castles made of sand…

The recap: Among other things I´ve learned on this trip, I now know that I am not much at budget travel, and that a month on the road is long enough for me. However, I love most of South America, so I´ve started the list of places that I´ll need to return for: Patagonia, the Lakes District, and Igúazu Falls…

Thats my plan for tomorrow, before I head off into the desert… I´m at a new hostel  in Arica, closer to downtown so that I can wander the streets easier. It´s amazing how different Chile is from Peru–divers here restrain themselves from using their horn at every intersection, and there are all different kinds of cars (even SUV´s) –in Arequipa there were only Daewoo Tico´s. 

I also feel like I blend in a bit more here, in part because Chilenos have lighter skin, but also because they seem to have more to do than harras the girl walking alone on the street. But it is much more expensive, almost twice the price of Peru for food and accomodations. While I´ve been walking around on my own, I keep thinking about the changes Chile has gone through in the last 30 years, from brutal military dictatorship to having a democratically elected female president. Somehow I doubt that seeing Hillary in office will be the same sort of progress…

yes, I am two days late, but I felt the need to do something in recognition of the fact that Chile is one of the least environmentally sustainable countries in the world. They are destroying many of their natural resources in the name of economic progress, according to Lonley Planet… anyway, here’s some of the wildlife I saw on today’s visit to Parque Nacional Lauca. It was just me and the tour guide, but I finally got in a bit of hiking and the weather was great.

not included here are the guanaco (llama relative), condor (too hard to photograph) or the tourists (only one other) that I saw today…also a confession: while I did indeed see pink flamingos, vicuñas and alpacas, someone else with a better camera had left their photos on this desktop, so I borrowed them… But the one of Volcano Parinacota was all me!

And Alpacas. And Vicuñas. They´re just so cute & fluffy!

  

     

but apparently BK likes the way they taste too…