If I could only recommend one single activity from this trip, the tour I took through the south of Bolivia would be high on the list. We left San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile, in a bus and headed for the Bolivian border. After clearing immigration we were split into groups of 6 and assigned to a guide and his Toyota Land Cruiser (so many Land Cruisers) for the remainder of the tour. My group had two Brazilian women, two American women who were traveling around together after graduating, a German guy, and me, and our guide was Abner, a 22 year old who’s been guiding this tour for 3 years now (!). During the first day’s drive we got up over 15,000 feet before slowly making our way to lower elevation. Luckily I didn’t have too much of a problem with the elevation, just a bit of a headache. Our first stops were at two lakes/lagoons, the white one (because of it’s borax deposits) and the green one (because of its mix of copper and arsenic, if I remember correctly). The lakes were pretty, framed by stark desert and massive volcanos, and the colors were fairly accurate. Most of the driving on this first day was through wide open expanses of desert with mountains on either side and it was pretty damn impressive. After the lakes we went to Dali’s desert, where volcanic rocks stick up haphazardly from a huge expanse of sand. The pictures don’t do it justice but you really could see where the name came from. Next we pushed on to some hot springs, which were a welcome sight since the early morning desert at elevation is really damn cold. To be fair, by this time the sun had been out for a while and it was pretty hot. After the hot springs we saw some very cool geysers, with huge pits full of boiling grey mud. The last stop was the Laguna Colorada, with it’s red and white patches, and then we stayed at a hostel right nearby.

Bolivian immigration

White lake

The algae was beautiful

Green lake. Apparently it gets greener later in the day when the wind mixes the chemicals more

Dali Desert

Hot spring algae

Sulfury…

Laguna colorada

So much flamingo (I think) poop

I was there!

Baby flamingo! Flamingos get their pink color from the keratin in their food, they’re born grey and turn pink over time as they eat

It’s a pretty popular tour….

Desert sunsets are…. pretty nice

Day 2 saw us up and at ’em to drive through the Siloli Desert before getting to our first main attraction, the rock tree. It’s a volcanic rock formation that really does sort of look like a tree, and it sits next to a ton of other huge volcanic rock formations in the middle of the desert, which makes for a striking scene. After that we saw another couple of lagoons, had lunch next to a particularly beautiful one, and then set up at a viewpoint to watch a semi-active volcano slowly puff smoke into the sky.

The rock tree

Casual smoking volcano

Day 3 was the payoff! We got up at the crack of dawn (kidding, before dawn) and headed off at 5 to drive across the salt flat to Isla Incahuasi (or Isla del Pescado), a cactus-covered island out in the middle of a perfectly flat ocean of salt. The whole drive was in the dark and Abner turned off all of the lights a couple of times, since the route is flat as a pancake, which gave us the surreal experience of speeding along at 40 or 50 miles an hour in complete darkness. Once we got to the island we went for a short hike up to the top where we were treated to an absolutely stunning sunrise, all different shades of pink, orange, and yellow breaking over the mountains in the distance and slowly lighting up the white plain. We then headed down for breakfast before driving way out into the middle of the flats to admire the view and take ridiculous perspective pictures. After that we headed to Uyuni, where the last attraction was the train graveyard, bunches of rusty old locomotives lined up against a desert backdrop.

Look at all those cacti!

Hexagons everywhere

The texture was fascinating

I was there!

He’s a monster!

He’s dead Jim

Perspective photos are funny from the wrong perspective…

This whole tour was one of the best things I’ve done all trip. I got lucky with the group and the guide but there is no way to go wrong with the south of Bolivia – it is truly one of the most beautiful and unique places I’ve ever seen. Mountains, desert, lakes, and salt together all make up an unbelievable set of scenery. I very, very highly recommend it to anyone who’s thinking of visiting.

After the tour the two American women (Jess and Maria), the German guy (Anatole), and I all decided we’d head to La Paz together on an overnight bus that same day. We spent the afternoon strolling around Uyuni, catching up on our internet needs, and grabbing some cheap food, and then headed to the bus station. I’ll write a separate post about La Paz but the short version is that I really enjoyed it.

