La Serena & San Pedro de Atacama-Life outside Santiago

These past 8 days have been some of the best I've spent in Chile thus far. As much as I enjoyed my first month in the hustle and bustle of Santiago, I have to admit it was nice to step out of the city for a bit and test my traveling abilities. So here's a lowdown of the adventures, with pictures to include...

July 21-24-La Serena & Pisco Elqui 

Pretty much right after our last day of  class on Saturday, a group of EAPers and I took an afternoon bus to La Serena, the second oldest city in Chile. We got in by about 9 p.m. and arrived at our awesome hostel. It had a pepper theme going on, since every room had a name of a spicy pepper stamped on(our's was Jalapeño). This was actually my first hostel experience and I really loved it! We were there with some Germans, who sound pretty interesting when they speak Spanish. A couple of them took us out to a local discotec, which I enjoyed more than the one in Santiago. Being underage in the U.S. I haven't done any clubbing there, but from what I've heard you are expected to hit the clubs looking your finest, with heels and all. Some places won't even let you in without heels.But in Chile I come in with the outfit I wore on the bus(thermal shirt,jeans,running shoes), barely an ounce of makeup, and it's still a blast! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy getting glammed up every once and a while,but I just thought it was a little refreshing how the locals here were really just making the experience about the music and dancing.

The next day was pretty relaxing. We woke up late and just explored La Serena,but seeing as it was Sunday it was pretty quiet. The main square has "La Recova," a market with restaurants and a labyrinth of souveneir shops. I got myself a really comfy llama patterned sweater. I swear our whole program will be sporting these babies by the end of the semester...

On Monday we took an hour bus ride to Valle de Elqui, which is known for its pisco...But I went horseback riding instead.An activity like this seems more worth the money than a tour of a pisco factory.It was so beautiful to ride through the valley and take in the sights. My horse was definitely the feistiest of the bunch though. It kept wanting to push to the front of the pack. By the end of the ride, when we got back into the ranch gates, my horse and a couple others were galloping towards the stables! It was kind of scary,but super fun at the same time!

On my horse, with a nice photobomb from my friend Amanda

On the bus ride back to La Serena, we hung out with two Chilean girls who were incredibly thrilled to meet gringas. They begged us to teach us some English,so we had a nice trade off going on. This somehow led to a chorus of the theme song for both "Spongebob Squarepants" and "Bob Esponja." It was definitely an eventful moment in Chile! Here's a the Spanish version of the show's theme song. I actually enjoy it more than the English version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpMh9H7-odw

Tuesday started with a last morning of exploring La Serena/shopping before we departed on a 16ish hour bus ride to San Pedro de Atacama. The bus ride wasn't as bad as I thought. They played movies the whole time, plus I slept for about 6-7 hours of it. I watched Hugo,understood the whole thing, and really enjoyed it! The weird thing was they had it dubbed and it had Spanish subtitles, but the subtitles didn't exactly match what they were saying. It's like different companies did the dubbing and subtitles or something...

July 25th-28th: San Pedro de Atacama

We arrived into San Pedro the morning of the 25th and got settled into our hostel, which was owned by a family. The first thing I noticed about the town is that while it has the small "pueblo" feel, it is kept alive by tourism. Every street is filled with tourist agencies, hostels, money exchange centers,souvenir shops, and restaurants with slightly elevated prices. The streets are also flowing with "extranjeros" (foreigners), like myself. We managed to find a restaurant for lunch that wasn't expensive and didn't have waiters flagging you down by the entrance with their menus. It was a simple place, owned by a couple I believe. The owner even called us "mis niñas/niños" and sat down at the table when he took your order. I got an amazing,huge piece of grilled chicken, rice, and salad for 2,500 pesos...that's only about 5 bucks! It was a relief compared to the 8+ dollar plates of food around town. The rest of the days in Atacama were full of excursions which we took through the hostel. We got a special discount the moment we told the hostel owner "hmmm well we may look around town for lower prices," and bam...she lowered the price. Here's a little photo gallery of each activity, with a couple facts about each place sprinkled throughout. Every activity "vale la pena"(is completely worth it)!

