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We arrived in Santiago early on the 17th of October after yet another disgustingly warm nightbus. The sun was shining and it was warm (finally!) so we freshened up and headed out to explore the city. Right next to our hotel were Santa Lucia gardens; beautiful gardens with palacial buildings on a hilltop with some good views of the city. Santiago is a huge city which unfortunately has a lot of pollution, but through the smog you could see the snow-topped Andes mountains which was quite surreal! After the gardens we headed to the Bellavista area for a beer and a traditional Chilean hot dog completo (chorizo sausage in a hot dog bun with salsa, sour cream and guacamole - mmmm!) before going up the funicular to get great panoramic views of the city. Due to the surprising heat and my lack of suncream, I had a lovely patchy burnt look that night which was the night we were celebrating my "fake birthday"! Because on my actual birthday we wouldn't be able to drink due to altitude sickness, we decided to celebrate it a week early instead. We went out for a really nice meal at an Arabic restaurant in Bellavista and then headed to a club, where my friend Alex from exchange came and met us for a few drinks, which was great although not long enough. We danced the night away with the help of many pisco sours and piscolas (pisco is a traditional spirit in Chile, and we became big fans of it!), which unsurprisingly made us feel a bit worse for wear the next day! Despite our hangovers, we went to a couple of museums the next day, including one which contained history of the whole of South America, which was really interesting but my head was too fuzzy to really take anything in! That night we met 3 new people who were joining our tour and went out for dinner to get to know them. On our last day in Santiago, we got up early and went to watch the changing of the guards at the Treasury Building which was cool, but seemed more informal than the one at Buckingham Palace. We wandered round the centre and went to a fish market, before heading to the Undurraga Vineyard for a tour. The tour was an hour long and was really interesting and informative - our guide told us all about the different grapes, how different wines are made and so on, and at the end we got to try 4 different wines, which was a personal highlight for me! That night we went for dinner and drinks to say bye to Matt, who was leaving the tour the next day, but it was quite an early night.
Next stop was La Serena, one of the biggest Chilean beach resorts. We were all excited to finally go to a beach in good weather but unfortunately the beach wasn't the greatest and it didn't seem like much effort had been made to keep it nice, probably because it was early spring and the season hadn't kicked off yet. On our first night there, we went to an observatory as that area of Chile is meant to be one of the best places in the world to see the stars. The sky just looked incredible and we learned a lot about stars, the universe, etc. We also got to see Jupiter through a telescope which was amazing. On our second night, we went for dinner at this cute little restaurant on the main square then went to the Chilean version of an old man pub where we made the most of their 1.5 litre bottles of wine for 2 quid!
After a decent nightbus for once, we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama in the blistering heat. San Pedro was probably my favourite place in Chile - it's in the Atacama desert, so is very dry and hot but it's a cute little town with dusty streets and sandy buildings and just a really cool vibe about it. On our first day we went to see the Death Valley and the Moon Valley; we saw some spectacular scenery, but the photos don't really do it justice - it just looks like lots and lots of dusty rock! We watched the sun set over Moon Valley which was beautiful. The next day we went on a lagoon excursion, where we visited 3 lagoons. The first was ridiculously salty - you could just float in the water without moving because it was so salty. There was a dark patch in the middle which was 76m deep and we just floated on top of it, crazy! We all jumped in the second lagoon, which was slightly less salty (and freezing!) to try and wash off some of the salt! The third lagoon was really shallow and the entire bed was salt crystals, which was a weird feeling on your feet, but really cool. We then got given some pisco sours and watched the sun set again.
