Argentina at Last

On one of the last days in Calama, we took a micro to the “cementario” on the outskirts of town.  I had not yet been so aware of the magnitude of the Atacama Desert; it was the sort of scene that overwhelms one with its inconceivable emptiness.  We walked through the cemetery, skirting around a funeral, and into a plain full of low bushes.  Lizards darted around, sometimes stopping to look at me, twitching their heads up and down.  As we walked along an old barbed wire fence, I heard a screeching cry and looked up to a small owl sitting on one of the fence posts ahead.  It had a bright white, warlike face, and soon went flying away into the adjacent field.  On the way out of the cemetery, I saw people sitting in front of the raised, concrete tombs of their family members, which looked like a number of square, glass-fronted dioramas stacked on top of each other.  One man held his hand out to the tomb for a moment and then walked off. 

Before going back to town, we sat at a little flower stand next to the road and drank the national soda, Bilz.  It was a great relief to get out of the dirty and hectic center, where it seems we were daily assaulted by the sight of stray dogs acting on their amorous desires, among other unsavory things.  The next morning, after being forced to pay more than we owed because of the innkeeper’s mathematical error, we got on the bus to Salta, Argentina.  I was very glad to leave.

The ride was obscenely beautiful.  At first, it seemed no different from any of the other recent rides.  The desert stretched on and on.  Plumes of smoke from the mines loomed in the distance.  The landscape was a seemingly endless, lifeless plain.  A few hours in, though, we started climbing in thick fog, and when it cleared, the scenery had completely changed.  There were lakes and beautiful snow-capped mountains in the distance.  We went past small herds of vicuñas and alpacas.  The stone of the mountains blazed blue and red.  There was the same sort of vast emptiness, but it was somehow much more alive.  We rode through salt flats that reflected the beautiful clouds, and past canyons cut in painted rock.

Around 10 PM at night, we arrived in Salta.  It was hot and humid as we walked through the night streets to the hostel.  After putting our bags in the room, we walked out into the city, which was still bustling at what must have been midnight or later.  Beautiful, slightly dilapidated buildings towered up all around us.  Intimidatingly attractive people sat in outdoor cafés and assessed us as we walked by.  I am glad to be in Argentina.

Tacna-Arica-Calama

A few days ago, we returned to Arequipa from Cotahuasi. The bus ride was perhaps the most eventful yet. Around midnight, the bus stopped and the lights went out. After receiving no information for 15 minutes or so concerning this curious development, I got my flashlight and clambered out of the bus. It turned out that the bus ahead of ours was stuck in a patch of deep and remarkably adhesive mud. There was a group of men digging out the wheels of the bus, and another group of people watching. The landscape was utterly surreal, as we were in the middle of a 15,000 foot mountain pass, well above the timber line. It was raining, and we seemed to be the only lifeforms for miles and miles. I went walking off to the side of the road into a field of boulders and large mounds of green moss. Finally I got back onto the bus, and within another 10 minutes we were moving again. Another part of the road seemed to have turned into a river, and though the small pickup truck behind our bus stopped at the side, we went barreling through. It made me sort of jumpy, but seemed to work out fine.

Despite the delays, we wound up in Arequipa at the projected time of 4 AM, and almost immediately boarded another bus to Tacna, which is the Chilean border town. As the sun came up, we were passing through sand dunes littered with red rocks. Food and newspaper vendors started boarding the bus around 9:30 and hawked their wares, and the steward deemed it the appropriate time to put on some absurdly violent movie. The desert spread out into long planes with hills in the distance. In one place there were dozens of dust devils in the distance, some seemingly towering up to 50 feet or so. The sand was dotted with little oases occasionally, and one large one toward the end that turned out to be Tacna.

We checked into a hotel in Tacna, took baths, and then walked around town. It had a different sort of feel than any of the other towns so far. Maybe a little more European. There was a sand colored cathedral on the plaza with beautiful, circular stained-glass windows. Some of them had masonic imagery for some reason. Further down in the plaza there was a large cast iron fountain that had been made by A.G. Eiffel and shipped over to Perú. He apparently made quite a mark on the towns in the area.

The next day we bought tickets for Arica at the quaint train station. It seemed to have been relatively unchanged for years, though a sign painted onto the traincar proclaimed that the Peruvian government was “on the edge of the future” or something like that. We rode to Arica in a combined engine and passenger car. It was bright yellow and green, and carried us through a familiar landscape of amazing desolation. Eventually I could see the sun reflecting in streaks in the Pacific. We arrived in Arica at about 7 o’clock with the 2 hour time difference.

