San Pedro de Atacama is on the border between Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, basically the middle of nowhere. San Pedro is the most deserty-desert I’ve ever seen. On parts of the drive from Calama to San Pedro, there were no plants, no cactus, no water, no anything living. Just pure red rock. We spent our first day of the trip waking up at 4:30ish and catching a flight at 6:50 to Calama. After a nap on the plane and a nap in the hotel, Hannah, Munika and I headed out to the largest open mine in the world. As Hannah pointed out their logo looks like an evil villain’s from some Disney movie, or evil corporation that’s out to make as much money as possible while meanwhile destroying the world… Oh, wait… It was kind of breath taking to see those ginormous trucks (where the wheels are larger than a six foot man) look like little Lego cars I played with when I was 5. After returning from the mine, we ate, slept, ate and slept some more.
The next morning, we headed out to San Pedro and spent the day planning the next couple of days which involved Salt Flats and flamingos, lagos altiplanicos, geysers at 6:00 in the morning with the sunrise, hot springs, the sunset over sand dunes and, of course, sandboarding. Oh there were also some ceramics tossed in there. San Pedro is a strange town. It’s where all the rich people go to see something strange. Kind of like Puerto Natales. So there are some really nice hotels and restaurants and everything has dirt roads, pitted with rocks. Luckily, it’s slightly warmer than anywhere else in Chile (except in morning and night). San Pedro is also an oasis, literally. So there are plants and living things (like lots of stray dogs) there. The first night, we went star-gazing with a silly Frenchman, who showed us Jupiter and it’s moons, Vega (which looks like its having a epileptic attack), and pointed out a few constellations to us, like the Southern Cross and Sagittarius. The next morning, a huge group of us headed out to go see the Salt Flats, flamingos and lagos altiplanicos (I don’t now what the translation for that is). It was pretty beautiful and my camera battery didn’t die! That night we made ceramics with this crazy old drunk man down the street, who then forgot to fire our ceramics. Sad panda. Fun nonetheless. Next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed at 3:30ish only to get picked up 40 minutes late by the bus company who drove us out to go see the geysers. At about 7:30 the sun reached the top of the mountains and began to spread over the geyser valley. It was a lot warmer once the sun was out. That night, we headed out to Valle de la Muerte in the Cordillera de Sal. The Cordillera de Sal looks like a bunch of dinosaur backs lined up and Valle de la Muerte is a gorgeous maze of canyons and sand dunes. To see the sunset, we hiked across one such sand dune in Valle de la Luna (which looks exactly like the Moon). And watched the sunset, which looked surprisingly like the sunrise (yay for lack of pollution!) The sky did turn a little rosy, but let’s just say this was no L.A. on-fire sky. That night we treated ourselves to Will Ferrell in “Blades of Glory,” in which Hannah and I found our song. Now I’ve had Aerosmith stuck in my head for the past week. It’s not a really happy place. The next day, we went sandboarding, which is like snowboarding only on sand dunes, so it doesn’t hurt. It was slightly windy, which prevented us from sandboarding quite as much as possible and made it possible to get sand everywhere, nuff said.
We headed back to Calama that night for an amazing sunset, some ice cream, and some more sleep and TV and were up and back the next morning to have lunch at [OH!] Salad before class. Oh, salad! How I missed you!
In other news, I’m going to try to make manjar tonight, have been café hopping around Santa Lucia and have yet to find a bad café, have begun to add es to anything that is plural (which doesn’t really work with some words,) also couldn’t tried to use solamentely as a word last night and start speaking in English without realizing it to my host family. Hmmmm…strangeness. And now back to the Spanish essay!
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Clubbin Santiago Style
The last couple weeks have involved exploring the bar scene in Santiago. So here’s a little rundown of the good, the bad and the ugly in Santiago, having only skimmed the surface.
Jazz Clubs: There are a surprising number of jazz clubs in Santiago, well, maybe not a lot. But enough. The most official jazz club in Santiago is The Club de Jazz, which is this spiffy little place down in Nuñoa. The nice thing about it is you can go and here jam sessions outside before the actual show starts, but given that winter is starting the being outside is not so hot anymore (literally). The atmosphere around the jazz club is too hip but in a way where they just don’t care about you. Not like they look down but they are just too hip to notice you. It’s also one classy joint and offers jazz for a relatively cheap price Thurs., Fri, and Saturday. The other qualified jazz club (that I’ve been to) is in Bellavista, called something like the Pereseguir. Two Fridays ago, we saw this amazing trumpeter and trombonist. They basically just rocked, but in kind of a sketchy Chilean way if you know what I mean. This jazz club fell within the preppy/yuppie hip stereotype, kind of the style that the host family I lived with last quarter would appreciate. Clean and smooth. We went to one last jazz show last week. It wasn’t exactly at a jazz club, but at a multipurpose café, the type that plays artsy movies on certain nights, has slam poetry sessions and occasional jazz shows. So it was mainly talking and sharing pitchers rather than listening to jazz. It was also the most touristy of the three, because I’ve read about it in all my guide books, and because that’s the type of crowd they seem to cater too (we, a group of about 11 loud Americans, met some Canadians there.)
