police, and the security manager for the town. In addition to those visits, we visited a local repair shop (mostly TLCs!) and the local hospital. It is a small affair, currently without an xray machine, a dentist, an optometrist, an internist, EKG capability...the list goes on. If someone gets hurt out here...

Following the tour, headed down to the job site, where inventory of tools and materials was underway. We are short a few items. Some are more painful losses than others. For example, we have Bosch sawzalls. This would be great, except we have no batteries or chargers. There is also a corded drill, which would be great too, except it's 220V/50hz, and our generator only puts out 110V/60hz...

Lunch followed this shortly- rice and meat. Eventually food will need to be sought elsewhere than the restaurant. There is a bustling market here in Negele; it is a series of alleyways filled with stores selling, it seems, everything not needed for a bridge project.

After lunch it was back to the site. It was in the afternoon that I first saw the town's child-chasers- hired men who keep kids away from the construction site. They usually carry switches, and will chase the kids away, swatting at them as they run. At times they will chase upwards of 20 children a hundred yards down the road. More from the 18th to follow...

18 August Part 1

2011-08-21T02:16:00.001-07:00

Negele is a dusty town in the southern lowlands of Ethiopia, inhabited mostly by a mixture of Oromo and Somali people numbering approximately 42,000. It is 7 hours from the nearest asphalt concrete road, and has no stoplights, no city water infrastructure, or road grader, it seems. However, it is full of life; people are always moving around here, it seems. In an hour of observation, at least several hundred pedestrians and at least a hundred animals and donkey carts crossed the dry wadi on the north side of town. There is a bustling market in the town, which becomes a camel market on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The people here speak very little English, mostly Amharic, Oromo, and Somali, but they are friendly. The children here, many not having seen pictures of Chinese people, often yell "China China" as we walk or drive through town- this is mostly the very young ones. This is because China has established a significant presence in Ethiopia, building roads and communications infrastructure. The other children yell "You, You" and wave. They get a kick out of it when we respond with the same.

Which brings us to the Seabees and their presence here in Negele. The aforementioned wadi is dry most of the time, but when the rainy season hits, it becomes impassable. Currently, the only way across is through a ford (also usually dry). However, during flooding, the ford is covered with upwards of 20 feet of water. Thus, we will be building a Mabey-Johnson bridge next to the ford for pedestrians and livestock. Vehicles can drive around, but that route is too far to walk. Personal vehicles are not common here; fuel is scarce and expensive, and donkey cart taxis are king. There are also a small number of tiny blue taxis, which are three-wheel, 3 seat affairs.

For those with vehicles, it is the Toyota Land Cruiser that rules the roads. We have seen almost every series made, though all diesel, and all manual transmission. So far, I have seen 40,45 pickup, 45 troopy, 70, 73, 75, 78, 79, 60, 62, 80, 81, 105, and 200 series Land Cruiser. The 70-series comes in 4 door, troopy, and pickup configurations. There are also quite a few Hiluxes. This pattern has been endemic to Ethiopia. While I am jealous of the diesels so readily available, the cities of Addis and Hawassa were also choked with diesel fumes from all the cars and the lack of emissions standards. My clothes smelt of diesel after just one day in Addis, and most of the detachment has some lingering sickness from the fumes.

The hotel itself is not particularly nice, nor is it particularly bad, except for the toilet situation, and the shower, which, with it's electric water heating showerhead, can give you an unpleasant shock when you turn the water on or off. Oh, and the food has made everybody sick. That should wear off in a couple weeks after adjusting to it...I hope. More from 18 August to follow...

Pics So Far

2011-08-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

Rebar High Chairs- I think there might have been a misunderstanding...these are 75cm tall!

Doing a brief survey. The drawings are only off by a factor of 2! Since we don't have any survey equipment of our own, the town is lending us their total station and associated equipment.

This is our hub and tack- a bottle cap and nail!

Getting some local assistance cutting rebar- all we have to cut with are a couple hacksaws!

Local masons building the ceremonial pier for the upcoming groundbreaking ceremony

After work is done, building some soccer goals out of excess materials.

A herd of camels makes its way down the road.

The kids in Negele love posing for pics

The entire road to Negele was like this! Animals everywhere

An example of a rural town

Looking north from the south abutment. North abutment will be just below the person across the ravine

The bridge site in section view

Example of mud/stick hut in the highlands

17 August- A Hellish Road

2011-08-21T01:19:00.001-07:00

After leaving the hotel at 0845, we stopped at an ATM for a cash plus-up. What should have been a routine, 15 minute stop ended up taking an additional hour! During this time, we experienced numerous failures of the ATM, a power outage, and a breakdown of one of the 200 series Land Cruisers. It's key fob had run out of batteries (keyless pushbutton start) and the driver had to replace it. We finally left at 1000, right at our go/no-go time, with a good weather forecast and full gas tanks. It is only 280 km to Negele, but it takes 8 hours. An hour into our drive, the pavement ended, and the reason for the length of the trip became readily apparent. At first, our driver laughed about how bad the road was. He had no idea what lay ahead- it started out bumpy, and became downright miserable- our driver kept stopping because he thought parts were falling off the truck! It is by far the worst road I have ever traveled for such distance. It looked like a grader hadn't been used on it in years! There is supposedly a project underway to pave the road, but, based on the one 10-minute section placed randomly in the middle of the drive, very little was nearly in paveable condition.

However, it was also a very scenic drive. After leaving the diesel haze of Hawassa and Addis behind, we climbed into the hills, where the landscape was lush and green. We wound our way up into the clouds, passing mud huts, villages, livestock, and even a pack of baboons. Passing on these roads is precarious, as there is often only a single passable lane. We were fortunate enough to have dry roads, but even so, managed to average only a paltry 35 km/h.

After what seemed like an eternity, we made it to Negele. We stopped briefly for sambusas so our interpreter could break his fast, and headed to the hotel. This would be our intro to Negele- a disheveled hotel compound with one western toilet and one shower for 6 rooms, 7 people. Since the other side of the compound has 0 western toilets, the remaining occupants (11) also use the one western toilet. We ate dinner at the restaurant; I had tibs and pasta with sauce. Tibs is some sort of meat; we see chunks of it being carried in every morning, when they have it. Some days there is no meat. The other choices available are rice and eggs; bread also comes with each meal, as does a soda, coffee, or tea. Sometimes they are out of soda or tea, but never coffee.

After eating dinner, we unpacked and prepared for the second day in Negele.

17 August and Preceding Days

2011-08-21T01:06:00.001-07:00

Awoke at 0530, 17 August for today's journey from Hawassa to Negele. It has taken some time to get here (Hawassa, Ethiopia)- after attempting to leave Djibouti, bound for Negele, Ethiopia on Wednesday, we were finally able to get plane tickets from DJI to Addis Ababa on Saturday evening (the 13th). We left late and barely made our flight- excess baggage fees were difficult to get through. Since we were bringing all our gear with us, each member of the detachment was over the limit of 30 kg/passenger. Since Ethiopian airlines doesn't have a credit card reader in Djibouti, we had to pay cash, at a different location than the ticket counter! Once on the plane, the longest safety video in the world was shown, and we were on our way.