The next day was a very important day - my birthday!! We had an early start because we were starting our 3 day, 1500km 4x4 trip across the Bolivian desert to the salt flats, but I didn't mind because I was welcomed with everyone singing happy birthday and I got given 2 bracelets and a little brass llama, very cute! After getting 2 stamps in my passport (I was very excited about this!) we headed into the desert. We'd been told it would be roasting so were in shorts and t-shirts, but our usual weather-luck struck again and we were in some sort of wind storm all day, so Chris and I looked very fetching in our shorts with our long, woolly llama socks pulled up to our knees! Other than getting hit with altitude sickness (we went from 2600m in San Pedro to 4800m at the highest point of the day), it was a great day and probably the most unique birthday I'll ever have. We stopped at a few lagoons, one of which was red and was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. At all the lagoons there were loads of flamingos, which we were all surprised about because we didn't realise that 4 types of flamingo come from Bolivia (Chris and I thought they came from Africa, because they're in the Lion King...). We also went up a volcano (the 4800m point) and saw the geysers and bubbling sulphur, which smelt really really bad! We arrived at our hostel (which was at 4259m) and just chilled out because everyone felt pretty crap from the altitude. We had dinner, toasted my birthday with water and were in bed by 8:30pm - rock & roll! We left at 7am the next day for a long day of driving in the sweltering heat on very bumpy roads - needless to say, everyone was a bit irritable that day! We stopped at some great sights though, including this collection of massive stones (which the boys thoroughly enjoyed climbing) which had just formed in the middle of the desert, more lagoons and another volcano. For lunch, we had llama steak, which was interesting to try but for the next couple of days I had a terrible case of travellers' tummy and I'm not sure if that was to blame! I also felt a bit guilty about eating llama because they're really cute! We spent that night in a salt hotel which was a really cool experience. Everything was made out of salt - the walls, the bed bases, the floor, the chairs! After dinner, a few of us headed out to look at the stars and tried to remember the constellations we'd learned in La Serena but failed miserably. The next day I woke up feeling horrific and got worse throughout the day. I was really disappointed because we were visiting the salt flats and it was one of the things I was most excited about seeing in South America, but I did still see it all and got all the photos I wanted so it could have been worse. I did feel really guilty though, as we stopped at Isla Incahuasi, an island covered in cacti in the middle of the salt flats, and I was sick on a cactus... not one of my finer moments! It was still a great experience and the salt flats are just breath-taking - miles and miles of crystally white land and bright blue sky, just absolutely beautiful. After the salt flats, we visited a train cemetery which I just found strange and eery. It was where all the old steam trains had been left over a hundred years ago during the war between Bolivia and Paraguay, and it was interesting to see but there was something I just found really creepy about it. We then arrived at our lovely hotel in Uyuni, where we relaxed and had a good sleep in a comfy bed.
The next day we had a 7 hour bus to Potosi. The first 6 and a half hours were on roads without tarmac and covered in rocks, which did not help my stomach which was still feeling a bit dodgy! The scenery was great though - we went through a lot of farmland areas in the mountains and saw a lot of people farming, including a man using 2 cows to plough his crops! I skipped dinner and went straight to bed once we arrived in Potosi, which was much-needed and I felt a lot better the next day. Potosi is a really interesting town with a lot of history - in the 1800s it was really rich because it had a huge silver-mining industry so it has lots of huge, beautiful buildings, but it went downhill once it lost the silver and now has a lot of poverty and problems. We only had one full day there and that morning we went to visit an orphanage. First of all we went to a market to buy things for the kids - we all put in a tenner and got loads of food and toys for them. The orphanage was a lot better than I thought it would be - the building was in great condition and it had loads of facilites for disabled kids, including physiotherapy and speech therapy. It gets money from the government to pay for the teachers and the health staff, but nothing else so all our food and toys were greatly appreciated. The kids were adorable, and Chris and I spent a while playing with a ball we gave them. After the orphanage we went to an old folks' home, where we also took food. I found this sadder than the orphanage because the old people had been taken in from the streets, and they had no families. One old lady kept telling us "thank you for remembering us, no one remembers us" which was upsetting, but a lot of them were really happy and excited, as well as intrigued by us. In the afternoon, we went to the museum and the Mint Building and went on a tour to learn about the Mint, which was really interesting because of Potosi's silver history. That evening, we went for dinner and I managed to eat an entire meal which I was very happy about!
We are now in Sucre, which is a very pretty city that used to be the capital of Bolivia. Today has been quite unproductive as we went out for halloween last night, which was a great night and we all made an effort to dress up. Tomorrow we're going to see some dinosaur footprints before getting a nightbus to Cochabamba. Bolivia seems really cool and a very interesting place, so I'm glad we're here for a couple of weeks, but I'm definitely going to watch what I eat from now on!
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