Bars: Last Tuesday, Stephen’s host sister and brother took us to the opening of this bar somewhere on the border of Bellavista and Patronato. It was superhip as well. The almost unfinished industrial look with the fake crystal chandeliers, grapes and peanuts everywhere, an open dance floor, and free daquiris. What more could you ask for? Well, it was also kind of empty, being opening night and all. So we went to Bar Central, which Stephen’s sister told me was the best place around. I can verify this because we watched the bartender do tricks the rest of the time. He also made a great Caipirinha. There’s place down the street which also tries to fit within the supercool category. But their drinks are overpriced and they kept insisting on talking to us in English and offering English speaking menus, what’s up with that? Dom and I also went to a bar on Manuel Montt called Ramblas. Dom told me he had broken a table there once, so we vbought each other beers and ward off drunk men who kept coming up to talk to us. The one dive bar on that strip is Cyclo Pub, they have comfy chairs and really greasy fries. A guy there also offered to buy me a beer once in English and when I turned him down in Spanish he tried to explain to me why he had asked me to buy a drink in English and forgot the English word for beautiful. Aubrey on the other hand has found this spiffy bar/discotheque called Background. Which is actually lots of fun and pretty laidback. First half is a bar, second half is a dance floor. So we danced. Which was wonderful happy goodness.
Discotheques: Discotheques are slightly expensive here. And I feel like a lot of them can be really hit or miss. Often more miss than hit. In terms of the last couple of weeks, we hit up Subterraneo for Troy’s birthday and El Tunel for Mishan’s. Subterraneo was fun, but super high cover without the free drink. Also, it was one of those places to see and judge and be seen and judged, which puts a little bit of edge on the dancing. Sad Panda. El Tunel, per us., just kind of has a no strings attached kind of feel. And crazy dancing is done and people have good and crazy times. Co-op party music with a neon-light dance floor. Sweet! And that is the quick update on the crazy places I’ve been visiting for the past two weeks. Not much else has happened besides making cookies with my host brothers. And now back to culture and schoolwork. Oh, but first to San Pedro.
Jazz Clubs: There are a surprising number of jazz clubs in Santiago, well, maybe not a lot. But enough. The most official jazz club in Santiago is The Club de Jazz, which is this spiffy little place down in Nuñoa. The nice thing about it is you can go and here jam sessions outside before the actual show starts, but given that winter is starting the being outside is not so hot anymore (literally). The atmosphere around the jazz club is too hip but in a way where they just don’t care about you. Not like they look down but they are just too hip to notice you. It’s also one classy joint and offers jazz for a relatively cheap price Thurs., Fri, and Saturday. The other qualified jazz club (that I’ve been to) is in Bellavista, called something like the Pereseguir. Two Fridays ago, we saw this amazing trumpeter and trombonist. They basically just rocked, but in kind of a sketchy Chilean way if you know what I mean. This jazz club fell within the preppy/yuppie hip stereotype, kind of the style that the host family I lived with last quarter would appreciate. Clean and smooth. We went to one last jazz show last week. It wasn’t exactly at a jazz club, but at a multipurpose café, the type that plays artsy movies on certain nights, has slam poetry sessions and occasional jazz shows. So it was mainly talking and sharing pitchers rather than listening to jazz. It was also the most touristy of the three, because I’ve read about it in all my guide books, and because that’s the type of crowd they seem to cater too (we, a group of about 11 loud Americans, met some Canadians there.)
Bars: Last Tuesday, Stephen’s host sister and brother took us to the opening of this bar somewhere on the border of Bellavista and Patronato. It was superhip as well. The almost unfinished industrial look with the fake crystal chandeliers, grapes and peanuts everywhere, an open dance floor, and free daquiris. What more could you ask for? Well, it was also kind of empty, being opening night and all. So we went to Bar Central, which Stephen’s sister told me was the best place around. I can verify this because we watched the bartender do tricks the rest of the time. He also made a great Caipirinha. There’s place down the street which also tries to fit within the supercool category. But their drinks are overpriced and they kept insisting on talking to us in English and offering English speaking menus, what’s up with that? Dom and I also went to a bar on Manuel Montt called Ramblas. Dom told me he had broken a table there once, so we vbought each other beers and ward off drunk men who kept coming up to talk to us. The one dive bar on that strip is Cyclo Pub, they have comfy chairs and really greasy fries. A guy there also offered to buy me a beer once in English and when I turned him down in Spanish he tried to explain to me why he had asked me to buy a drink in English and forgot the English word for beautiful. Aubrey on the other hand has found this spiffy bar/discotheque called Background. Which is actually lots of fun and pretty laidback. First half is a bar, second half is a dance floor. So we danced. Which was wonderful happy goodness.