Valle de la Luna

NASA officially named this place, because it really does look like the moon! We also got to explore an old salt mine, have a toast with pisco sours at sunset, and run down a giant sand dune. What this tour made me realize is the lack of waivers in this country means that the tour guides really put a lot of trust in you. There were some points in the tour where our guide would drop us off at one point he couldn't drive through, tell us to walk for 20 minutes or so, and meet him at another point in the valley. I feel like this would never happen in the U.S. They would have a second guide to lead you along or something, but here part of the experience is this mutual trust. In fact, it made the experience all the better!

Our guide encouraged the classic touristy photos...

I'm falling off a cliff!!...not really.

Laguna Cejar-30% Salt, 10% Lithium, Lots of Floating! 

The next day we had the same guide(number Juan!) for our much more relaxing,but equally enjoyable trip to Laguna Cejar. I could put my hands at my side and bob up and down like a cork. Another weird sensation was that it was warmer near the bottom of the lake than the top. It had something to do with warm currents coming from the lake bed. I just expected that the sun would be warming the surface,but in reality my feet were super warm and my arms were freezing!

Floating Free!

Geysers del Tatio

Our last full day started with a 3:30 am wake up call! We were loaded into the van by 4, to head out on an hour and a half journey to the geysers. The only redeeming factor of waking up so early and driving down an incredibly bumpy, dirt road was getting to see the sky full of stars....that is definitely something you don't see in Santiago, or L.A. and Irvine for that matter. We got to the geysers before sunrise and it was freezing! We're talking -15 degrees celsius, or 5 degrees fahrenheit!Even when the sun came out, it wasn't much better. It didn't stop me from enjoying the large expanse of geysers though.

The group in front of a big geyser

The geysers stretched on and on!

Pretty colors and funny smells

After seeing what we wanted at the geysers, we drove towards the hot springs. On the way we spotted vicuñas! They seem like a  mix between a deer and a llama to me. 

Lone,proud vicuña

The hot springs themselves should actually be called "the lukewarm springs, with one corner where everyone crowds by the warmer water." It was actually pretty comical how a bunch of strangers were huddled together by the warm part. It felt pleasant, then all of a sudden a rush of boiling water would come pouring out of a hole from below! Since it's such a touristy place, I got to hear curse words in many languages in response. 

All the people, crowding towards the warmth. I'm on the far left!

After the springs, we stopped in a little town called Machuca,where I had the best goat cheese empanada ever! They also were grilling vicuña meat, which I didn't get a chance to taste. A couple people in our group weren't feeling well from the altitude,so we headed out pretty soon.

Machucha:There's a system where 25 families rotate who stays there what week,because families can make money selling food to tourists there.

We spent the rest of the day completely relaxing, because we were pretty beat after the early wake up.  It was just a lot of relaxing in the hotel hammock...

The next day, but before hopping on the bus, we stopped at an interesting ice cream shop. They had flavors made from different nuts, weird fruits, roots, and other stuff I can't remember. I had quinoa with milk and raspberries. It was tasty! 

As we were eating our ice cream, the wind started picking up, blowing dust all through the streets. A dust storm in a desert town wasn't a nice send off, but at least we were leaving before it got worse. But anyways, I survived a 23 hour bus ride back to Santiago. The most eventful part is when they played a bootlegged DVD of The Avengers. The sound was all weird, it had random Chinese subtitles throughout, and I swear I could hear the audience behind the camera laughing at one point.  The rest went by super slow, but I finally got in by Sunday afternoon. It felt so good to sit down to a big lunch and crash early that night. 

After this trip, I think I've caught the traveling bug! It's exciting to pull together a trip with a bunch of people your age and see where each day takes you. Still, I'm glad to be back in Santiago, even if it has been hectic with starting classes. Once I sign up for classes, I'll keep updates on what exactly I'm taking. But Chao for now!