The Big Dig

The open pit copper mine Chuquicamata.

Breakfast at Tatio

We visited the Tatio geysers at the highest geothermal field in the world. We had to get up at 4 am to be there at sunrise when the temperature change causes the geysers to erupt. This isn't garbage in the geothermal pool--the tour guides are warming up milk for coffee and boiling eggs for our breakfast.

The Inca Trail

You can see part of the extensive centuries-old Inca trail heading off toward the mountains in the distance. The white structure marks the Tropic of Capricorn.

Salar de Atacama

These are the salt "flats" I tried to describe earlier.

On the Bus

We traveled the Panamerican highway for much of our 36-hour bus trip. It starts (or ends, depending on your perspective) in Alaska and ends (or starts) on the Isla de Chiloe.

Algae Harvest

One of the economic activities on the Isla de Chiloe is harvesting algae, which is then dried and shipped to Japan for use in cosmetic products and gel capsules.

A Room with a View

The view from our hotel room in Puerto Varas.

No Eruptions, Please

I'm standing on one of the volcanoes across the lake from Puerto Varas.

Funicular

We went up one of the Valparaiso hills in this ascensor.

Going to the Chapel

The Methodist church in Cochabamba where my parents were married.

In the Arms of Christ

Here's the Christ statue up close. You can climb up inside the statue to the arms, looking out through holes along the way.

Cochabamba

The view from our hotel in Cochabamba. The Christ statue seen in the distance is a little higher than the one in Rio de Janeiro.

La Paz

The city of peace with Illimani (the mountain) in the background.

The Party in La Paz

A small sampling of the dancers and musicians who participated in La Fiesta del Gran Poder.

Getting to Know You

While it is certainly easier to express myself in English, there are some great Spanish words. For example, trámites describes all those bureaucratic procedures you have to go through to get something done. The Department of Motor Vehicles survives on trámites. There's also the two verbs most often translated "to know": conocer and saber. Saber means to know something intellectually, such as a subject you studied in school. Conocer is to know something through experiencing it.

You'll notice I get more reflective as my journeys come to an end, but why am I on this tangent of different ways of knowing? Because Tuesday we saw Chuquicamata, the largest open pit mine in the world, a hole in the ground kilometers wide and almost a kilometer deep. This copper mine is owned and operated by the government of Chile. Near the mine is the company town of the same name that is essentially a ghost town. The government decided the town was too contaminated so they have moved the workers to Calama, a town about 15 km away. A good decision, but it leaves houses, an auditorium, a theater, schools, parks and playgrounds eerily empty. The hospital has already been covered by mountains of rock from the pit and houses are soon to follow. The town of Chuquicamata reminds me of the Ukrainian town of Prypiat near the Chernobyl nucelar plant. Prypiat was also abandoned due to contamination, but in a matter of hours instead of years.

There is a scene in The Motorcycle Diaries, a film about Che Guevara's travels with a friend through South America, where they are at Chuquicamata and a foreman tells them the mine is not a tourist site. I agree; however, I think the point of visiting places like Chuqui and Chernobyl isn't to pasear (another great Spanish word), but to conocer, to know somewhere or something or someone personally and to learn from them.

Pimp My Llama

On Saturday we had a Chilean guide, Juan Ignacio, who had spent time living in the U.S. and other places abroad. He has seen too much U.S. television (haven't we all). On of his jokes was that the llamas had different colors on their ears because they had been on the MTV show "Pimp My Llama." We went with Juan Ignacio, two Brazilians, some other Chileans, an English girl, and even a couple of Americans (the first on any of our tours in Chile) to the Lagunas Altiplanicas and the Salar de Atacama. These salt plains (salar) are different from the ones in Utah or Bolivia because the salt has formed vertical, crystalline structures, and there are lagoons with flamingos living in the middle of it all. Photos will be coming soon because some of these things defy description.

The Second Longest Day

It has to be the second because I already wrote about the longest in my previous travels. On this second longest day (actually more than one), we spent 36 hours going by bus from Puerto Varas to San Pedro de Atacama. Both the length of time on the bus and the change of scenery were extreme. We went from the lake district in the south to the Atacama Desert in the north.

