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OK, so I am in Santiago, staying in a converted orphanage/after school cae program with a friend (of a friend) Matt Crip. I am going to be here in Santiago for about a week (a week, in one place!!! yay!!!) getting stuff ready for the next leg of the adventure, when another friend from Alaska comes down and we bike the Carretera Austral in southern chile for three weeks. It feels great to finally be here, and I guess I should finish off with the rest of my story that was cut off before.
SO, leaving the salt flats of Bolivia was pretty much the most exhausting day of my life, but I made it to the tiny town of San Pedro de Quemez in the late afternoon....unfortunately the ony person attending the two hospedajes in town was a little old lady who was high on coco leaves. SO, I bought some yogurt and waited for someone a little more with it came back. I ended up staying that last night in Bolivia in a dorm room with 8 beds to myself, for about 2 USD. pretty cheap. A few hours later, a jeep full of other gringo tourists came by and stayed in the same hostel. It was fun talking to them, but them being there meant that I got to eat their AMAZING gormet food (for a small price) After that really hard day, gormet omlets really hit the spot, great.
In the morning I was going for the border. My lame map showed a "2-lane dirt road" going from San Pedro to the border, but as with most roads in Bolivia I wasn't going to trust that it was 2 lanes. I was right. At times it was two lanes, but at most oter times it was very bumpy, covered in salt, or hardly there at all. I finally got to the border with Chile around 4 o clock, got robbed in the exchange rate, and then made it across with no trouble at all. When I say I got robbed, I really mean robbed; the exchange rate of boliviano to chilean peso is 1 to 60, but the border gurad told me 1 to 15. so I lost about...21 bucks... I think. Not the biggest deal, but very irritating! So, got into the border town of Ollagûe around 5 o clock chilean time, bought some good cookies, realized that I didn't actually have any more money, and went to sleep.
I had 2,000 pesos to my name, maybe 4 dollars to last me the two days to Calama, Chile, and I made it work! I did about 90 kilometers that first day in Chile on very good (compared to Bolivia) dirt roads, and slept that night out of the wind in some kind of rock shelter. Made it to Calama on the 12th and checked into a cheapie hotel, with CABLE TV. I bought a lot of groceries, and, although I am not really pleased to admit it, spent about 24 hours sleeping, eating, and watching TV. It was amazing to just sit a relax for a while. Left Calama on the 14th, somehow without very much food, and started going to Antofagasta, 215 kilometers away. That day started out with my second flat tire of the trip, but I made it about halfway, sleeping that night in an abandoned nitrate town by the side of the road. In the beginning of the 20th century "Chilean Nitrate" as fertilizer led to made sort of gold rushes, in which towns sprang up overnight and faded away after about 10 years. I slept in the remnants of a clay-bricked city that in another 50 years will be not mroe than a big pile of mud. It was pretty cool. Another reason I slept where I did is that the WIND in Chile is pretty much the most annoying thing ever, and this was the first place I found that was out of it.
The next day I made the 100 or so kilometers to Antofagasta, and went a little bit crazy in the wind. I think I talked to it for about 3 hours; yelling, pleading, begging, scream at it to GO AWAY. It didn't, but I made it to Antofagasta anyways, got into my hotel, and ooked the cheapest bus ticket to Santiago for the following day.
So yesterday at noon I go onto the Pullman class bus to Santiago, a 19 hour trip. I had to take apart my bike and put it into a box to do it, which is always irritating but getting less so as time goes on. Got on at noon, 5 bad action movies and 3 meals of bread a cheese later I made it into Santiago, at 7 o clock this morning. I walked my bike and my bags (which are alltogether absurdly heavy) from the bus stop to outside near the metro station, where after a slightly stressed phone call Matt met me, and we started the treacherous journey to this house. If you want to understand the treachery, here is what it was like: Imagine you have a huge box, weighing about 20 pounds, and a bag weighing 100 pounds that has nothing to hold on to, and you need to travel from one end of New York City to the other, during morning traffic, and the only way you can travel is by subway. Because THAT is what I did this morning, only in Santiago, not New York. Matt too the box (smart move) while I took the heavy heavy bags with no straps, only ropes. I still have marks in my shoulders, 6 hours later, from where I was carrying the bags. Slightly painful. Oh, and I forgot to mention that in the imaginary situation you have no money, because I don't, only about 5,000 pesos, which is enough for a really good hamburger and little else.
SO, I am here in this orphanage all alone, scared to leave because I wasn't sure how I would get back in, being bored. BUT someone who lives here showed me the computer room, and here I am. Free couch to sleep on, free internet, and nice people. Good place to wait out a week. I think in a few days I will make peanut butter balls, which is my favorite holiday tradition in my family and I think I would cry without them at christmas. Mom, you have to make some for me too at home and eat them. do it for me.
On the 22nd my good friend Caitlin will come, and she and I will head south! Hope everyone is doing well, I am going to try and put up some pictures now!
(Oh, and P.S., although most of you don't want to know, tonight I am going to do laundry, which hasn't been done since Halloween. seriously. y.u.c.k.)
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