The plane touched down in Addis a bit late, but customs inspections were quick, and the inspectors didn't even take the customs declaration forms. We were met by waiting SUVs (Land Cruisers), and taken to our lodging, with intentions of departing on the 14th of August. When one of the rental cars showed up the next morning, it had bald rear tires. The two additional vehicles they were supposed to provide were not available either. Called the rental company and told them to change the tires. The company said okay, it will happen, but not today. Thus, we were stuck in Addis Ababa for a day. Sometime in the afternoon, the rental company called again. They had changed course; they would not be changing the tires. Instead, they would have a new vehicle for us, plus 2 others, Monday morning. And so we waited. During this, we still had one car, and used it to go to the mall to buy internet sticks. During the course of that exercise, we discovered that a) stores cannot refund you money and b) all internet sticks activated on the 14th in Ethiopia don't work, and c) the telecom office here in Negele doesn't do internet. Ergo, I'm on a borrowed internet stick because mine was activated wrong.

Monday came and went without us leaving Addis. The promised vehicles from the rental agency did not materialize. Instead, they offered up the same Hilux with bald tires that was rejected on Sunday. After a re-rejection, they started putting new tires on a beat-to-high-hell 105 series Land Cruiser with a broken headlight. That was rejected as well, at which point they made some phone calls and procured the newer Hilux we are still using. Unfortunately, the rental agency was never able to obtain the other 2 vehicles needed, so we went elsewhere. This is where we hit paydirt.

At a new rental agency found through the help of our interpreter, we were able to secure two 2009 200 series Land Cruisers for the trip down. These showed up early for our slated 1400 departure from Addis. Unfortunately, the new Hilux did not. With a 4 hour drive ahead of us, at 1400 we were forced to cancel the day's journey. It is not safe to drive at night here, and the trip to Hawassa is on 2 lane rural highways.

The next morning (the 16th), we left at 1000 and took 5 hours to make it to Hawassa without incident.

I will pause here to comment on Ethiopian driving. I had noted that, in South Africa, one might see 4 lanes of traffic on 2 lane roads. Ethiopia puts SA to shame for levels of crazy! While in SA most people at least drove the speed limit, I am convinced that, in Ethiopia, there are no traffic laws of any sort. Sure, there are lane lines, but good luck finding a driver who doesn't straddle them most of the time! Our hired drivers have nerves of steel to drive in Addis. Imminent collision is the norm, not the exception. Most intersections have no governing signals, no stop, no yield; you just kind of go.

The highways are worse. Passing is sometimes done 2 abreast, and when you leave Addis, the amount of livestock and donkey carts increases dramatically. Going through little towns, the drivers lay constantly on their horns, warning other vehicles and donkey carts to move right and be passed. They flog the Land Cruisers hard, putting both brake and gas pedals to the floor at all times. Even paved roads here are terribly bumpy and filled with craters; there is no calling these potholes. At times, the pavement gives way to dirt, even in the middle of large urban roads.

Getting back to the travel- Hawassa is home to the Haile resort. Named for famed leader Ras Tefari, who crowned himself Emperor Haile Selassie, it overlooks Lake Hawassa. We got in about 1500. The room was nice, with a balcony overlooking the lake. There were a number of fishermen on what looked like woven reed boats until the rain and lightning came in around 1600. Ate a substantially sized hamburger at what was destined to be the last substantial dinner for awhile.

Hidrospeed, Norte a Santiago de Chile

2007-06-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

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!!!!!!!!!!

2007-06-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-06-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-06-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

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...

Iquique and around

2007-06-05T11:13:00.000-07:00

Sadly, Pancho returned to the States after only a few days in Chile; he made the decision to leave based on a fever he´s had for a few weeks. According to the doc back home, it was likely only a sinus infection, so he´ll be okay. He left the same day we decided to rent a car...

After our first night in Iquique, we decided to head up to see the Gigante de Atacama, the geoglyphs at Cerro Pintado, the hot springs at Pica, and the mud baths at Mamina. Saturday night we found a tour company willing to do it for 15000 pesos a person, or about 30 dollars, but we felt that a rental car would be cheaper and easier, so we turned down the offer. We did walk around downtown Iquique quite a bit, on the Paseo Baquedano (note that every Chilean city we´ve been to, including Putre, has Baquedano, O´Higgins, and Patricio Lynch streets). The Paseo is a Chilean national historic district, with old buildings running continously for over a kilometre. As with Santiago and even Putre, nothing was open until after 8 PM, and so we were not able to have dinner until then. We had some sandwiches and wandered around a bit more, used the internet, and went back to the hostel and plotted our route the next morning.

Sunday we woke up at 0830, determined to make it to Alamo rental car, which, according to the alamo website, opened at 0900. We hired a taxi and away we went, only to find Alamo closed. The driver helpfully drove us to 4 other closed rental places, so we sat down and ate breakfast on the Paseo Baquedano. Nothing is open in the morning there and we had to get pastries at a street near our hostel, the very strange Hostal Jose Luis, which only costs 7 dollars per person to stay in. The owner/operator is a very crazy lady, who acts angry but says nice things. We found out from a local that this is likely due to the numbers of prostitutes that frequent the hostel. Some things are better left unknown, I think, but at least we know not to go back there.

So, despondent at the lack of rental car, we wandered down Baquedano, until we saw a sign for rental cars. We rang the intercom for the place, and were ushered into an antique photo studio, where, it was explained, the rental lady´s brother took antique photographs like you´d see at ghost towns in the US. They told us that they had one car left, though there would be more tomorrow. Why they said more tomorrow, we soon found out. Our Hyundai Elantra had lost all of its emblems, had been rattlecan painted at one point, etc etc, but it started, had a cassette player, and the rental guy was helpful enough to lend us 3 tapes none of which we could stand for more than 10 minutes.

When we drove away from the rental place, the speedometer started spinning backwards for a block, then decided to waver in about a 40 km/hr range, located roughly 50 or more kms above actual speed. The clutch was nearly gone and the shifting sloppy, with a completely worn out gear box. The syncros were well worn, and it emitted terrible grinding noises with about half the shifts. To add to this the odometer was stuck at 105999.9 kms. However, the engine ran smooth, and it didn´t shake until it broke the 100 km/hr mark.

We drove first to the Gigante de Atacama, the world´s largest geoglyph at 86 meters high. There´s not much to say about it except it´s in the middle of nowhere, and is a really big rock art picture of a man out in the middle of the Chilean desert. After that we had lunch in the town of Pozo Almote, a small highway town. We had "el menu" which ironically means that you don´t look at a menu but instead get a daily lunch special, which is usually 4 dollars or less and often includes bread, salad, soup, and meat with either rice or potatoes. It´s quite the deal, and is usually quite good, the soup having many veggies and typically a meat as well. Very filling.

After Pozo Almote, we headed south towards the geoglyphs at Cerro Pintado where there are more than 400 glyphs, most somewhere between 5 and 20 feet high, some larger, some smaller. Again, not much to say, but one must wonder why they are there. After this, we proceeded across the worst paved road I have ever seen, at times requiring speeds of about 10 mph for long stretches. This particular road led to the city of Pica, which has a famous thermal pool and is the fruit center of Chile. When we arrived, we went directly to the town square, where I got a mango con leche, or a mango blended with milk. Dave and Richard, smarter than I, went ahead and ordered piña con helado, or gelato in a bowl made of half of a freshly sliced pineapple, with the diced fresh pineapple included as well. It may be the pinnacle of dessert evolution as far as I am concerned, Coldstone has nothing on this tasty treat. Thus I ordered one as well and was in ice cream bliss, and with a full stomach. After this we found our hostel, La Tamba, right next to the pool, so we headed down there for a couple hours. It´s not really a hot spring, but is a warm pool overshadowed by lush vegetation and containing 2 caves extending more than 30 feet into the hillside. You can also grind mud from the rocks for a pseudo mud bath of the face.