It was immediately evident that we were in a different country. Chile is much more European in feel than Perú. There are many more privately owned cars, and thus many gas stations with coffee and junk food, including delicious packaged flan. It also seems to be more consumer based, with lots of pedestrian malls selling clothes and electronics. A lot of the youth are painfully fashion conscious. In general, it felt more like the U.S. than anywhere I have been so far. The prices are accordingly high across the board. I cannot understand Chilean Spanish nearly as well as Peruvian; it seems much more rapid and slurred together. After spending a night in a french owned hostel, about which roamed a cat named Napoleon, we got on an annoyingly expensive and uncomfortable bus to Calama. We were stopped twice in the middle of the night to get out and open our bags for inspection by the police.

Calama is in the middle of the Atacama desert, which is the most arid in the world. It is a fairly nondescript city, apparently the retirement place of miners from the nearby hills. It has a large shopping mall and a small downtown that is somewhat unattractive. When I hopped on the wrong bus one day, I saw the paved streets dead end in the desert. While the downtown is crowded with ostentatious construction, the people out in the far reaches of town live in corrugated metal shacks. Groups of stray dogs roam around. While walking in the plaza one day, I saw a dog show that involved a bunch of the unfortunate beasts being dressed in tutus. I thought of it as just one more reason to be in Argentina soon.

Cotahuasi

We came to Cotahuasi in order to get off the beaten track to some degree, and also to see what is apparently the deepest canyon in the world, Cañon del Cotahuasi.

The bus ride there was pretty incredible. At 5 PM in Arequipa, we embarked on a 12 hour journey over rocky roads and through a 15,000 foot mountain pass in a bus that was absolutely stuffed with people. Some had apparently bought standing room tickets and were standing/sitting/sleeping in the aisle. One man opted to use my shoulder as a head cushion for most of the night in the sweltering bus, despite my frequent squirming in the opposite direction. At least they played Legionnaire, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was dubbed in Spanish.

At any rate, the ride was beautiful. Before it got dark, we rode through rolling desert hills and martian landscapes of red rock partially buried in white sand. There was an amazing sunset of vibrant, hot-pink hues.

We came to Cotahuasi around 6 in the morning and stumbled into a 3 dollar/night hostel. Alojamiento Chávez. The town was beautiful. We didn’t see any other foreigners for several days, and the Andes towered up all around us. You can buy the ingredients for several meals for about 2 dollars in one of the many small shops that line the main street.

I went on several walks down to the edge of the river gorge outside of town. The road wound through thatch-roofed buildings, fields, and pastures full of sheep and cows. Everyone I passed seemed to say hello, and though I got some negative gringo-oriented attention, the people were for the most part extremely kind and polite. Anyway, the rude ones were drunk 15 year olds wandering around on Año Nuevo-eve trying to impress girls, so I suppose they can be forgiven.

It rained every day in the afternoon, and rivers of cloud flowed over the tops of the mountains. The thunder echoed between mountain slopes in the distance and sounded to me like the rumble of coal cars running into one another on the train tracks in Dagsboro.

One day we took a walk past the bullfighting arena and cemetery down to the riverbank. There was a suspended cable bridge there from which I could see the rushing river below and throw rocks in an immature manner. The walk there was very interesting. We passed many people on the way who carried large bunches of mint and water containers. Part of the path was a tunnel carved through the side of the hill, which was made up of some sort of ancient conglomerate of rocks and mud. It evened out into a plane of boulders and cacti.

In Quechua, Cotahuasi means: “Star House.” When the clouds of the rainy season did not obscure my view of the sky, I could see why they gave Cotahuasi its name. The stars were amazingly beautiful.

Our next destination is Tacna, via Arequipa, to cross into Chile. There is an antique train that goes across the border for $1.50. I am very excited.

Arequipa I

I arrived in Arequipa at 6 in the morning fueled by 2 hours of sleep, but having had a much better overnight bus experience than the last.

We came to the Terminal Terrestre after rolling through miles of perfectly desolate and beautiful desert.  The city loomed up beneath El Mistí, its snow-capped volcano.  Much of the city is built out of a white volcanic rock called sillar.  It looks something like a dense pumice with flecks of mica and other impurities throughout.  Our first hostel was an old colonial structure built from the stone.  It had a large courtyard, a garden, a cat, and a curvy roof upon which I scrambled about enthusiastically.  We cooked stir-fry and noodles the first night.

The city itself was fairly spectacular in many places.  The sillar façades of banks and churches were covered in beautiful and delicate carvings.  Flagstone sidewalks and stately churches were everywhere.

One day we walked to a suburb across a river called Yanahuara, apparently a cloister of the rich.  There was a beautiful park in the center of the neighborhood, with a lookout, or mirador, that consisted of sillar arches inscribed with poetry in a beautiful Spanish Nouveau script.  I could see the curve of the earth from there, with the simple houses sprawling out toward the mountains.

