castles made of sand…

  When I was wandering around here for 6 hours on Monday, I kept thinking about those scenes from There´s Something About Mary where they´re wondering who goes to Santiago twice in one year… a couple of the winery supervisor-types that I met at my last hotel come here twice a year for the harvest, and I´m now on my second trip into Santiago within one week. I´m staying here one more night before heading to Mendoza, Argentina, and hopefully the folks at the hostel won´t be going too crazy tonight — last night was a BBQ that started around 9:30 and people were still drinking cheap red wine with coca-cola when I went to bed at 2am…

Anyway, I managed not to get lost in the city today, although that could have been because I was with a group of people andone of the hostel employees as our guide. After visiting Salvador Allende´s gravesite in a cemetery that is more like a historic village than a graveyard

we ended up near the Presidential Palace, La Mondea (it´s been restored since the attack of of September 11, 1973). At this point I had managed to ditch the rest of the group (including the Italian guy who never shut up) and spent a few hours in the world´s best museum of pre-columbian art. There was an amazing temporary exhibit on hats of indigenous peoples of Central and South America, and the permanent collection was beautifully displayed and interpreted. I´ve also purchased a pendant of Lapis Lazuli, since Chile and Afghanistan are the only countries where it is found, and am ready for another border crossing tomorrow…

here are two things I have learned in the last two days:

1. A large percentage of industrialized nations celebrate Labor Day on May 1. Even though the entire movement seems to stem from various events in the United States during the late 1880´s, our government (in all of its segregational wisdom) celebrates the holiday with various retail sales in September, as opposed the the closing of all retail stores which happened here in Latin America yesterday. So I went hiking (with a locquacious Frenchman, who I split the taxi fare with in order to avoid getting up at 6am for a bus) and saw very little wildlife, aside from a shiny bug and a cow that came charging down the trail looking for the rest of his herd. I did get some good photos though, of the fabulous fall colors here in this part of the world.
2. An aptitude for geography and a sense of direction were not amongst the genetic traits passed down to my from my father. I had an idea of this, from Geography being my worst category in a Jeopardy! computer game, but it has become quite evident in the past week… anytime I set out more than 5 blocks from my hostel, I seem to loose the ability to navigate my way around a town without a map. Until today, I hadn´t gone more than a few blocks out of my way in my misdirectionedness… but at least I was riding a bike when I spaced on a couple different turns and ended up seeing about 5km more of Chilean wine country than I really wanted to see. Yet another reason why I should probably find a travel partner next time. Here´s a fun photo of the geyser fields, now that I´ve uploaded my photos — the owner of this hotel is quite the entrepreneur and has a very extensive website. He´s even going to be opening a museum in Putre next year…

On the likely chance that my previous attempt at posting en español was incoherent, I just spent 24 hours on a bus from the middle of the atacama desert, to the middle of Chile. For us norteamericanos who are the last in the world to convert to the metric system, thats a bus ride of about 1,000 miles. But since the bus wasnt that crowded, and they didn´t play horrible movies at top volume, it really wasnt that bad of a ride. (Plus I saved $15 on a place to stay for the night.) I wish I could say the top half of Chile was more interesting, but mostly all I saw was the desert. I spent 2 days and 2 nights in San Pedro de Atacama, visiting the Tatio Geyser field at 6 in the morning, and the Valle de Luna for sunset. I also realized exactly how addicted I am to email and high-speed internet access when I was forced to go three days with only the slowest, most disfunctional internet connection ever.

I´m in Santiago now –only for a six hours– and then I head down to Talca to stay at a place reccomended to me by an Australian couple we met in Arequipa. I´m hoping to do a bit of hiking and wine tasting before I head over to Argentina at the weekend. Santiago is great and reminds me a bit of Boston, but it would be nicer to have someone to explore the town with. Right now I just want to stock up on books in English and catch up on the news… I have to say that I´m a bit happy to not be in the bay area right now, as the melting freeways would have had a direct impact on my commute to CCA.

Hasta luego por ahora!

anoche, fui a la San Pedro de Atacama con TurBus, por 12 horas desde Arica. A las 4:00 de la mañana, todos los pasajeros habido salir el autobus para un inspeción de aduanas. No me gusta, quise dormir.  En domingo, voy a Santiago de Chile a las 9:00 de la mañana, pero no llegaré a las 8:00 en la mañana de lunes. Espero hay no necitamos parrer por las aduanas en la noche otra ves.