After the springs, we went looking for dinner, but places in Pica close early, so we ate the menu in the only place open, which was tasty, then we heard music coming from the back that turned out to be a discotheque of sorts. It was only 9 so we decided to hang out there for a bit. It was a strange affair, with many extremely drunk Picans wandering around, but almost everyone was friendly, including the next character from our travels, William.

William is a mango farmer who spoke enough English for us to communicate with him, and he was able tio translate for a few of his friends there. After talking for some time, the topic of the mango came up. William became convinced that we had to try his "personal drink," the mango sour, made with pisco and mango. He went to the bar then came back and asked for money for the drinks, went back, then disappeared. We had almost given up hope for a return on our money when he triumphantly returned to the disco, toting a shaker of mango sour and 4 glasses. We had the first round, which was rather tasty, then William decided we had to have another round, and told us that nobody from the bar had known how to make the sours, so he returned to the bar once again, and returned, this time with the shaker behind his back and his finger pressed to his lips as to say ¨shhhhhhhh.¨ The look on his face was priceless and it seems as if he took great joy in returning with our free drinks. We had the second round and refused a third, then Dave and Richard went to dance with the local girls while I tried to get pictures, only coming up with one spectacular picture of Dave and his amazingly bizarre dance pose.

After Richard asked one of the girls about salsa dancing, the dance floor cleared of its 8 people and we went back to the hostel to sleep. We got up in the morning, caught a quick breakfast, then headed back to Pozo Almote and to the small town of Mamiña. When we got to Mamiña, we parked the car and walked about 2 kms to lunch, then went to the goofy little mud baths there, said to be slightly radioactive and healing of skin problems. At lunch, we watched a chained llama struggle with entanglement, finally falling over when it tripped over its chain. At the mud baths, directly behind the water bottling plant for the springwater, we were given bucket of mud to encoat ourselves, then were left to suffer the cold winds as we dried. Pretty goofy. We then cleaned off in the muddy thermal pool at the baths, and elected not to go to the sulfurous hot springs, so we hopped in the car and drove off.

At this point, the speedometer had quit working entirely, the check engine light was on, there was a not so faint gasoline odor in the cabin when the car was running, and we were still 125 kms from Iquique, out in the middle of nowhere. Nonetheless, the only option was to press on and drive. As we left Mamiña, the temperature guage went down to zero and didn´t rise until we hit Pozo Almote again. On the way back to Iquique, we stopped at the nitrate ghost town of Humberstone, which was completely abandoned in the 1960´s. Unlike most American ghost towns, which consist of a single street and a small mine, Humberstone is a large town, complete with a huge mine, processing plant, hospital, church, theatre, swimming pool, and many mining relics left to the desert winds. Walking through it was an experience in desolation, with no other visitors and only the sound of creaking doors to accompany us. We left as the sun set behind the western hills, and continued our drive.

As we made the final stretch to Iquique, we discovered one last problem with the car: the headlights were dimmer than most running lights, and we´re not sure if we had brake lights. We were left to follow other tailights down the winding highway which snakes down to the city, somewhat nervewracking at Iquique´s rush hour. We then drove much of the length of the city while getting lost trying to find our way back to the rental place. We arrived at the rental place, told the lady we were headed to San Pedro de Atacama, at which point she told us she had a friend going to San Pedro for work. This is where the saga of James begins.

Southbound to Iquique

2007-06-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

Thursday night we managed to get our laundry into the lavandoria, shelling out around 9-12 dollars apiece for laundry. We then went to the barber shop across the street from the hostel, and Richard and I got haircuts for the bargain price of 3 dollars! We also ate at the Sandwich Hippie, where we were served fresh mango and orange juice. The ¨jugos naturale¨was made from fruit blended right in front of us, and added to either milk or water depending on one´s preference. The whole dinner, including sandwich and juice came to about 4 dollars. We wandered around a bit in downtown Arica, then decided to try and find the Circus Oro, which was in Arica this weekend. We decided to try riding a bus, and hopped on the first one going in the right direction. It cost more than 50 cents, and we got off way early; it turns out you can flag down the bus at any point on its route and can get off anywhere, not just bus stops. We made it to the circus tent, but were too late, and we also found out that it´s a kid-oriented circus, complete with Barney the purple dinosaur. We ended up walking over to the beach and walking almost the whole length of Arica to return to the hostel, then went to bed.

Friday morning we woke up later than planned (as usual), and made our way to El Morro, the mountain overlooking Arica. We hiked up the mountain, which has a San Cristobal statue and military museum at the top, and were met with hundreds of chanting Chilean soldiers, military trucks, buses, and a marching band! It must have been some sort of celebration; the soldiers were only in rough formation and the marching band played continually but was constantly competing with the crowd noise. We were told we could not walk over by the museum, but could take as many pictures as we liked, and we were able to go to the overlook of the Pacific Ocean and also to the Chilean Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the San Cristobal statue. When we asked what was going on, none of us understood the answer, so who knows. We wandered around on top of El Morro for awhile, looking at some old cannons from the (I think) Bolivian-Chilean conflict back in the 1800s that made Bolivia into a landlocked nation. El Morro is (again I think) the hill where the war was won. Peru may have been involved with that one as well.

After El Morro, we descended and decided to eat at a fireman´s canteen. According to one guidebook, Chile has a volunteer fire department that must raise funds through these restaurants. It doesn´t seem as if the bamberos are volunteers, but who knows. We each had a steak with a side dish and a drink, and spent a little over 6 dollars to get that. In addition, it seems that many sit down restaurants here serve bread before the meal, with either a salsa, tomato based spread, and, on rare occasion, butter. It´s a nice way to start a meal.

After lunch, we went back to the hostel to check if Pancho had arrived. We had left our room key and a note for him at the front desk of the hostel, but he had not arrived yet, so we took off for the beach. There are beaches to the north and south of the town centre, with Chinchorro beach to the north. We hopped on an empty bus that said Chinchorro in the windshield, and asked the driver to take us to la playa. He asked us the name of a beach that we didn´t understand, and so, like so many other times, the response to something unknown was ¨Si!¨ So, instead of heading north to Chinchorro beach, we ended up with the bus as a private taxi going south, to the smaller, more sheltered (and in my opinion, lamer) beaches. We got out a ways south of the town centre, took a look at the beach, seeing a man with a BB gun or .22 hunting birds, and started walking back to town. Luckily, the bus driver had stopped across the street to take a phone call, and we were able to get back on the bus. We (and by we I mean 98% Dave) talked to the bus driver for about 15 minutes, then we started on his normal route. School and work were ending in mid-afternoon, and our private bus soon became full to capacity, and then some as we drove around unknown parts of Arica. Finally we drove by Chinchorro beach and the bus driver told us we´d reached our stop. We immediately started walking in the wrong direction, and the driver must have had the entire bus full of people yelling for us to go the other way! A lot of people were laughing at us then...We made it to the beach just fine, arriving to see only one man swimming and 4 or 5 people kiteboarding. Dave and I decided to go in, as the waves looked inviting for bodysurfing. However, while the waves were good, the water was too shallow to bodysurf, so we pretty much just suffered the cold bobbing in waist deep water. Richard elected to stay warm and didn´t swim. After swimming, we repeated the long walk along the beach to the hostel, where we found that Pancho had in fact arrived.