We’ll fast forward quickly now for a present day update. It’s been an action packed couple of weeks so I’m woefully behind on the blog. After Uyuni I spent almost a week in La Paz, which included biking down the death road and then climbing a veeeeeeeery nearly 20,000 ft tall mountain. I then headed to Copacabana, on the shore of Lake Titicaca, to see the lake and tour the Island of the Sun, where the Incas believed the sun came from. Last night I took an overnight bus to Cusco, and tomorrow morning at 5am I’ll be starting the 5 day Salkantay trek (with porters and cooks, don’t worry about me straining myself…) up to Machu Picchu. I’ve heard great things about the Salkantay (it’s apparently like the Inca Trail but costs a third as much and you can reserve the day before instead of 6 months in advance) so I’m really excited to do it, and I’ll be back to give you a rundown of it, and catch up on previous adventures, in 5 days. After that I’ve got one night here in Cusco and then back to back 22 and 7.5 hour bus rides to get to Huancayo, where I’ll start volunteer teaching English on May 2nd. So, not a lot of sleep in the forecast for the next week, but I’m very excited to get to Huancayo, settle in, get to know some people, and hopefully help some kids learn English. I’ll keep you posted!

Hey y’all, I’m back after touring around the south of Bolivia with a real rundown of my stay in San Pedro de Atacama. I’m going to write a separate post about my tour to the Uyuni salt flat so this is just about the things I did in San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a small, touristy town out in the middle of the Chilean part of the Atacama desert which serves as a jumping off point for all kinds of tours around the area. There are about a million agencies all offering the same tours, so choosing is a bit daunting. Luckily my friend Eugene, whom I met down in El Chalten earlier in the trip, put me in contact with his friend Camila, who’s been working at a hotel in San Pedro for about 3 weeks. Camila helped me pick a tour operator and gave me some advice on which tours to do. On my first day I slept in (I had just come off of back to back 12 and 13 hour bus rides, and arrived around 1am) and then met up with Camila to stroll around and book some tours. In the afternoon I went to the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), which gets its name from the stark landscape’s resemblance to our favorite natural satellite. It was a cool tour, and it ended up high with huge, beautiful views and a fantastic sunset.

Moon!

This was a day for selfies

The texture of the rocks close up was fascinating

More selfies

Sand!

Mud!

Mountains!

It was a pretty big drop

Sunset was nice

Even more selfies!

The next day I got up at 6 for a tour to the Lagunas Altiplanicas. The altiplano is a high plateau that slopes up to the Andes, so these are lakes (I’m not really sure why they use the word laguna instead of lago, it’s a subject of some debate with the people I’ve been on the tours with…) in the middle of the desert, at altitude. They’re examples of the interesting patches of water and vegetation that you can find even in the Atacama, the driest desert in the world. After the lakes we went down to the Atacama salt flat, where we saw a few flamingos and other birds.

Sunrise from the van

These yellow bush things were everywhere

The Atacama salt flat has a crazy texture because of erosion

Water!

….and beautiful colors

Flamingo!

I was there…

That night I caught this beautiful sunset:

The day after the lagunas was even earlier – 4am wakeup to hop in a van and head to the Tatio Geysers. During the day in the Atacama it was very hot and very sunny, but at night and in the early morning, especially in the higher areas, it is absolutely freezing cold. The geysers are at around 14,000 feet, so at 6am it’s about 20 degrees. We had breakfast in the darkness and waited for the sun to rise, and as the day lit up we started to see a huge field of geysers. Chile has an incredible amount of volcanic activity, which gives the area its beautiful mountains but also creates geysers and volcanic rock piles in the middle of the desert. This field of geysers had all kinds, shapes, and sizes, and walking around was a treat. After that we went to a hot spring where Joachim, a nice Belgian guy, and I were the only ones to muster up the courage to hop in since it was still pretty cold. It turned out the water wasn’t actually that warm so the rest of the group were really the smart ones. Our next stop was a beautiful wetland (in the middle of the desert!) where we saw several different kinds of birds, and we topped off the trip in a small village where I got to try a llama shish kabob (delicious) and play with Valdivia, their adorable puppy.

