I Go Where You Go: Chilly, Chile!, Chili

Northern Chile and Santiago

Lest you think that world travel is all glamorous, let me invite you to the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. I (Kenzi) was still recovering from some traveler's D (thanks Bolivia), and once we arrived in the driest non-polar desert in the world, I had to keep applying Vaseline to my nasal passages to keep them from being super painful and bleeding. Yes, it's that dry. And my eyes watered every time we went outside. Not to mention, I got the worst migraine I've had in about five years while in this dusty, dry desert. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to leave, which has been a rare sentiment during our travels.

The driest (non-polar) desert in the world, the Atacama desert of northern Chile.

We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama by bus, directly from our Bolivian altiplano (highlands) adventure. The altitude was 8,000ft there, so I started feeling better altitude-wise right away, since we'd been up at 16,000ft the previous day. We had scheduled four days in San Pedro, which is too much, but it allowed us some down time for recovery.

We did an afternoon tour of Mars Valley (Valle de la Marta) and Moon Valley (Valle de la Luna), which as far as deserts go, was pretty impressive. You'll notice in some of our pictures that the ground seems to be covered in snow or white powder. That is gypsum (from which drywall is made). During the "rainy" season, the white stuff is more noticeable because it collects when it rains. We walked down some HUGE sand dunes, visited rock structures known as "The Three Mary's", visited an old salt mining community, and watched the sunset over the desert.

Me coming down a small section of the HUGE sand dunes of the Atacama desert.

A panorama of the Valle de la Marte (Mars Valley)

Me at some pools left over from the rainy season. The white stuff is gypsum.

The "Three Marys" are on the right and "PacMan" is on the left.

We toured around San Pedro de Atacama town itself quite a bit. It's a dusty, expensive town, full of tour companies and tourists. The little church on the town square was endearing, partly because it has survived fires, earthquakes, and vandalism. We were joking that the restaurant we went to twice would be considered a dump in the US (the roving cat, dust pouring in the windows, hole in the ceiling, etc.), but it was totally fine for San Pedro.

Bill entering the charming old church in San Pedro de Atacama.

The inside of the church.

The sun in northern Chile (and previously during our time in Bolivia) was SUPER intense because: 1) we were in the tropics, and 2) we were at high altitude.

Because the desert is at high altitude and has so little humidity, it's one of the clearest places to see the stars and there is a big observatory. We were really excited to go on a night time stargazing tour. Unfortunately, it was cloudy the one night we had signed up to go, so our trip was cancelled. Big bummer.

Anyway, me and my sinuses were happy to get away from the desert, so we flew to Santiago, where we spent almost a week.

Chile is the most prosperous country in South America, and it shows. Santiago is a big metropolitan city with about 6 million people. It feels a bit more European than the rest of South America. One interesting thing to note about Chile is that it's on a strange time zone. We were on the Eastern US time zone while in Colombia and Panama. If you look at a map, you'd think Chile would be the same. Not so... it is two hours ahead of Eastern time, so it's 5 hours ahead of San Diego. The sun rises late and sets late. It's summer time here, so I guess that makes sense.

Our AirBnB was an apartment in this building, and we really liked it.

We got settled in our nice little AirBnB which was cheaper, but much nicer than our accommodations in the desert. Our first day in Santiago, we took a day trip to the coastal city of Valparaiso, a really interesting city with TONS of street art. We took the bus there, no problem. In fact, it was a fancy bus with reclining seats. However, we almost didn't make it back to Santiago that night because all the buses back to Santiago were booked. We walked around the bus station pretty confused and concerned since all the bus ticket windows had signs up that said "all Santiago tickets sold out". Luckily, some enterprising minibus owner was selling tickets back to Santiago, for a high, but doable price, so we basically got the last two seats on the bus. We should have known since the country is on summer holidays in February, and it makes sense that everyone would go to the beach city for the weekend. Thankfully we made it home that night!

The colorful, hilly coastal city of Valparaiso.

Valparaiso street art.

More street art.

Door art.

Colorful streets in Valparaiso.

One of the fancy Chilean buses with reclining seats!

The next four days we spent the mornings taking Spanish classes in Santiago. Our little language school also offered optional activities in the afternoons/evenings. We had a fun time attempting to improve our beginner's Spanish skills and seeing new things around town. We did a City Tour where we visited the main square and cathedral, we visited the Bellas Artes museum, climbed to the top of Santa Lucia hill in the middle of Santiago, saw La La Land with Spanish subtitles, and saw the city from the top of South America's tallest building, Sky Costanera.

Bill standing in front of our Spanish language school in Santiago.

Seeing a gigantic Chilean flag near the Presidential palace on our Santiago City Tour.

Inside the lovely Bellas Artes Museum.

Sky Costanera, the tallest building in South America.

Panorama of some of Santiago from Sky Costanera's viewing deck.

Checking out the lovely view from the top of Santa Lucia hill in Santiago.

Chilean Spanish is definitely different from Mexican Spanish which we're more accustomed to. There are some different words and a pretty strong accent in Chile. But we figured any Spanish is better than our extremely elementary existing Spanish. And I think we succeeded in expanding our vocabulary and comprehension a bit. We're still very much beginners, but we had a lot of fun learning and meeting fellow students.