Pancho´s journey hadn´t been a great one, as he´d spent 5 days driving around the US including San Diego and Las Vegas, come home, driven to Denver the next day and then spent 3 hours on the flight to Atlanta, 9 hours to Santiago, then 30 hours on a bus to Arica. nonetheless, he made it, getting scammed on a taxi in Santiago but otherwise just fine, and sporting the enormous satellite phone that his dad rented for our trip. We decided to go to dinner at a chicken-on-a-spit joint again, and went to the same place we had gone to earlier in the week, the only charcoal fired chicken oven in a sea of electric ovens. The chicken was quite good, and after dinner we went out to get some needed supplies. Dave ended up getting a 7 dollar pair of jeans and Richard got a 2 dollar pair of fake North Face fleece gloves that claimed to be Gore-tex nylon shells. The fleece wasn´t half bad though. We went back to the hostel then headed out in search of a bar. We split a pitcher at a small local bar with Navy Seals the movie on the computer, then left in search of something more exciting, finding a karaoke underground bar. The bar itself was nice, but it was chock full of smoke, and we were the youngest people in the place by a good 5 or 10 years. It was pretty funny to see 40 year olds singing spanish karaoke songs though, some of them get into it. We next went to the ¨discoteque¨upstairs from the karaoke bar, being ushered in by a 50 year old man in a suit, took one look at the menu, and left, since it was basically a restaurant with music and expensive beer. Following a common trend, we went to what may be the narrowest disco in town, with room for one row of tables and chairs and nothing else except lound music and a stage, upon which nobody was dancing. Again, we turned and left pretty quickly. We went next door to split another pitcher and weigh our options, and this is where we met Rodrigo.

I´m pretty sure Rodrigo is one of the nightclub employees who roam around bars and clubs to take you to the next better disco, meaning the bar that employs them. It didn´t seem abnormal at first since a lot of people like to try out their (usually minimal) English skills, so we talked with Rodrigo for a bit, then when we asked him where the people our age were, he told us that Soho was the place to be. We walked with him to what we thought would be Soho a couple blocks away, but instead found ourselves inside what looked like an upscale coffee shop with loud music. Rodrigo knew the bartender, and we got 2 for 1 drinks, while we talked about how to lose Rodrigo, since he had been talking crazy things like one of us driving his car, or getting in a taxi with him, neither of which we were able or willing to do. So after one drink, we said farewell to Rodrigo, and decided to find Soho on our own. Who knows, Rodrigo probably wanted to take us somewhere and have us robbed, maybe not, but, whatever the case, we flagged down a taxi after telling him we were going home, and made our way to Soho, ironically located on the same Chinchorro beach we had walked home from twice already.

When we arrived, after midnight, there was nobody there, though we got in for free. Soho is a huge disco, and we started laughing when we went in and saw maybe 5 people in the whole place. Pancho hadn´t seen the beach yet so we wandered over the couple hundred metres to the ocean, where we ran into a group of Chilean youth who wanted to confirm many of their sneaking suspicions about the Estados Unidos, including their favorite bands Nirvana, Audioslave, Blink 182, Pearl Jam, among others, and also to mention their skateboard heroes Bam Margera and Tony Hawk. We talked with them for over an hour, communicating (except for Dave) with hand signals and enthusiastic ¨Si!¨and ¨Buenos!¨ We then went back to Soho, where they charged us $5.00 per person to get in (1 beer included). We went in, and fared poorly, with our white man dance skills and lack of salsa ability. We ended up leaving after less than an hour there, and repeated our lengthy beach walk back to the hostel.

This morning we woke up and barely made the 0915 bus from Arica to Iquique, arriving here around 1400, and finding our hostel a mere 2 blocks from the bus terminal. Since then we have eaten and come to the internet place, and will begin exploring the city tonight.

Putre and Beyond

2007-05-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday we rented a car, a 2 door Suzuki Grand Vitara, and headed up into the mountains to a little town called Putre. At first we took the wrong turn and ended up on the highway heading back south, but we were able to turn around and headed up west by northwest towards Putre. The drive out of Arica started with a trip up an enormous canyon of sand and dirt, all tan and brown except for the bottom, which is agriculturized with river water. The green at the bottom made for a stark contrast with the rest of the canyon, especially as we started our climb up the canyon walls. It is only 138 km from Arica to Putre, but the climb is 3500 vertical meters, more than 11,000 vertical feet in 90 miles! The road was steep and windy, with lots of switchbacks, and not that many guardrails, but it is paved. On the way through the first canyon, we saw geoglyphs, large, ancient formations in the sand created by the early inhabitants of the valley. After climbing out of the valley, we were able to explore some Inca ruins, c. 1200 BC. These were mostly round stone walls about 3 feet high, leaving little to indicate what comprised the higher parts of the fortress walls. The fortress stands on a hill overlooking yet another huge, steep canyon, set against a backdrop of high Andes mountains.

We also stopped at the home of some real 21st century hippies; during normal times, the woman who greeted us told us, visitors would be sat down in a circle, given Mate Cocoa to drink and educated about the environment. However, they were experiencing a medical emergency, and had to rush to Arica when we had stopped. As we continued on, we got our first glimpse of a snowcapped volcano, mostly hidden behind other high, but dry, peaks. The final kilometres into Putre were very steep and winding, as they traversed up through rugged hills that make Arizona´s desert mountains seem like molehills in comparison. Rounding the final bend to Putre is quite a sight; the town sits at the foot of a high volcano and its sub-peak, set amid terraced green hillsides and extending down the flattest valley in the area. It is a town of old stone buildings, tin roofs, and simple farming. There is no gas station, yet there is internet access in some hostels and one internet cafe. We arrived with a place to stay recommended by the hippy woman, the Hostal Pachamama. It was quite comfortable, with a clean room and warm showers, internet, but no heat. At 11,500´ it gets pretty cold, and Richard and Dave ended up sleeping in their beanies to keep warm. We ate dinner at a small pub and restaurant a couple blocks from the hostel, and had our first taste of Alpaca and Pisco Sours, which are the official cocktails of Chile according to our guidebook. Both were quite tasty. After dinner we went up to an abandoned hot spring, the Termas Jurasi, and soaked for awhile in a small muddy pool, while overhead a full moon shone and the sky was clear, allowing us to see the Southern Cross for the first time. It was kind of creepy, with the abandoned buildings about 4 km off of the paved highway, no lights, and no other people, but it was very relaxing.

In the morning (Wednesday), we bought gas from a guy in Putre who apparently buys it and stores it at his house, for about 800 pesos per litre, whereas we paid 620 in Arica. He brought it out in 10 litre increments to siphon from a jug, our first experience with this. He asked where we were going, and when we said that we were going into the Parque Nacional Lauca, his eyes lit up and he told us about a salt lake, the Salar de Suiree, where we could find 3 types of Flamencos (flamingos). We also learned that his parents ran the hostel and supermarcado across the street from his house. Our plan was to head out to Salar de Suiree, then head up to the small town of Parinocota, at 4400 metres elevation, where we would stay at a CONAF (Chilean Forest Service) refugio and then hike a 5096 metre extinct volcano, Vulcan Guane Guane. We made it up to the Salar de Suiree just fine, which turned out to involve about 120 kms of dirt road each way, with little in the way of traffic except for semis carrying borax from a mine at the lake (the lake is actually outside of the national park). We passed through the small town of Guillarme, asking the Carabinero (policeman) on duty if we were headed the right direction. It seems to be a lonely outpost for any government employee, miles and miles from the nearest town that has even the smallest store or social life, but at the same time, there is a serene beauty in the desolation of the Altiplano.