It was pretty damn cold

Whole lot of geysers

Wetlands in the desert!

Valdi!

So cute!

That night Camila and I went on an astronomical tour. Northern Chile is famous for its clear skies and some hugely disproportionate number of the world’s really serious telescopes/astronomical investigation facilities are there, so astronomical tours are a popular activity in San Pedro. Our tour was great – we started just standing outside and getting a lesson on all the things you can see with the naked eye, the movement of the moon and stars, the difference in what you can see at different latitudes, etc… Our host had an unbelievably powerful laser so she could point out everything she was talking about and trace the constellations in the sky. After a while we went over to their set of 10 telescopes and got to look at all different things – the moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, clusters of stars in the Milky Way, nebulae (my favorite – they’re so cool!), and an entire galaxy far, far away. We ended the night with hot chocolate or tea and a Q&A with Alain, the French astronomer who founded the facility 15 years ago. The first question was something about the big bang or the history of astronomy which got Alain talking for about 45 minutes, so we only ended up having one question in the session, but it was interesting and Alain was quite a character.

You could see the whoooooole Milky Way! But my phone can’t capture it…

Moon!

All in all San Pedro was…. good. I can’t say that I was swept off my feet, but I think that was in part because I had such high expectations for the place – the Atacama desert has fascinated me since I first heard about it, and I had always pictured the most extreme part, an endless stretch of hostile wasteland. It is, in fact, an incredibly varied area, with beautiful wetlands mixed in amongst towering volcanos and huge sand dunes. It was a great few days, and I’m glad I visited. But, just to make sure we end on a cliffhanger, the tour through the south of Bolivia really did sweep me off my feet. So tune in next time!

I had grand plans to spend part of today’s lazy afternoon writing a great blog post, talking about all the tours I went on from San Pedro de Atacama with stunning pictures and everything. Unfortunately lazy was really the defining attribute of the afternoon and now I’m sitting here at midnight thirty with my computer packed up, ready to pass out. Tomorrow I’m getting up early to start a 3 day tour up to Uyuni, in Bolivia, home to the biggest salt flat in the world. We’ll be stopping at a ton of places along the way and capping the trip by going to the salt flat, so I’m excited.

Here in San Pedro I went on a few different tours – moon Valley, lakes that are on this high plateau, geysers, and a very cool astronomical one. I’ll write up a full rundown with pictures (internet permitting) on the 17th when I get to Uyuni.

I’ve also been working on nailing down a volunteer program and it looks like I’ll be teaching English in Huancayo, Peru, for the month of May. I still need to confirm everything but as of now that’s the plan, which I’m excited about. The idea is to spend the two weeks after Uyuni on a lightning tour of La Paz, Lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu, Lima, and Cusco – we’ll see if I can work that all out. I’ll keep y’all posted!

One of the things I’ve confirmed on this trip is that I love the aesthetic of hills rising up in cities, covered in uneven piles of houses, offering a beautiful upward view from below and an even better outward view from on top. Having the houses pop with a full rainbow of bright colors, distributed randomly across the whole spectrum, just enhances the experience, and so it was fairly predictable that I would love Valparaiso. Valparaiso is tucked in between the aforementioned hills, or cerros, and the ocean, and rose to prominence as one of the most important pacific ports in…. some previous century. Maybe the 19th? Whatever… The point is, Valparaiso had a massive boom as one of the wealthiest and most important cities in South America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (I’m pretty sure) before its glory faded with the opening of the Panama canal and the accompanying redirection of shipping traffic (fact-check anyone? I’m writing this with no internet connection and I’m damn sure not gonna go back and research it later. I feel like I maybe read this story of Valparaiso’s development at its art museum? Either way, it sounds plausible). Then, in the past, I don’t know, 20 or 30 years perhaps, Valparaiso has seen a renaissance as a bohemian haven and artist’s gathering place. It still has a massive (and apparently somewhat dangerous) port, but the hills that rise up away from the ocean are blanketed in brightly colored houses and the entire city is covered in graffiti and beautiful murals, easily the most street art I’ve ever seen, and tourism has become a huge industry.

