Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Chile Galactica

After returning from Easter Island we couldn't get into our apartment.

Had our apartment been robbed? Had the giant stone statues cursed us? 

It turns out that our landlady thought that we were skipping out on rent because of a problem with one of our credit cards.  It didn't help that we were completely isolated from civilization while she tried to contact us for four days. She ended up replacing all the locks.  Unable to get in, we dejectedly journeyed through the night our landlady's apartment, where she gave us a new set of keys.  Back again!

Weeks have passed, weeks which I'm sure Patience will do justice in another post.

One day, all of a sudden, Chile galactica began. 

We took a night bus to the misty port city of La Serena.  Aptly named, La Serena is a serene place.  No one was out Saturday morning as we made our way through a desolate South American suburbia to the beach. 

We saw a big cannon and picked up a few rocks. This rock collection was particularly exciting for me. 

We headed to a now lively city center and walked around an artisan market, some churches, and, surprisingly, a Japanese garden.  Japan and La Serena have several corporate partnerships, so Japan donated a garden to the city.  Turns out lots of Asian countries set up shop in Chile, even North Korea!

From La Serena we headed to Vicuña in search of stars.  The desert hills surrounding Vicuña offer some of the clearest skies in the world for stargazing.  Billion dollar telescopes have been built by Europe and the US to advance the knowledge of our universe.  We took a tour to an observatory and it didn't disappoint.  With the Milky Way stretching all the way across the sky and constellations like Scorpio and the Southern Cross easily visible, the night sky was the best I've ever seen.  Through the telescope we saw several star clusters, Mars, the rings of Saturn, and some nebulae.



Earlier that day, we visited an entymological museum (insects) and a giant Pisco plant (Capel).  Pisco is a very popular Chilean brandy made with a special grape native to South America.  Both Chile and Peru claim to be the inventors of Pisco.  Chile even renamed a city "Pisco Elqui" to assert its claim.  We took an on-site tour of the plant and saw lots of fermentation and bottling stations, not to mention fields of Pisco grapes stretching across the desert.  Good times in Norte Chico.


The coming weeks are some of our last.  In preparation for Patagonia we have a lineup of asados and feasts.  I recently discovered a cache of jugglers in Parque Forestal, the huge park that we live by. They made me aware of a 700-person juggling convention this Saturday in another park in Santiago.  Exciting times ahead!

Sunday, July 13, 2014

EASTER ISLAND

What is Easter Island really?

We can finally take a stab at this question after our four day journey to the island.
Half of this entry will be written by Patience, the other half by Ian (we will leave distinction to the reader).  So, what is Easter Island?

1. A speck in the Pacific -  Easter Island may have 60,000 tourists a year, but it ain't easy to get to. The island is over 1,000 miles from the nearest populated point (Pitcairn Island) and is over 2,000 miles from Chile.  The island comprises a triangle about 15 km to a side, and is composed of volcanoes that will one day subduct into the ocean, along with the entire island.  We took a five hour flight from Santiago to Honga Roa, the only town on the island and the only place to stay.

2. An unsuspecting land of legend -  Captain Cook puzzled over why anyone would want to live on Easter Island after discovering the speck in the 1700s. The island has almost no trees and is covered in hills overlooking rocky cliffs that make agriculture and fishing difficult.  The hostile land belies the legends that it holds.  Upon Cook's discovery, only about 2,000 Rapa Nui people remained on the island, down from an estimated 15,000 at one point.  The Rapa Nui civilization peaked and plummeted after overusing its resources and descending into conflicts between two levels of a Polynesian social hierarchy.  Little remains of the Rapa Nui culture besides the language and a thin line of oral legend, and an impressive amount of HUGE stone statues scattered around the island.

3. An open air museum - From the natural scenery to the hundreds of statues (moai, as they're called), Easter Island is truly an open air museum and an archaeological treasure.  Moai ring around the perimeter of the island, facing into the island. They are giant stone humanlike figures carved from volcanic rock that weigh several tons each. To this day, no one knows how the statues were moved from the rock faces from which they were carved to the beaches they protect. Be it aliens or clever lever systems, the mystery surrounding the moai and their movement adds to Easter Island's mystical feel.  We explored many a moai on Easter Island and also went to where they were carved, Rano Raraku (see full story below).