From Guillarme, one can see several volcanoes, the closest spewing a continual plume of smoke, but apparently it poses no threat of a deadly eruption. The highest of the surrounding mountains must be covered with snow year-round, as the first snows of winter have not yet hit the Altiplano. At the elevation of the town, somewhere around 4500 metres or so (above 14,000 feet), the winds are harsh and cold, yet life thrives, mostly in the form of small plants that look like a cross between cacti and prairie grass, and some small greenery near streams. This vegetation serves as the primary food source for Vicunas, which are the most common of the llama family that we have seen here, and some bird species. It is quite a contrast from Colorado´s high mountains, where plant life above 12,000 feet is limited largely to lichens. The vicunas look pretty much like small llamas, a bit less furry, and all tan. They scare easily but aren´t that bright, and you have to be very careful driving when they are near the road.

When we arrived at the Salar de Suiree, the first thing we saw was the Borax mining operation, where photography is not permitted. Past that, we stopped at a Conaf office and talked to the ranger, who told us about more thermal waters about 17 km past the office, and also told us where to find the flamingoes we had come to see. This is in addition to the spectacular backdrop of mountains surrounding the lake´s plateau. We decided to go on to the thermal waters, and there saw the first personal vehicle since we left the paved highway 120 km back. It was a Land Cruiser (80 series) from Bolivia, with a guide and 2 tourists picknicking but not swimming at the springs. The springs themselves are gorgeous, blue waters with the lovely smell of sulfur. Despite the 5 degree Celsius (about 41 degrees fahrenheit) temperatures, the high winds on the plateau, and our lack of towels, Dave and I decided to take the plunge. Richard slept in the car, somewhat overcome with altitude sickness. Where we entered the pool, it was a.) about a foot deep, and b.) only lukewarm, not an encouraging sign. The tour guide waved us on further into the pool, which was about 80 by 40 metres in size. While the water didn´t get any deeper than 2 feet, it got warm, really nice and warm, and it was an incredible experience. The wind took away the sulfur fumes, and we bathed in muddy bottomed pool for about half an hour. Upon exiting the pool, however, the wind was biting, and the sulfur smell wouldn´t leave our skin, but it was worth it.

Due to altitude sickness and convienience, we went back down to Putre to spend the night, this time at the Hostal Cali, owned by the gas guy´s parents. While the room was cheap and had a private baño (a first!), there were many noises during the night caused by loosehanging sheet metal that blew merrily in the wind, keeping us from sleeping well. To add to this, Dave became convinced that he and anonymous workmen were wiring the hostel incorrectly, and he couldn´t convince himself otherwise until the morning. We awoke at 630, and Richard elected to stay in Putre while Dave and I headed up to Parinocota and Guane Guane. When we arrived in Parinocota, we inquired at yet another Conaf office, with yet another friendly ranger, about Guane Guane. He told us the hike would take 3.5 hours, and wasn´t very bad. About 1 hour later, only 100 vertical meters into the 900 metre climb, Dave lay down and tried to go to sleep, so I kicked him in the gut and dragged him down the hill . He woke up when we got to the car. We had covered over 1 km distance though... It seems that altitude sickness can strike anywhere, and we were starting the hike at 14,400 feet, which is about as high as one can hike in Colorado! The views from Parinocota are stunning, though, and Guane Guane is just one of the peaks overlooking the little town; Vulcan Parinocota overshadows Guane Guane by at least 1500 metres in my estimation, and is kind of a textbook looking Andean volcano, round, snow covered, and majestically tall.

We arrived back in Putre to find Richard freshly showered, and Dave and I still smelling of sulfur, but we bought some more gas and headed back to Arica. We have gotten another room at the Hostal Venecia, this one with 2 windows on the second floor. Dave notes that, while we averaged about 9 km/litre of fuel on the way up to Putre, we averaged more than 20 km/litre on the way down. Tonight we´ll have some laundry done, maybe get some haircuts for 3 bucks, and check out a beach, which we haven´t done yet. Tomorrow, Pancho should arrive by bus (haven´t heard from him since he left the states), and we will hopefully see him in the afternoon or evening, then either saturday or sunday we will head southward and onto more adventures.

Chile Part 2, the Journey North

2007-05-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

The trip north we undertook on a Pullman bus from Santiago to Arica, a 29 hour affair. The tickets werent bad, 47.50 in US dollars for a 2000 kilometre trip on a full blown tour bus with reclining seats. since we boarded the bus at 1430, it also meant we didnt have to get a room for the night. The trip was pretty uneventful; the bus kept stopping to pick up and drop off people by the side of the road, including a guy selling turkey sandwiches and a drink for 2 dollars. They fed us only 2 sandwiches, 2 drinks, 1 packet of cookies, and 1 cup of heavily sweetened coffee as part of the bus ticket, so we got off the bus and bought some extra food twice. We watched quite a few old Jackie Chan kung fu movies in Spanish, as well as a Jean Claude van Damme movie (in english). The desert in the north is barren, with miles and miles of dry dry dirt with nothing around. In addition, the Panamerica (the highway) faces the same road construction plague as Tempe, with quite a few dirt detours that slowed progress considerably. Nonetheless, we made it to Arica just fine.

In Arica, we walked to where we thought the Residential Madrid was, but instead found our hostel, the Hostal Venecia, for 6.50 a person for a 3 bed private room. another 4 dollars bought a quarter of a rotisserie chicken and some french fries, then we wandered around the 21 de Mayo pedestrian mall for awhile, then walked down to see the ocean, and went to bed pretty early. In the morning, we woke up, rented a car at Avis in downtown Arica, then headed off towards Putre, only taking about 5 wrong turns on the way to the supermarket to buy bread, lunch, and some miscellaneous supplies, including toilet paper. For all the things Chile has going for it, a ready supply of toilet paper can only be found at the supermarket. Restaurants, bars, hostels, and even drug stores do not always have it, and sometimes you have to pay an attendant for a small portion before you enter a restroom. We have theories to account for the shortage that range from bathroom attendant unions to supermarket monopolies, but who knows.

We are now in Putre, after a highly scenic drive up the Ruta 11 towards Bolivia, and have wandered around town to figure out where to buy gas from some guys house, and will now go to find some dinner. Here at Hostal Pachamama we have met a Swiss lady who has been biking across Europe, the US, and now South America for the past 8 months, quite the journey.

CHILE!!!!!

2007-05-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Santiago de Chile at 0945 on a plane from Atlanta. The flight from Denver to Atlanta was on time, but the Atlanta to Santiago had been delayed almost 3 hours. First, apparently someone had a heart attack outside the plane. Next, a baggage cart rammed the aircraft, puncturing the fuselage (!!). After the repair was completed, the city of Atlanta shut down the main runway, and the aircrew almost had to remove our baggage so the 767 could lift off from a smaller open runway. Luckily, the city decided to let us leave with our bags. The flight was not nearly so luxurious as the flight I took last summer; there were no personal movie screens, no unlimited free booze, and the Delta flight attendants weren´t quite as friendly as the South African Airways attendants. This was coupled with the fact that our flight was full to the brink of unhappy passengers due to the delay.

Nonetheless, we arrived in Santiago on a foggy foggy morning; the only mountains we were able to see were north of the city before the plane dropped into the cloud layer. Our first action was to hop on a bus from the airport to the city after purchasing our 100 dollar entry visa and going through customs, which was a painless process. After Dave told a taxi driver we did not want his pricey 5 dollar ride into the city, we hopped on the right bus on the first try, though we attempted to get off on the wrong stop before the driver had us reboard. On the bus we met a Dutch student (Daniel) who was to meet up with his girlfriend sometime this week. We ended up finding the hostel, la Casa Roja, with Daniel, then went out to find some lunch and padlocks for the hostel lockers. Finding the hostel was entertaining, and we found out that when asking directions, if the askee doesn´t know where to point us, they point us in the direction we were already headed. Luckily, the 4th person we asked actually knew where to send us. Lunch was had at a little family cafe where the owner and her son enthusiastically served us sandwiches, hot cocoa, chocolates, freshly made apple juice, and cappucino. It was a great start to a great day.