I knew I was going to like Valparaiso before stepping off the bus, having been captivated by the hills and ocean while the bus rolled through town into the station. I had sent a couple of couchsurfing messages the night before hoping to find a place to stay but didn’t get any replies (I know, way to plan ahead Phil, a whole 12 hours in advance) and so I whipped out my phone at the bus station to find somewhere to stay. Picking hostels from online listings is pretty much a crap shoot, just like anything else on the internet that you evaluate based on reviews: you can nail down the location, and then everything beyond that is to be interpreted based on people’s personal neuroses and the randomness of their experiences. This time, though, I got some great luck. My hostel was up on one of the trendy touristy hills, Cerro Alegre, near lots of delicious restaurants, an all-day breakfast place (desayuno integral: fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee or tea of your choice, delicious multigrain bread with butter and incredible homemade apricot jam, and then a big bowl of fresh fruit with oats and yogurt. I got it… more than once), and plenty of murals and craft stores. Sergio answered the door, and I later found out he was one of 3 brothers who owned and ran the hostel together. He was extremely friendly and laid back, and I immediately felt more genuinely welcome than I had at any point in Santiago (disclaimer: I didn’t love Santiago). I didn’t really have much of an agenda for Valparaiso – my understanding was that it was mostly a town to either wander around and look at murals or go to the beach, and since the weather wasn’t very conducive to the latter I really only planned on the former. Accordingly, I was, to no one’s surprise, extremely lazy. I pretty much just spent 5 days lazing around, sleeping in, wandering around staring at murals, watching soccer, chatting with Liv, eating good food, and generally just getting re-acclimated to traveling.

There were a couple of specific things I did aside from wandering the streets, the first of which completely by accident. On my first day I was strolling around and passed by the cultural center, where I saw tons of people sitting around and enjoying the afternoon. I went in to stroll around and discovered that, along with just enjoying the green space, people were there for a Lambe Lambe festival. Lambe Lambe (as I learned that afternoon) is basically mini-box theater: the presenters make a stage in a small, enclosed box, and then put on a puppet show while you watch through a small peephole and listen to accompanying music or dialog on headphones. The boxes are also decorated on the outside and most of the presenters were wearing costumes to go along with the themes of their performances (think “The Voyage”, “A Message”, “Undersea”, etc…) so it was a vibrant scene. There were 35 presenters, from Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Mexico, and each of them had at least 5 people waiting to see their show. I got there late so I only had time to see one, a delightful little tale of a woman turtle thinking of her beloved, traveling to France, getting in a plane crash on the way back, and then ultimately being reunited with and consoled by him. The synopsis doesn’t do it justice – it’s really about the music and the adorable puppets.

Other activities were the art museum, housed in a giant palace on a hill, whose beautiful wood and marble turned out to be the main attractions in my opinion, and La Sebastiana, one of the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s three houses that are now conserved as museums. Neruda certainly had an eclectic decorative sense and his houses are fun to walk around. He also loved the ocean so his house featured tons of windows with breathtaking views out to sea, so that’s nice. I did end up connecting with one of the people I messaged on couchsurfing, Will. He unfortunately couldn’t host me but he graciously found some time in his busy schedule (he’s wrapping up his PhD in neuroscience) for a coffee and a chat, which was fun and interesting. Otherwise I spent a fair amount of time hanging out with Sergio and the other people at the hostel and generally just relaxing. I finally got myself together enough to sign up for a volunteer exchange site, HelpX, and spent some time looking for opportunities to volunteer in something more meaningful than working the front desk at a hostel. I found several promising programs in Peru and Bolivia and sent messages out so I’m hoping to have a volunteer project nailed down in the next week or so, where I’ll ideally spend 4-5 weeks in May and early June teaching English and/or working with kids. In the meantime I’m heading up to San Pedro de Atacama, the jumping off point for most of the most famous activities in the Atacama desert, and then am planning on crossing into Bolivia after, headed for Uyuni and the famous salt flats. At this very moment I’m 12 hours into a bus ride to Copiapo, which sits about halfway between Valparaiso and San Pedro de Atacama, and where I’m planning to spend the night tonight before hopping back on a bus for another 12-13 hours tomorrow to get to San Pedro. Chile, it turns out, is really extraordinarily long. I had actually booked a flight from Santiago to San Pedro to save myself the trouble of the bus but the workers are on strike so all flights on Sky, the cheap domestic airline, are canceled until further notice. You do, in fact, lose some. The drive today has been nice though, passing through the cute palm trees and tiled roofs of Coquimbo and La Serena, along miles and miles of dramatic, untouched coastline, and up through some decently high mountain passes. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep and am excited to get settled in San Pedro tomorrow night. I’ll be back soon with an update from the driest desert in the world!