4. Hitchhiker's paradise -  Easter Island is not only a paradise for giant stone statues, but also for hitchhiking, regular hiking, and stray dogs.  The island is, with the exception of Honga Roa, a Chilean national park, and is littered with trails and overgrown paths along cliffs and up volcanoes. The few roads are frequented by tourists who rent cars and some friendly locals, so hitchhiking is easy. We hitchhiked successfully four out of four attempts during the trip: once with two Chilean women, once with a local fisherman, once with some multinational bros, and once with a Rapa Nui family.  Hiking free range across open land was a great way to get away from it all. We saw many a crater and picked up a few dog companions along the way.

5. Isla de Pascua - Easter Island has been annexed by Chile following a turbulent history of war, plague, and slave raids.  The island functions as a Chilean resort, to the expense and benefit of the local Rapa Nui people. Chilean control has caused many property conflicts and some vehement protests by locals. Tourism is the island's only source of income, and as such is embraced by everyone.  Most things are imported to the island besides a small selection of local produce, and prices are high -- triple Chilean price.  That being said, we camped and cooked and ended up doing the trip quite cheaply. Enough with definitions, what did we actually do?

We landed on Thursday morning, and wandered around the only city (Hanga Roa) for about an hour before finding our campsite.



Once settled at the "Mihinoa" campground, complete with a kitchen, lockers, bathrooms, and a lawn for tents to be pitched, we feasted on peanut butter sandwiches and began a hike up the coastline to see our first moai. You can see them all over the island, but there's a fair concentration of them right where the city is. We saw three within our first hour of walking. We ate dinner at a little restaurant on the edge of the city that served delicious Chilean-style food (although we did our best to distance ourselves from Chile, the predominant fair was still empanadas and pollo asado). Then we walked back to the campground as the sun set, played some cards, and went to sleep.



The next day our goal was to reach Orongo, a ceremonial village east of the city. After buying some  local-grown bananas (which were shorter, thicker and more delicious than any bananas I've ever had, grown in an agricultural cave by some sorcery), we started a hike there from the city. A dog started following us, which apparently is a very common ocurrence. We ignored him, figuring he would lose interest after a couple minutes- but he followed us for the entire three-hour hike to Orongo! The hike was lovely, guiding us through fields, forests, and up a volcano to the breathtaking view of a vast oceanside crater. 






 We walked around the edge of the crater to the ceremonial village, Orongo, where the Rapa Nui people resided long ago . A collection of very low stone houses had tiny crawlspaces for doors. They rested on a cliff overlooking a bare rock island a bit off the coast - apparently back in the day, competitors used to race across the treacherous waters to this rocky speck, climb the steep rock walls and seek the egg of a certain species of bird. The first one to bring an undamaged egg back would determine who was the "Birdman", ruler of the island, for the following year. A strange standard for one's government, but it worked for them.

After touring the stone ruins, we had lunch overlooking the crater, and then started walking. The dog that was still following us picked up three new dog friends, who joined him in his dogged (haha) pursuit of us.



They probably would have followed us all the way back to Hanga Roa if we hadn't caught a ride with two Chilean women. The dogs watched us climb into the vehicle with dismay and ran hopelessly behind the car until it was out of sight.

We returned to Hanga Roa much earlier than expected- the trip to Orongo was expected to take all day, but it only took about 5 hours. We went to an ice cream shop, and were wondering what to do with ourselves for the remainder of the day when a French man interrupted our musings. He explained that his family of four wanted to go on a boat tour of the southern shore, but the tour company would only take them out with five or more willing customers. He asked if we wanted to join, and we did! Snorkeling was included, and though the family weren't interested in submerging themselves in the notoriously cold Pacific, we were down, and were given wetsuits and goggles to try on.