After lunch, we decided to go find the Plaza de Armas, which the guidebook described as a very busy place. We got to what we thought was the Plaza de Armas, and it wasn´t busy, save for a few soldiers milling around and doing guard duty. We followed some people through a security checkpoint and into (at this point) an unknown Palace. It turned out to be the Palacio de Moneda, which we thought to be the palace of money. We found out later from a taxi driver that this ¨Palace of Coins¨was the presidential palace...

After the Palacio de Moneda, we found the actual Plaza de Armas and found it packed with people- everything from a mariachi band, a dixieland jazz quartet, a ¨copper man¨, a guy on some sort of mechanical horse, dancing children, comedians, and a whole heck of a lot of people milling around, eating, and generally enjoying the atmosphere. We had some churros, filled with something sweet and good, and then went into an electronics store to find a plug adapter for our cameras. The store at Plaza de Armas didn´t have one, but they gave us directions to a store at a mall across town, so we hopped on the Metro, which was cheap, about 25 cents per ride for students, and went on our way. Plug in hand, we decided not to go back to the mall, but instead back near the town center. After exiting the subway, we wandered back in the direction of our hostel, and ended up touring some art exhibits at the Universidad Catolica. Next, we saw a park across the street that ended in a walled structure at the top of a hill, and went about a quarter mile to find the entrance to it. We found out that the hill was really something of an old fortress, and after signing in, we started up the hill to tour the place. It was neat- trails and stairways all the way around the hill, with a fountain and everything. After taking in the view from up top, we headed back towards the hostel, again passing through the Plaza de Armas. At the Plaza we went into a restaurant and had some beers, some churrasco (grilled beef) sandwiches and pizza, watched some Chilean soccer, and headed back, this time actually reaching the hostel. There, we decided to go out, and, after changing into fresh clothes (none of us had showered at this point) and joining up with a Scottish guy, we hopped on a taxi on a quest to find the discoteca ¨Subteranea¨ It was kinda crazy, with 5 of us packed into a subcompact taxi. Dave sat on my lap.

At first, we wandered into a tango club, which was a bunch of people in suits. No good. We kept asking people on the street how to find Subteranea, which we had been told was a good discoteca, but we couldn´t find it. What we did find, however, was a sidestreet full of clubs featuring dinner tables and live music until they turned into discotecas later in the night. This was probably the most bizarre part of the night; we were immediately overwhelmed with club employees swarming us, offering us free entry, free drinks, ¨muchas chicas¨, strippers, drugs, and more. The funniest club employee was the guy who ran up to me yelling ¨budddyyyyy! Salsa! Es muy bueno!¨ We took a couple free drink offers, and got a couple pitchers of Cristal, seemingly the national beer, at those places (either live music or completely empty, but entertaining just the same). The strangest 2 in my opinion were a.) the Bedrock Bar, complete with fake stonework and flinstones paintings on the walls, and b.) the name unknown discoteca which had nooooobody inside, but had loud music and 2 levels. We also had a pitcher at a place playing live music that included a couple songs in english, but wasn´t enough to keep us there. The last place in that club grouping we stayed at for a bit and a couple tequila shots out of the bar´s only shot glass- the bartenders called us loco for taking the shots, i guess it´s not really big down here, more cocktails and stuff on the rocks. We danced for a bit, Daniel making a stir in the beginning when he was the only one in the club dancing, but the floor filled up fast, within 10 minutes of our arrival. It was here that we lost Donald the Scottish guy, in the morning he said that 2 girls had taken him home and introduced him to their mother.

After leaving the first row of clubs, we (now 4), continued our quest for Subteranea, Dave and Daniel considerably impaired, and myself and Richard in high spirits as well. Probably the third person/group that we asked was a group of 3 girls from Santiago who agreed to take us there. When we got to Subteranea, finally, we elected not to go, due to language issues Dave thought they didn´t serve drinks and I thought they were charging us to go in, and the girls didn´t think it was that great. So they took us to a salsa club down the street, which, ironically was the club that the guy yelling ¨hey buddyyyy¨! worked at, and he recognized me, berating me for not coming sooner, but alas...We stayed there for over an hour, leaving at around 330 and saying goodbye to the girls, and ending our first day in Chile. We woke up around 1030, had breakfast, and got on a 1430 bus to Arica, arriving here at about 1800 hours tonight. So far we´ve walked to our hostel, gone to the main pedestrian mall, the 21 de Mayo, ate pollo at the rotisserie capital of Chile, and visited an internet spot. More to come, tomorrow we head for the Altiplano in a rental car.

2006-06-13T01:25:00.000-07:00

and finally, the Cape Town Panorama from Table Mountain

2006-06-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

this was as close as i dared to venture to the store entrance

2006-06-13T01:23:00.001-07:00

this is about as far in as i went

2006-06-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

turquoise waters at the Cape of Good Hope

2006-06-13T01:22:00.000-07:00

at Cape Point

2006-06-13T01:18:00.001-07:00

the painted look again at Camp's Bay

2006-06-13T01:18:00.000-07:00

hangin with Bishop Desmond Tutu

2006-06-13T01:17:00.000-07:00

down by the waterfront in Cape Town

2006-06-13T01:16:00.000-07:00

looking off the edge of the world...if only i had a coke bottle to throw. (if you don't know what i mean, go watch "the gods must be crazy")

2006-06-13T01:14:00.000-07:00

Bernice, our wonderful host in Stellenbosch, with Dustin and Katie

2006-06-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

FJ45 at U Stellenbosch

2006-06-13T01:12:00.001-07:00

at the US! (University of Stellenbosch)

2006-06-13T01:12:00.000-07:00

the moon rising over the indian ocean at sunset

2006-06-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic

2006-06-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

just about as far south as you can go on land- Cape Point at the Cape of Good Hope

2006-06-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

Camp's Bay looks like a painted background in the sunlight

2006-06-13T00:55:00.000-07:00

awww I want a dog

2006-06-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

our hired Citigolf. like a 1980's VW but built in 2005, it had no radio and no room. The most high tech part of it was the beeping sound it made when the headlights were left on after you turn it off. the name "citigolf" sounds suspiciously like "shittygolf." hmmmm.

2006-06-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

next time i'll go up this route

2006-06-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

clouds move through the lower mountains

2006-06-13T00:45:00.001-07:00

the cable car ride was pretty exhausting

2006-06-13T00:45:00.000-07:00

loooking out over cape town from Tafelberg

2006-06-13T00:35:00.000-07:00

At Table Mtn, Cape Town!

2006-06-07T06:51:00.002-07:00

work day 2- into the gold mine

2006-06-07T06:51:00.001-07:00

an african sunset

2006-06-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

work, day 1...the cement plant

2006-06-07T06:50:00.000-07:00

after the lion farm, dustin takes up work as a small cat tamer

2006-06-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

behold, the elusive white lion! (seriously, they are rare)

2006-06-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

more land cruiser!

2006-06-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

they love their chicken

2006-06-07T06:46:00.001-07:00

more lions

2006-06-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

the lion farmer might be insane

2006-06-07T06:45:00.001-07:00

when lions attack!

2006-06-07T06:45:00.000-07:00

cute

2006-06-07T06:44:00.000-07:00

awwww...wook at da widdle wion

2006-06-07T06:40:00.001-07:00

look! it's fergie! and kaiser the bodyguard!

2006-06-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

getting kicked out of part of the palace

2006-06-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

real zebra chairs!

2006-06-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

makin' the palace classy

2006-06-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

look! a rhino!

