Monday, April 12, 2004

The Bus System

Let me tell you about the bus system here- it is great. There are options for economy class, half bed, and full bed, with attendants and everything. It is like an airplane. With full bed, you get breakfast, with a half bed you get tea and a small something to munch on, and in economy you just get a great price. It is the best way to travel. I love it.

My Long Weekend in Norte Chico (Small North)- you can read some more info about where I went if you click on the link to the right and scroll down until you find my destination

Valparaiso
So I left Santiago on Wednesday evening by bus and arrived in Valparaiso, a small city on the coast where my friend Christine is living. I stayed at the YMCA (for free, which is always cool) and got to know the city a little bit. It has a distinct ambiance that reminds me a lot of Austin, TX and Capitol Hill in Seattle. I dig it. We went up a hill called Cerro Alegre (Happy Hill) with an awesome view of the city and beach at night. It was beautiful. But I left that night around midnight in order to continue my trip up the coast to La Serena.

La Serena
So I went up to La Serena, a small town of about 170,000 and known for having the best quality of life in Chile. It also has the most churches for the population- over thirty, of various denominations, that were built in the past for settling congregations and as a communication point in betweent the northern border and Santiago.

I waited for about an hour in the bus station for my friend Perrine to arrive (we met in Santiago, she is French and working for a French company in Santiago) and we went straight out to the Valle del Elqui where Pisco, the national liquor if Chile, is produced. Pisco Elqui was the farthest town (about two hours busride inland from La Serena) and we started there.

Pisco Elqui
Pisco Elqui is a very small town with a nice, small river and pleasant weather when we went. During the summer I would imagine it is a lot hotter. But there is a pretty church and a pisco producing plant that we got a tour of. I learned that pisco is made from grapes- silly me, had had previously thought that it was made from a pisco plant, which doesn´t exist.)

After, we took the bus to Monte Grande where the tomb of the Chilan Pulitzer Prize Winner Gabriela Mistral is buried. It is the town where she lived until she was 9. We went to the school house, which is now a musuem. I ran into some people that I had met in Santiago about two weeks ago, too. (Chile is a small country- I am always running into people.) And Perrine tried mote con huesillos, a very good, sweet peach nectar drink with a wheat-like grain in it and dried peaches (I am pretty sure it is native Chilean). It is one of my favorite drinks here. I ate the best raisins- they were dried on the roof of one of the houses. Practical, huh?

Vicuña
On to Vicuña- very distinct for it´s arquitecure of houses with interior courtyards. From the outside, the blocks seem very inclosed and uninviting becuase you can only see walls and doors or windows. But once you get a peek inside a house or business, it is like a different world inside. By doing this, Perrine and I met some artists who create wooden portraits of the religious Gods from the indigenous Danguito beliefs. They will be displaying their works in Santiago at the end of the month, and I will be sure to go.

Vicuña is known for the most beautiful skies, as the inhabitants are required to use yellow lights so as not to disturb the scientist that work in the near-by observatory, studying the constellations. We went to an observatory that is open to the public at night time and I was floored. We learned how stars are created and about solar systems and then were able to look at different formations, stars, the moon and planets with the telescope. I reall wish that I would have brought my digital camara, because I could´ve gotten some great images through the telescope. But we can´t dwell on the past now, can we? So after staying listening to some good music with various indigenous Latin American instruments, we went back to town and stayed in a hostel. The next morning, we got up early to the traditional Chilean breakfast of toast and coffee and then walked the Cerro de la Virgen (The Virgen´s Hill) for a great panoramic view of the area.

After lunch, we took a bus back to La Serena and were able to walk around about. We stayed in a hostal (it defintely wasn´t the cleanest, but I am just learning on how to hostal-it...from here on out, I will definitely ask to see the bedroom and bathroon before making a decision....no wonder it was so cheap- 3000 pesos- I definitely woke up with about twenty bug bites.)

National Parks
The next day, we went to two national parks with a tour company. It was a little pricy, but definitely worth it (I payed a discounted price of 15.000 pesos because the guy was nice and I told him I was a student and couldn´t afford the normal price of 20.000) because it included transportation which is not available by bus and lunch.

The first park was Parque National Fray Jorge, a forest like those found in the south of Chile, but in the north and in the middle of a desert arid region right next to the coast. This phenomenon is able to exist because of the cloud aggregation formed by the high hill on which the forest exists. It was like walking in between two worlds- it was so neat. The forest has distinct plants that only flower in the winter as well as the sacred tree of the Mapuche tribe of Chile, as well as the endangered puma and chincilla. And outside of the clouds, there is a desert with cactus, foxes, and dry brush. It is a strange, but very interesting phenomenon.

The second park was Valle del Encanto where there is rock art dating back about four thousand years from the Danguito tribe. In one spot, there are human figures and masks in the rock (speculated to be formed by etching, but no tools have been found, or else with the combination of various plant chemicals that could have had an effect like acid, which "ate" the rock) but can only be seen in certain positions of the sun. There are also holes in the rocks, in various sizes and shapes, some of which mirror constellations in the sky.

All in all, it was interesting to be in parks like that, close to nature and speculating about what a tribe of hunter and gatherers speculated about God, on a day of all days- Easter Sunday. Very different than what my family was doing- they called me, I am sure after going to church, from a get-together at my sister´s house in Southern California with the whole family and some friends, no doubt watching some sort of sports game and eating Easter candy along with some really good Mexican and Spanish food (man, I would kill for some flavor down here- unless the food is really fatty, it is super bland and it is a must to load on the salt) with margaritas and sangria.

I definitely live a different estilo de vida down here....

posted by Rebecca @ 4/12/2004 01:53:00 PM