Christmas cheer, I suppose, called for music to be blasted from the main cathedral every night, along with a psychedelic light show on the front of the building.  They played classics ranging from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Louis Armstrong.  It was truly bizarre. 

On Christmas eve, I went to a grocery store on the plaza to get Panetón and wine, and experienced once again Perú’s drastically different regard for personal space.  I find myself squished into impossibly small spaces with impossibly large numbers of people here on a regular basis.

Later that night, we made dinner and sat on the rooftop terrace of our hostel, La Casa de Margott, and observed the festivities.  Around 11 PM, the city exploded in fireworks.  I could see and hear them from all directions, from all over the city.  Even the policemen standing watch on the corner set some off.  Cars honked their horns even more than usual, and in general, the excitement was contagious.

On Christmas day we took a walk up to the city’s main park, Selva Alegre.  There were lots of wholesome family-enjoying-Christmas-in-the-park scenes, including one in which some kids and their father messed around with one of the grasscutter alpacas that was tethered to a tree.  It got very mad and spit at them.  At one point I was afraid it was going to hurt one of the smaller children, but in the end nobody was injured.  It was just some good old Christmas alpaca torment.  Later on, in another part of the park, we observed some caged animals, including a monkey that grabbed my hand.  When it realized that I didn’t have any food, it lost interest.  It was sort of like shaking hands with a miniature old man.

On my last night in Arequipa, in la Casa de Margott, I drank several Pisco Sours with Andy, the desk clerk, and a German traveller.  It was fairly amusing to try to learn how to make them through communications in a combination of both germany and spanishy englishes.  The main thing I understood was “mas pisco.”  I guess you can never go wrong with that.

The basic recipe is:
-1 egg white
-1/4 cup Peruvian lime juice
-2 tablespoons sugar
-mas pisco
-ice water
-bitters
-cinnamon

You pretty much blend everything but the last two together until it is white and frothy and then sprinkle the bitters and cinnamon on top.  I quite like them.

The next day we got on a bus to Cotahuasi in the afternoon.

Machu Picchu

So I went on the most touristy of tourist trips a few days ago. We got on a train in Cuzco that took us through absurdly beautiful mountains, fields, and rain forests, and ultimately to the town of Aguas Calientes, or Machu Picchu Pueblo. It is a real shit hole. As soon as we got off the train we were herded into a labyrinthine artisan’s market like so many cattle. Being there solely to cater to the huge numbers of tourists who pass through, the town consists of a sprawling jumble of shoddily constructed buildings, tacky gringo restaurants, and of course endless packs of hucksters trying to get a buck out of any foreigner who walks by. Cuzco itself is much the same in the last respect, but has many other redeeming qualities. In any case, the bastardization that is Aguas Calientes didn’t even begin to put a damper on the absurdly beautiful surroundings. There are emerald mountains towering up all around it which are adorned by ever changing patterns of cloud stream. Wild orchids and bromeliads sprout up everywhere.

The next morning we began the hike up to Machu Picchu. It was a very steep 2.5 kilometers or so, but of course very rewarding. At the very beginning of the walk, I saw a long and bushy striped tail disappear into the foliage on one side of the path. There were (Cattleya?) orchids everywhere. Epiphytic plants perched on almost every tree. At times it seemed there were multiple layers of them… the depth of life was amazing.

The experience of Machu Picchu itself is difficult or impossible to sum up. I think because of the extent to which it is built up in people’s minds. How can you re-describe one of the wonders of the world? How can you experience it the way it is “supposed” to be experienced? I think in the end, the things that affected me most were the things that always affect me. The seemingly endless mountains, the clouds. At one point we got out of the crowd and sat on one of the grassy slopes to the side of the ruins proper. I think my favorite part of the day was sitting there against the stone looking down into the valley below. The most impressive thing about Machu Picchu itself was the wonderful system of water channels. We saw these in all their glory, channeling the rainwater down into a series of pools. Also very impressive were the very large rabbit/squirrel/chinchillas (Viscachas) who seemed to have adapted well to the area. They sat on the walls eating blades of grass and eyed us suspiciously.

So. I don’t know what Machu Picchu’s function was, and I don’t know why everyone feels the need to theorize. All I need it to be is a beautiful place on top of beautiful mountains.

The train ride back to Cuzco the next day was an eventful one. At one point it stopped on the tracks and all the lights went out for around 40 minutes. No one seemed to know what was going on, and being somewhat neurotic, I tried to prepare myself mentally to deal with bandits. Being stuck in a dark box in Peru is not very enjoyable. The problem turned out to be a malfunctioning locomotive rather than people with firearms, or whatever other imaginative menace I could come up with.