2006-06-07T06:36:00.000-07:00

ahhhh! elephants!

2006-06-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

heading out to fight a veldtfire in mafikeng

2006-06-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

on our way to fight the veldt fire across the street from dustin's house

2006-06-07T06:06:00.001-07:00

before going swimming at the palace pool

2006-06-07T06:06:00.000-07:00

the High Tea. unlimited food and tea!

2006-06-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

at the Lost City Palace on the King's Tower

2006-06-07T06:03:00.000-07:00

giraffes look pretty funny when they run, sorta a bobbing/tipping over appearance

2006-06-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

chillin with the elephants in Pilansberg

2006-06-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

the wildest game of all...the elusive toyota land cruiser

2006-06-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

a taste of africa...testing the office connection at lunch

South Africa!!! Post 2

2006-05-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

Day 4 Continued:

Forgot to mention the grass fire on day 3, right before we left for Pilansberg. The winter grass is really dry, and was burning just across the road from the Tessendorfs’ house. We saw a few people beating it out with branches, and figured we’d help too, so Dustin and I grabbed shovels and went after the fire. I couldn’t believe how many people just drove by without even slowing down! It seems that these grass fires are really common and I’ve seen at least one every day in and around Mafikeng. The grass burns so quickly that the trees and bushes don’t even have time to light on fire, and it’s easy to beat the fire out. Ecologically it’s a good thing for the grass to burn, but the smell of burning wood permeates the Mafikeng air much of the time. This is exacerbated by the village fires at night, used for heating. You can see the flames driving by the villages at night. Singing and shouting also comes across the veldt at nights- probably from the shabeens, which are the little village bars.

Anyways, back to day 4 and the Lost City Palace at Sun City…

After the game drive, we headed over to Sun City, a 5 star resort about 20 kilometers from the chalet we stayed at the night before. We had reservations for High Tea at 3:00. but got there around 11, so we had some time to kill. With a bizarre combination of papers and phoning ahead, we didn’t have to pay the R65/person entry fee to the resort, and got valet parking at the Palace Hotel. To get into the hotel 4 hours early, we went from employee to employee and finally got in. This also gave us free reign over the tower, the elephant statues, etc. etc. The view from the top of the tower is amazing- the whole resort is designed to look like a bunch of crumbling ruins, save for the actual Palace hotel, which is stunning. The floors are nearly exclusively marble, even in the bathrooms. Mosaics cover the ceilings and walls, and an incredible chandelier and statues adorn the tea room. To top it off, the Black Eyed Peas were there, and we saw Fergie and some other group members in the lobby. We also snuck into the swimming pool, and had some drinks at the bar by the pool. The weather is really nice in SA during the day, even for winter. It’s been right around 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit with blue skies and sun almost every day!! Basking in the sun at a 5 star resort is, to put it mildly, relaxing. After the pool, we went to High Tea, a formalized Brit-style tea complete with those nasty little cucumber sandwiches but also with a ton of dessert stuff. It was a pretty good ending to the day, then we drove back to Mafikeng, about 2 and a half hours to get back.

Driving home, one of the things that stood out was the sunset. Sunsets here are simply amazing. I’m used to Arizona sunsets, and Colorado sunsets, both of which are beautiful, but the sun setting across the African horizon is something else. The orange glow spreads almost all the way around the horizon- only the far eastern sky remains blue at sunset. Seeing the sunsets here each day has been an absolute treat, and seeing the stars that come out afterwards has been wonderful as well.

Day 5:

Sunday was sort of a lazy day. After church we lazed around a bit, then sort of played 3 holes of golf, and by “sort of played” I mean we kept hitting into the grass until we had no more golf balls to play with. We went back for a braii (bbq) and I met my boss here in SA, pretty low key really.

Day 6:

Day 6 was another day of touring fun- we went to a lion farm! It was amazing seeing so many lions of so many different sizes- and we got to bottlefeed an 8 week old cub. She was absolutely adorable, and would stand at our feet “roaring” in this scratchy little voice crying out for more milk. We could only touch the older cubs through the fence since they tend to scratch people rather badly, but they’ll suckle on your fingers trying to get milk. They were really cute, and the paws are massive! It’s easy to see why one bat of a lion’s paw can kill a man. And these weren’t the full grown lions either. After the cubs, we took a small break to feed some monkeys peanuts, then went to see the (in my best crocodile hunter voice): “the elusive white lion.” The lion breeder we went to see had about 7 female lions (regular brown lions), and one male white lion in a fenced off habitat. To get the lionesses and lion near the fence, he threw their lunch of dead whole chickens into the pen right next to the fence. It was really cool to see the lions eat. Kinda gross too, since they eat everything involved with the chicken, but still really cool. The breeder also got one of the females to stand up leaning on the fence, and she stretched out to about 3 meters (9 ft) high! The white lion, to this point, had stayed back in the trees eating the furthest thrown chickens, but Dustin prompted him out by rattling the fence. He charged out, and despite the fence, I was scared. I cant imagine seeing one charge you in the open- even the low level growl is terrifying, and when they roar it’s louder than a jackhammer on concrete. That combined with the size, speed, and power, and there’s no hope for survival. Plus, we were told after the lion charged, if the lion had been a wild lion, he would have gone right through the chainlink fence. Only the fact that this lion had grown up in captivity kept him inside the fence. Kinda discomforting in a way, but still really cool to see these amazing animals up close.

After the lion farm, Dustin and Katie went off to the Orphan Intervention Center, and I went off to meet with my boss to discuss work and all that good stuff. The only exciting part of Monday was finding out how much I’ll be making: R150 per day. In American dollars, that translates to roughly $23.80 for 10 hours of work, since I’ll be working from 7 to 5 most days. I suppose that’s what happens when one takes a working vacation, haha. Coming in, I didn’t know if I was getting paid at all, so I’m happy with it. Plus, it should at least cover my biltong addiction.

For dinner, we ate at Wimpy- the diner/burger sorta joint named after the Popeye cartoon character who ate lots of hamburgers. Sort of strange, back home we eat manly burgers, down here we eat Wimpy burgers. I had a weird burger, with chicken, beef, and hash browns, which turned out to be pretty good. At Wimpy we ran into one of Dustin’s friend’s dad, an Iranian guy who, we’re told, is quite well connected in the Mafikeng area. He also has an account at the Wimpy, and practically runs his office out of there. After hearing that Katie and I were American, he came back to our table, with a dubious looking guy in tow. We were introduced to the other man with a “Look here, real Americans! Come on, take a picture, real Americans!” Turns out the guy with him was the lead reporter for the local newspaper. Sure enough, our picture was taken, and we might just end up in this week’s paper.

Day 7

Today I officially started work. I went out to the Holcim cement plant in Lichtenberg to go to the site of a new oil spill containment reservoir. The whole process involved a lot of waiting, waiting for the workers to meet us there, waiting for our entry paperwork to the plant to be completed, waiting for medical screening for the workers, waiting for a Holcim employee to lead us to the job site, and waiting on the slow pace of work here. It’s a huge change from home; where things seem to go a lot smoother. It should be interesting to see how the month plays out. Tomorrow I’m going out to an open pit gold mine, around 250 meters deep, with orders to observe what’s going on for a structure site visit. That should be really cool.

South Africa Ho!

2006-05-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

So....I'm here in SA with Dustin and Katie, 2 friends from ASU, and we're living with Dustin's family in Mafikeng, SA (if you want to know where it is try google maps or something). all of us have update abilities on here, and here's some of the first 4 days...