Only 3 hours after getting off the bus in San Pedro de Atacama, we were on another bus, a tourist bus, going to the Chilean Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). This was definitely more impressive than the Bolivian version we visited near La Paz. The most impressive time to see the valley is sunset. We were there, but so were the clouds, so the effect was muted.

I have to explain about the buses because anyone who has ridden buses in the U.S. probably thinks we're crazy. There are different levels of service here depending on the length of the trip and how much you want to pay. The classic level, which we took to Valparaíso, is the basic level--clean, comfortable buses with a bathroom in the back. We used the executive level on the way to Puerto Varas. You get more leg room and the seats recline farther. For our long trip, we took the highest level of service, cama premium, a two-story bus. It includes meal service and larger and softer seats that recline to almost horizontal. It's quite comfortable, though 36 hours is pushing it. At all levels of service you have screens that invariably show Hollywood action/adventure movies dubbed in Spanish. I have now seen every movie of that genre from the last two years.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Day

This is winter, so the rain is to be expected. Actually, we've been quite fortunate in leaving the worst weather behind us in Santiago. Until yesterday. Yesterday we went to the Isla de Chiloé, the second largest island in South America, according to our guide. He studied electronics, though, so we had a running joke about whether to trust what he told us. The best part of taking tours, besides learning a lot about local culture and history, is the people you meet. We were in a group of 6--us, Lily from Brazil and Ruben from the northern desert part of Chile, plus the guide and the driver. Ruben had come to the south to experience the cold and the rain so he was happy with the weather. Spanish was the common language we all understood. Lily spoke only Portuguese, but we could get the gist of what she said.

Yesterday was also seafood day. I tried clams at lunch and abalone for dinner. I still don't understand the appeal. It's hard to take someone who grew up about as far from the sea as it's possible to live and get them to enjoy sea food. I've had better luck with the drinks here. I'm on a quest for the best café cortado. It's a layered drink of hot milk, hot coffee and foam. I'm going to switch to finding the perfect pisco sour. Pisco is a type of brandy that I'm told is originally Chilean. I have to say so far the pisco sours in Perú were much better, but I'm not giving up yet.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Yes, I stole the title from Ernest Hemingway, but unlike his short story, this will not be a depressing entry. I think of his short story whenever I go into a café overseas that is bright and welcoming. We found just such a café in Valpo called the Marco Polo. The first time we went in there it was drizzling outside so it was nice to be someplace warm and dry. Other people were eating these round doughnut-like things called picarones. After the huge sandwiches they gave us, we couldn't eat another bite, so we had to come back to the Marco Polo our last day in Valpo to try the picarones. They turned out to be hollow rings drizzled in caramel. Actually not the tastiest thing I've tried here, but we had the same waiter in the same clean, well-lighted place, so it was like being part of the city for a short time.

Planes, Trains and Funiculars

We really are limited in the transportation options we have in the U.S. Unless you live in a big city, you have to get in the car to go anywhere. We've taken lots of different forms of transportation already:

• Planes
• Taxis
• Buses - including an English-style double decker bus on our Cochabamba city tour
• Subway and commuter trains
• Tram to the Christ statue
• Feet

The most unique way has been the ascensores (elevators) here in Valparaíso. Even though they are called ascensores, the guidebook says all but one are technically funiculars (I guess this is an English word). You get in a little cabin then chains and cables pull you up the hill while a cabin on the other side goes down. Valpo is a port city surrounded by hills, so these funiculars are a good way to avoid climbing hundreds of stairs.

Walking is certainly one of the best ways to see the sights, and we've done a lot of it. Luckily, Mom's ankle stopped hurting the day we arrived in Chile. Because so many people walk, you have minimarkets and pharmacies and all types of businesses around every corner. Some of the comerciantes (businesspeople) set up on the street every morning and put their stuff away at night. Last night we saw people hauling all of their wares on different wagons and dollies and such. I'm not sure where they were going, but it looked like hard work.

Tonight we're taking a bus to Puerto Varas in the Lake District of Chile. It's an overnight bus, so we'll arrive tomorrow morning.