Out in the water, we were dropped off by the boat near the island where Rapa Nui used to race to get bird eggs - sheer cliffs surrounded us, and huge ocean swells  lifted us like we were tiny corks. There wasn't much to see in terms of marine life- some brown coral, needle fish, a couple little yellow fish- but the water was incredibly clear, clearer than anywhere I've ever snorkeled before.
After snorkeling and a windy boat ride back, we were tired. We trudged back to Mihinoa, showered and hung out for a bit (I read a few chapters of Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy).

A Canadian couple (from Northern Alberta) who had already been on Easter Island for 10 days engaged us in conversation. Hearing that we were planning to go to Anakena Beach the next day, they offered to split the cost of a taxi with us, which we readily agreed to. We met up with the couple the next morning around 9, got a taxi and enjoyed a scenic ride along the mountainous coast to Playa Anakena.

Our time at Playa Anakena can only be described as a perfect beach day - the sun was hot, the water was clear, and the moai were, as always, watching us silently. Ian and I hiked around grassy hills surrounding the beach to get a good view, then settled down in the abandoned lifeguard tower for lunch, where we saw a herd of wild horses run across the beach, like something out of a storybook:

Around 2 we reunited with the Canadian couple and started a trek to Rano Raraku, the quarry where the Moai were originally carved hundreds of years ago. It would've been a long walk, but we were driven halfway there by a friendly multi-lingual native who was on his way to go spear fishing, and the rest of the way by a truck-full of international bros (there's no other way to describe them- one was from Alberta and our Canadian friends bonded with him).

Rano Raraku was possibly the coolest thing we saw while we were on Easter Island. First we passed an ahu (platform) with 15 moai. It was incredible.


 Then we went up to the quarry - there were moai sticking out of the ground for miles around the site, moai that had broken while they were moving them, moai that for no known reason had been abandoned only a few hundred feet into the journey. There were huge gaps in the walls of stone where moai had clearly been carved out- and even some half-carved moai that had never been finished, including the enormous one chillaxing in the picture below.



We also visited a big crater lake, which was, of course, breathtakingly beautiful, and then caught the taxi back to Hanga Roa. That night, Ian and I went to a "no-frills den with momma-style empanadas" (as described by Lonely Planet) and had huge, delicious fresh tuna empanadas for dinner.

The next day, we were uncertain of what do with ourselves: it was raining, and we were tired, but felt like we couldn't waste away one of our precious days on the island playing cards inside. We decided to make the wet trip back to the empanadas place, where we were given free tea with our meal by the kindly owner who recognized us from the night before. We played a few rounds of Vietnamese cards on the porch until the rain gave way to sunshine, then decided to embark on a hike along the coast as far as we dared to go.

We saw dramatic cliffs, crashing waves, and sea caves (one of which we took shelter in temporarily when a brief spurt of rain threatened our dryness). It was awesome. Once we reached our destination (another "ahu" platform that turned out to be just an ahu, with no moai on it), we treked back through the countryside instead of following the coast. We got a little lost, had a few nerve-wracking encounters with cows, and after finding our way to a paved road through a neighborhood got a ride from a Rapa Nui family back into the heart of Hanga Roa.

Since it was our last night, we decided to splurge on a slightly fancier dinner. We went into one of the central, touristy restaurants, where they politely overlooked our mud-streaked pants and wind-swept hair and served us a hamburger and fish.

Then we went to sleep.

The next day, our flight didn't leave until 3 so we took a quick hike to the sea caves west of our camp site, and discovered an outdoor swimming pool, beautifully paved and maintained in the midst of a labyrinth of volcanic rock. Its water came from the ocean that crashed up from the rocky coastline below.

Then we packed up our tent and sleeping bags, had some pollo asado with french fries at a restaurant by the airport, and said goodbye to the island for ever.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Industrial Beach - Weekend Warriors P. 2

From our mountain adventure we took a bus back to a city called Talca, population 200,000.

Talca is a center of Chilean agriculture and wine.  The city was close to the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake (6th largest ever recorded), and was devastated. We didn't stop in Talca for long, and changed buses to go to a smaller town by the name of Constitución.