We have been in Cuzco ever since, and are going to take a bus to Arequipa tonight.

Lima to Cuzco

After a couple of days in Miraflores, we decided to explore a bit of central Lima.  The taxi ride that got us there was the most dramatic I have ever experienced.  I think the cab drivers in Lima have created an art-form out of horn use; they are unparalleled by the likes of NY drivers.  The fleet is also curiously eclectic, featuring 1970’s American muscle cars and VW bugs.  We went hurtling through narrow, pedestrian filled streets that were paved in stone.  The sheer number of people in Lima is somewhat dizzying.  We finally got to the Plaza de Armas.  The grand stature of the spanish colonial state buildings and cathedrals was amazing.  They were highly ornate and brightly colored.  The ubiquitous machine gun police stood watch.

We walked from the Plaza de Armas down a pedestrian glutted street filled with markets and restaurants to a neighboring plaza.  At one point I turned a corner to see an Incan temple in the middle of the bustling metropolis.  Lima was more beautiful and amazing than I expected, though I was glad to leave its oppressive air pollution and crowds when  I returned to Miraflores that night.

 I spent a few more days walking around in Miraflores.  There was a vast pre-incan ruin about 10 minutes away from the hostel.  It seemed to sprawl out over miles.  We went to a vegetarian restaurant called “Govinda,” which is run by the Krishnas.  They seem to have a healthy foothold in the continent.  I watched “La Brujula Dorada” (the golden compass) while sipping Inca Kola. 

I joined an old club called “South American Explorers” that has clubhouses in cities throughout South America.  They helped us gather information about the trip.

Overall, I found Miraflores to be quite enchanting.

Finally, we bought our bus tickets to Cuzco, as we decided that it would be best to go up to Macchu Picchu before the rainy season was in full swing.  We left Lima at around 5:30.  It was quite unnerving to see the vast slums on the outskirts of Lima after spending a week in one of the more aristocratic suburbs.  The buildings went from mouldering highrises to unfinished mudbrick complexes, to flimsy one-room shacks thrown up in the coastal desert.  The summer fog only gave me glimpses of islands out in the ocean through the sandy desert hills.

Around midnight we began climbing.  The bus wound around treacherous roads in the barren mountains, southern constellations burnt into me through the window.  I have never seen the milky way so bright.  It was an entirely new sky.

After some fitful sleep, I woke up feeling sick from the altitude and the swaying of the bus.  I took diamode for the altitude and tried to find the horizon to orient myself.  We rode through hours of fog and rain, which seemed to clear suddenly to reveal the Andes.  We began climbing even higher and winding along river beds and through little farms perched on the hillsides.  Each seemed to have its own population of pigs and cows.  I saw old Andean women wearing hats and braids.

Soon I began feeling the strange numb breathlessness again.  When we finally got to Cuzco I was weak and exhausted, but the crooked cobblestone streets began working their charm on me.

We clambered into a hostel, only to discover that night that it was placed directly above a particularly rambunctious discotech.  So it was that I fell asleep to “Mr. Bombastic” my first night in the Andes.

Peru

I think I only began to feel fear about an hour before our plane landed in Lima last night.  It suddenly dawned on me that I was dropping into the middle of a dark, sprawling city of 7 million people who spoke a different language than I.  We got off the plane and found a taxi to take us to a hostel.  It quickly became clear that I was truly in an entirely different place.  There were tiny cars and colectivos flying all over the place.  Rickshaws and groups of Limeños filtered through the traffic… I caught glimpses of spanish colonial structures in a forest of nondescript concrete towers.  Our taxi driver told us that his family was from the amazon to the north…

 Today we walked around Miraflores.  There were cliffs down to the Pacific and beautiful parks filled with sculpture and mosaics and couples lying in the grass.  We bought the ingredients for our dinner at the grocery down the street for 8 soles (2 dollars) and cooked it in the communal kitchen of our hostel under flickering light, amidst a blur of languages.  I drank coca tea for the first time.

 It is sort of hard to explain the intensity of the experience.

Tickets

I have tickets to Lima, Peru for December 1st. The round trip cost was $512, which seemed like a fairly good price to me. We are probably going to be staying in Peru for several weeks before moving on through Bolivia to Argentina. We have thought of seeing the plains at Nazca, Lake Titicaca, some of the Pacific coastline, and perhaps some Incan ruins.

I will post more plans as they are solidified.

Planning

I have little money, but in two or three months I plan to board a plane to Lima, Peru and make my way to Argentina. Perhaps to a WWOOF farm in Patagonia for a month or two before renting an apartment in Buenos Aires.

This site will be my South America blog.