South Africa- Day 1

We arrived in Johannesburg around 7 in the morning, SA time. It was quite a shock, having left Dulles at 930 the previous morning, and having been stuck inside the 747 for that amount of time. Jet lag wasn’t as big a deal as I was expecting, by the end of day 2 (today), I feel almost completely normal. The flight was pretty decent- Dustin and I got exit row seats, which meant we could stretch out well. We still got up and walked around the cabin a few times during each leg, since we stopped halfway through in Dakar, Senegal to refuel. I got some shuteye during the flight, so i was able to wake up when we landed.

The Johannesburg airport was interesting- lots of construction going on and around 0 degrees Celsius. We got out of the plane and took a bus around what seemed like most of the airport, then got in line for customs and baggage, which went without a hitch. Dustin’s dad was there to pick us up within 10 minutes of our passing through customs, so off we went. One of the first things I noticed was the number of BMWs and Mercedes’ in the airport parking lot. It’s crazy. The drivers here are also a bit crazy. The parking garage was small, with lots of blind corners, and I think I nearly died a few times walking to the Tessendorfs’ car. On top of the nutty drivers, a bunch of cars just parked wherever there was “space,” whether that space was in the drive lane or not.

The drive to Mafikeng was pretty nice. Seeing Johannesburg was interesting- though we couldn’t see much of the town proper due to smog. Apparently the smog problem is largely due to the squatter colonies that burn wood, trash, etc., often consuming the shanty houses in the process. It was definitely a far cry from home to see the squatter colonies sitting next to a modern highway. We stopped for breakfast at an upscale mall in Joburg, where Katie got an apple juice that looked like a pureed apple that they chopped up there in the café. That was really tasty! After breakfast, we loaded up in the car again and headed out of town. Parts of the drive could have been mistaken for the Colorado Springs to Denver drive (sans mountains), with the rolling, grassy plains spotted with trees. As we approached Mafikeng, though, the land flattened out, looking more like Kansas as we drove through the main corn growing area of SA. We stopped at a gas station/shoppe for some drinks and snacks, getting some juices and wine gummies, then finished up the drive.

Mafikeng is something else. Coming into town a bit messed up from jet lag, I don’t think I fully appreciated it, but its much different than anything I’ve experienced in the States. Crazy drivers are everywhere, especially the taxis, which cram 16 grown men into a vehicle smaller than most american minivans. The taxi drivers don’t really care about the other cars on the road, and the taxis have the dents to prove it.

Our first errand that Mrs. Tessendorf sent us on was to get pasta and parmesan cheese from the grocery store. It took awhile, mainly because we couldn’t find the cheese, and it took 3 store employees to help us find it, right next to the pasta we already got. The people in the store were friendly about it. We also picked up some Biltong, raw meat that is dried out (and spiced somehow), then cut into bite size chunks with a big deli slicer. Biltong is amazing, a simply sublime creation of the South African butchers. You can eat it like any other snack, except it’s not potato chips, it’s good, red meat. Soooooo much better than any beef jerky I’ve ever tasted, and easier to chew than most. You can also order it in various stages of drying, so you can get it as soft or hard as you so desire. I think I could live off the stuff.

After running to the store, eating, and watching a LOST rerun while halfway asleep (though the US was watching the season 2 finale, SA has just started season 2, we headed to bed. Jet lag did not escape me entirely; sometime early in the morning I needed to get up and find the bathroom…but I couldn’t. I spent five minutes blundering around the bedroom, opening all 3 doors of the closet, each time thinking it was the bathroom door, trying desperately to find the lamp on my nightstand (which I had knocked off in my initial attempt to navigate, but hadn’t realized it), tripping over my luggage on the floor, and trying again and again to find the door (which is right across from the closet). Finally, after falling over my luggage again, I dug through it to find my headlamp, and, feeling waaaaaay disoriented, made my way there and back.

DAY 2

On day two I relearned driving, British style. Driving on the left side of the road and right side of the car is weird. It’s ok once you’re going straight, but turning is another story, you have to fight the urge to turn to the right side of the road. Shifting is also messed up, and I kept trying to shift the door with my right hand, which didn’t work all that well. The good news is that I survived driving around some of Mafikeng, and we were able to do some sightseeing and get more Biltong.

One of the first stops was the international school, where Dustin went for most of the SA equivalent of high school. It makes Palmer seem like a dump, not that Palmer’s facilities were that great to begin with. Cricket fields, field hockey fields, a rugby pitch, squash courts, boarding houses, tennis courts, teacher housing, a first rate theater, all really nice.

We also visited the Helping Hands Orphan Intervention Center and the Top Village office, as well as Rev. Tessendorf’s church. Top Village, which is pretty much third world, is across the street from the Intervention Center, which is in a first world neighborhood. The contrast is stark; from tin shacks to modern houses. The AIDS crisis in these villages is astounding; 1 in 5 people in SA have AIDS; in the villages its closer to 1 in 3. AIDS is basically orphaning an entire generation of children, which, combined with the current level of poverty in the villages, is a problem of almost unimaginable scale. The numbers just don’t do the issue justice on paper.

Dustin and I finished the day with a run right around 11:30. The stars here are amazing; not only can you see the constellations of the southern hemisphere that we don’t see at home, with so few lights in the area, the Milky Way is really bright, and you can see the stars with incredible clarity. That being said, I only know one constellation, the Southern Cross.
DAY 3: downtown Mafikeng drivethrough, festive appearance,

Today we drove through downtown Mafikeng, which was really cool. The downtown area is like one big street market, with crazy drivers and crazy pedestrians. Hopefully we’ll get to spend a little time there; we were technically running an errand and detoured through there. We also got some more biltong, this time from the Riviera Butcher in a neighborhood in Mafikeng. Very good stuff. Since we woke up really late, we didn’t do much else, had some drinks out on the porch, hit a few golf balls onto the 17th green. After dinner, we drove northwest to the Pilansberg game reserve to stay in a 3 star resort chalet for the night, in order to take a game drive in the morning. There we had a buffet dinner complete with kudu, a large elk-like animal, a few glasses of wine, and some beer. Alcohol is cheap here, with 2 beers costing R20, or about 3 dollars at the resort restaurant.

DAY 4:

We woke up at 530 in the morning to a knocking at the chalet door. I went down the stairs from the bedroom, and answered the door in my boxers. Sort of answered the door, since I didn’t know where the key was, and it had a double sided lock. The guy yelled “it’s security” through the window, and said to call the front desk, then he disappeared back into the darkness. It turned out that the front desk hadn’t been able to get hold of us for our wake up call, and sent the security guy, but didn’t tell him why he was sent. Dustin was in the shower, so I lay back down for a couple minutes, and then he knocked on the door again. I got back up, stumbled down the stairs, and, half-naked, answered the door again. Since I still didn’t know where the key was, the security guy used his and opened the door. He had waited in the darkness just out of sight until we told him what was going on. Definitely a strange way to wake up.

The game drive in Pilansberg Game Reserve started at 630. It was cold. Very cold. According to Katie, the Afrikaans driver had a sexy accent. Katie was also “just a little” jealous of the british tourist girls who said they were cold so they could sit by the driver. We drove out into the park looking for animals, and didn’t really see anything until about 7 or so. Darn South Africans, starting things early in the morning…Anyway, we saw the following creatures of the “Dark Continent”: wildebeests (lots of them!), impalas, steenbok, rhinos (even a baby), kudu, the upper 30% of a hippo head, a large herd of elephants crossing the road (with an angry elephant mama), and a beautiful giraffe and her baby that also crossed in front of the truck. No zebras, no lions, no cheetahs, but a great all-around experience for the foreigners from across the pond!