Constitución isn't listed in any of our travel books.  Its a straight shot to the Pacific from Talca.  We headed to Constitución with no plan or conception of what was there. The town turns out to be an industrial center for timber, coal, and paper manufacturing, and is separated by a big hill from a giant timber plant.  On the other side of town, a river meets the ocean, sheltering pine forests from the ocean in a quiet cove. The scene reminded me a lot of Maine or Oregon.



Tsunami warning signs added an ominous note to the solitude, harkening back to the 2010 tsunami that killed 350 people in Constitución after the quake.  We climbed up a hill to get some great views of the timber plant, the ocean, and the town in all its splendor.  A hilltop park provided an afternoon of enjoyment from tree climbing to factory watching.


Going Timber




We asked locals about nearby hotels and walked in circles until we found them, eventually happening upon a "hostel" for a good price.  As the only guests, we had an entire house to ourselves, including several plasma TV's.  One of the TV's displayed all of the security cameras on the premise, which was somewhat disconcerting.


Patience in Blue on the Security Cam

We were just in time for the end of the Chile V. Brazil World Cup game.  Chile lost to Brazil in a sudden death kickoff by one goal after playing very well.  We were eating in an old fisherman's restaurant when the team lost.  The patrons sighed, heads hung, and all of Chile seemed sad for a couple of hours.

A walk to the market, town square, and along the cove rounded out our day in Constitución.
The next day, on my 20th birthday, we partied on a 5 hour bus ride back to Santiago, and collapsed in the apartment, eventually rallying and eating food with friends for dinner.

That's all for now, stay tuned for mystical tales from EASTER ISLAND!


Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Wintry Forest - Weekend Warriors P.1

About our weekend, let's start somewhere in the middle:

We were the last ones on the bus. All of the school children had departed. Even the one girl who had stared at us for a solid twenty minutes (ever seen The Ring?) had left the bus.

Confident that we had missed our stop, we rattled onward.  The driver reached the end of the line, veered through the mud to turn around, and abruptly let us out.   And there we were - Altos de Lircay Nacional Park, the gateway to the Andes.  We had made it! A sign greeted us and told us that the visitor center was a mere two kilometers ahead. 

It turns out we weren't even prepared for the walk to the visitor center.  Mud turned into knee-high snow as we slogged upward toward the building.  I was ill-equipped for the hike with tennis shoes, and Patience had boots that looked effective but still got soaked. Many of the power lines were downed, trees had fallen into the road,  and the path had an air of apocalyptic silence to it. But we were not alone. 





Several local construction workers had ventured into the snow to start re-erecting the power lines. They stared at us puzzled as we walked by, but reciprocated our greetings.  When we finally got to the visitor center, the only person in sight was a construction worker smoking on the steps of the building.   It was 4 pm, and the visitor center should have been open.  We asked the guy what was going on.  He shrugged, and casually explained that the entire park had been shut down for some time because of the snow. "No hay nadie," he said, there is no one here. 

Now we could either go back down the ice slope to a collection of houses or forge onward to a presumably snow entrenched campsite that we had read about in Lonely Planet.  We tentatively decided to continue,  and followed the downed power lines to an utterly abandoned campground. We hopped over the gate of the camp and surprisingly found a spot with no snow, setting up camp as the chill of darkness descended.  The setting was tranquil and eerily silent, and I  was unnerved by some scat I found near our site, convinced that it was a mountain lion's. The sunset was fantastic, and we had truly escaped humanity in a mountain oasis. 



         Gratuitous sunset pics: campsite + Patience [left]
                                              mountain valley [right]

       


My sleeping bag had its temperature limits tested during the night, and at sunrise we broke camp and decided to hightail it out of the park.  Though beautiful, the trails would be suicidal in the snow drifts, and we were out of food.  We descended to the park entrance, and the walk was better than before because the snow had iced over. Patience felt like Legolas, skimming on top of the snow instead of sinking. Ian felt more like a mentally impaired penguin. 

After returning to the collection of houses below, we found a cabin serving hot tea and coffee. We were poised to catch the next bus, an infrequent occurrence! To our shock, a tour bus arrived, and let out a bunch of people at the entrance of the park.  Who were all these tourists entering the remote snowscape that we had just survived?  We immediately felt less awesome. Onward to the beach!