Awww grandma

This is what Liv is afraid I will do to her heart.

Rainbow houses!

Lambe Lambe

If you look closely you can see the decorations on the boxes

Truly delicious ceviche

I made a kitty friend!

The flowers match the house

Pablo Neruda had a pretty sweet view from his bedroom…

This image does not properly convey how gigantic this mound of every type of seafood was

Hello again from Santiago de Chile. The title of this post is a hilarious joke because I just spent 10 days in New York visiting my girlfriend Liv, which is a brief sabbatical in the US from the hard work of traveling around without a shred of responsibility. HA! Anyway, I had a great time back in the land of the free. I’m sure anyone who’s been in a long distance relationship can imagine how much I was missing Liv, and it was really really good to get to spend some time together. The biggest activity of the trip was spending Easter weekend up in Connecticut, where I got to meet and spend some quality time with Liv’s mom Anne and her fiancee Glenn. I also have to give a big shoutout to Fred, whom I met at a delicious fish fry dinner at the yacht club the evening we arrived, and who, along with Anne, has to be the biggest fan of this blog who isn’t related to me. We had a great evening chatting and all getting to know each other, and it was my first time at a yacht club, so even back in the US this period of my life continues to be full of first-time, unforgettable experiences.

The next day Liv and I toured all around the area, saw the different houses that Liv grew up in, and went for a delightfully sunny if chilly stroll along the beach in Rhode Island. We picked up some beautiful fresh scallops (one of my absolute favorite foods) on the way home and made fettucine with scallops for dinner, capped off with a delightful hour or two drinking wine and chatting at the dinner table. Sunday we slept in, then took a trip to the grocery store to load up on supplies for Easter dinner. Glenn’s son Eric came over, and before we could proceed with dinner the kids had an easter egg hunt, where the three of us walked around the first floor and picked up what must have been 5 giant bags of candy that Anne had covered every visible surface with. Our baskets were also spiked with an entire bag of Cadbury eggs each to start, so I can safely say that I highly recommend going to Anne’s easter egg hunts.

The rest of the time in New York was less about activities and more just about spending time with Liv – I’ve visited before and seen some museums and attractions and such, so I mostly just spent the week following Liv around to work or school, which she graciously minimized to spend time with me. The good news is that she somehow isn’t sick of me yet, and we agreed that this whole distance thing is getting old, so the plan now is for me to move to New York sometime in June. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do in between but the rough plan is to head north through Chile, with the Atacama desert as the main attraction, and then cross into Bolivia or Peru (or both) and, after touring around a little bit, hopefully spend about a month volunteering. I haven’t figured out what I’d like to do yet but I’m going to be looking online and contacting organizations tonight and in the next couple of days, so hopefully I’ll have a better idea soon. Tomorrow I’m heading to Valparaiso, almost straight west of here, where I should hopefully find a cute, interesting city and some beautiful beaches. Not sure what the next stop after that will be but I think I’ll be just working my way north along the coast before cutting inland to San Pedro de Atacama. I’ll keep y’all updated!