Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Hi everyone!
Well I'm actually back home now, but I never posted about my last few weeks, so I'll do that now and then talk about reentry.
First, San Pedro. It was an absolute blast. I don't know if all deserts are the same, but the Atacama was like nothing I've ever seen before. The people were all really nice, and the town of San Pedro was very cute and had great food. I went with Rachel and Steph and we had a lot of fun together and got a along really well.
This is what's known as the Valle de los Muertos (Valley of the Dead), the name of which no one really knows the origin, but one theory is that the indigenous people brought those infested with small pox there to die:
We also got up super early one day to go see the geisers (you have to leave at 4 am and it takes 2.5 hours to get there in a van). That was really cold (something like 10,000 meters above sea level or something crazy) and REALLY early, but it was really neat to see. Sort of mystical and certainly unique.
This one of Rach and Steph is funny because it shows how cold and dark it was:
As the sun was coming up:
Here is a picture of Rachel and Steph by a smoking one long after the sun had come up:
A neat picture that sort of captures what it was like (again after the sun was up). You can see the boiling water in the one on the right too:
This is the sunset in the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), so named because supposedly it looks a lot like the moon. I wouldn't really know as I have never been to the moon, but it's an interesting name at least:
We also went to go visit the Salares (salt plains). Basically it's a place between two mountain ranges where all the water and minerals collect when it rains on the mountains/volcanoes or when the snow melts on top, but then the water evaporates (the Atacama is the driest desert in the world) and leaves the minerals behind. So all the lumpy stuff you see in the pictures below is salt. Some water remains because the area is techinically lagoon... not sure how that works though. We were walking on a path through the salar and the crushed salt looked just like snow. And since we were up high and it was early and therefore very cold, it was easy to forget for a minute that it wasn't snow! And the most fun part is that flamingos live in the salar and eat the brine shrimp that give them their pink color. You can see them in this picture below:
This is a neat picture because you can see two flamingos closer, and you can see one of the volcanos smoking in the background. I forget what that one was called (there are 4 big ones there that you might have noticed from other pics), but it's due for an eruption this year:
This is a really neat bird that also lives in the lagoon; it's about the size of a seagull. If you look at its beak you'll notice that it's actually curved UPWARDS... that's for getting algae off the top of the water:
A neat picture of the salt shore on another lagoon:
Me on a cliff overlooking another lagoon... gorgeous isn't it?
Me and Steph in the belltower of an old church in a small town we visited when touring the lagoons:
Our van was one of two we saw all day, since it's the off season. But at one point a fox ran across the road and saw our van, and knowing that humans usually have food stopped and approached the van waiting for food. He was so close and it was so neat to see, and of course we gave him food!:
So that's San Pedro, which I did the weekend after I got back from Peru. The next weekend was the disorientation for my program, and then Leela and Rachel and I decided to go to Buenos Aires again, even though we had all already been. We found a good deal to go and wanted to spend time together before we left, so we went. There aren't a whole lot of stories to tell, except that every single one of us ran out of money at the very end and we had a great time hanging out together.
Change of subject: I think I wrote earlier about the strike that was going on in the Universidad de Chile. Basically students wanted a better policy about giving better loans to study etc etc, and they took over the tower that held the office of my program (among many other things - it had 21 floors), and it stayed that way for 3 weeks because the director of the university wouldn't call the police because it's a bad image for the school. There are people who didn't get paid for 3 weeks because the paycheck department is in that tower and no one could get in. But against all Chile entropy laws they resolved the issue and the tower was released a week before I left. Here is a picture of it when it was taken over by students. Note the wood on the front there... that used to be a glass door that they shattered the first day of the strike when I was standing out front with everyone else.
So that's all for a little bit.
Well I'm actually back home now, but I never posted about my last few weeks, so I'll do that now and then talk about reentry.
First, San Pedro. It was an absolute blast. I don't know if all deserts are the same, but the Atacama was like nothing I've ever seen before. The people were all really nice, and the town of San Pedro was very cute and had great food. I went with Rachel and Steph and we had a lot of fun together and got a along really well.
This is what's known as the Valle de los Muertos (Valley of the Dead), the name of which no one really knows the origin, but one theory is that the indigenous people brought those infested with small pox there to die:
We also got up super early one day to go see the geisers (you have to leave at 4 am and it takes 2.5 hours to get there in a van). That was really cold (something like 10,000 meters above sea level or something crazy) and REALLY early, but it was really neat to see. Sort of mystical and certainly unique.
This one of Rach and Steph is funny because it shows how cold and dark it was:
As the sun was coming up:
Here is a picture of Rachel and Steph by a smoking one long after the sun had come up:
A neat picture that sort of captures what it was like (again after the sun was up). You can see the boiling water in the one on the right too:
This is the sunset in the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), so named because supposedly it looks a lot like the moon. I wouldn't really know as I have never been to the moon, but it's an interesting name at least:
We also went to go visit the Salares (salt plains). Basically it's a place between two mountain ranges where all the water and minerals collect when it rains on the mountains/volcanoes or when the snow melts on top, but then the water evaporates (the Atacama is the driest desert in the world) and leaves the minerals behind. So all the lumpy stuff you see in the pictures below is salt. Some water remains because the area is techinically lagoon... not sure how that works though. We were walking on a path through the salar and the crushed salt looked just like snow. And since we were up high and it was early and therefore very cold, it was easy to forget for a minute that it wasn't snow! And the most fun part is that flamingos live in the salar and eat the brine shrimp that give them their pink color. You can see them in this picture below:
This is a neat picture because you can see two flamingos closer, and you can see one of the volcanos smoking in the background. I forget what that one was called (there are 4 big ones there that you might have noticed from other pics), but it's due for an eruption this year:
This is a really neat bird that also lives in the lagoon; it's about the size of a seagull. If you look at its beak you'll notice that it's actually curved UPWARDS... that's for getting algae off the top of the water:
A neat picture of the salt shore on another lagoon:
Me on a cliff overlooking another lagoon... gorgeous isn't it?
Me and Steph in the belltower of an old church in a small town we visited when touring the lagoons:
Our van was one of two we saw all day, since it's the off season. But at one point a fox ran across the road and saw our van, and knowing that humans usually have food stopped and approached the van waiting for food. He was so close and it was so neat to see, and of course we gave him food!:
So that's San Pedro, which I did the weekend after I got back from Peru. The next weekend was the disorientation for my program, and then Leela and Rachel and I decided to go to Buenos Aires again, even though we had all already been. We found a good deal to go and wanted to spend time together before we left, so we went. There aren't a whole lot of stories to tell, except that every single one of us ran out of money at the very end and we had a great time hanging out together.
Change of subject: I think I wrote earlier about the strike that was going on in the Universidad de Chile. Basically students wanted a better policy about giving better loans to study etc etc, and they took over the tower that held the office of my program (among many other things - it had 21 floors), and it stayed that way for 3 weeks because the director of the university wouldn't call the police because it's a bad image for the school. There are people who didn't get paid for 3 weeks because the paycheck department is in that tower and no one could get in. But against all Chile entropy laws they resolved the issue and the tower was released a week before I left. Here is a picture of it when it was taken over by students. Note the wood on the front there... that used to be a glass door that they shattered the first day of the strike when I was standing out front with everyone else.
So that's all for a little bit.