Discotheques: Discotheques are slightly expensive here. And I feel like a lot of them can be really hit or miss. Often more miss than hit. In terms of the last couple of weeks, we hit up Subterraneo for Troy’s birthday and El Tunel for Mishan’s. Subterraneo was fun, but super high cover without the free drink. Also, it was one of those places to see and judge and be seen and judged, which puts a little bit of edge on the dancing. Sad Panda. El Tunel, per us., just kind of has a no strings attached kind of feel. And crazy dancing is done and people have good and crazy times. Co-op party music with a neon-light dance floor. Sweet! And that is the quick update on the crazy places I’ve been visiting for the past two weeks. Not much else has happened besides making cookies with my host brothers. And now back to culture and schoolwork. Oh, but first to San Pedro.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Sick and Tired Again
Keeping life updated on this blog thing is harder than I thought it would be. And right no life seems kind of hard to compartmentalize, but in terms of South American adventures…
Last weekend I went to Buenos Aires kind of on my own. And by tthat I mean, I went by myself, stayed by myself and in general tried to avoid the 15 other Stanford students there. But in a city as large as Buenos Aires with only 3 days, that’s not really hard to do. However, as soon as I got off the plane, I got sick. And I mean the WHA-BAMN type of sick where you don’t really feel like doing anything except lying there watching reruns of Alias and CSI, over and over and over…But because I’m me, and in Buenos Aires, and the hostel beds were more like pieces of felt laid over wooden boards, I decided to go out and explore a little more. I was staying in the yuppies-ville of Buenos Aires this time. They had told me that it was hip, but everyone was just trying a little to hard it seemed like. Luckily for me, there was lots of good food around, so I ate a lot. I also heard some interesting version of Argentinean jazz, but then again, whose goes to Argentina to see jazz. Spent sometime wandering, sometime shopping, watched an American movie, spent a night trying to go out with the Stanford kids, and that pretty much sums it up, except there was more beautiful architecture involved and some great people met. Oh I also saw some art, because that is what I do. However, throughout most of this my brain was swimming in a pool of mucus so everything is a little fuzzy.
When I got home, I had class, but decided not to go and spent the majority of the next two days trying to get in touch with every single family member and chat for a short period of time. Sometimes it’s hard to get all sides of the stories. People are so selective with what they tell you. Really, what’s up with that?
Oh, I also got to go to a party with my host family, which rocked. It’s nice because all the kids and all the parents were there and I just got to kind of space out and listen, which was really all I could contribute because they talk really really fast. And then last night, my host dad and I made plans to go teach at his interpreter school, which will be fun and strange. He also offered me a place to stay if I ever decide to come back and study in Chile, “of course, after you finish university and then, Boston,” which is incentive enough to come back to Santiago for another stretch of an unbelievably long time period.
Okay, yay for rambling, glad I got the vague update done. Maybe next week it will be better.
Last weekend I went to Buenos Aires kind of on my own. And by tthat I mean, I went by myself, stayed by myself and in general tried to avoid the 15 other Stanford students there. But in a city as large as Buenos Aires with only 3 days, that’s not really hard to do. However, as soon as I got off the plane, I got sick. And I mean the WHA-BAMN type of sick where you don’t really feel like doing anything except lying there watching reruns of Alias and CSI, over and over and over…But because I’m me, and in Buenos Aires, and the hostel beds were more like pieces of felt laid over wooden boards, I decided to go out and explore a little more. I was staying in the yuppies-ville of Buenos Aires this time. They had told me that it was hip, but everyone was just trying a little to hard it seemed like. Luckily for me, there was lots of good food around, so I ate a lot. I also heard some interesting version of Argentinean jazz, but then again, whose goes to Argentina to see jazz. Spent sometime wandering, sometime shopping, watched an American movie, spent a night trying to go out with the Stanford kids, and that pretty much sums it up, except there was more beautiful architecture involved and some great people met. Oh I also saw some art, because that is what I do. However, throughout most of this my brain was swimming in a pool of mucus so everything is a little fuzzy.
When I got home, I had class, but decided not to go and spent the majority of the next two days trying to get in touch with every single family member and chat for a short period of time. Sometimes it’s hard to get all sides of the stories. People are so selective with what they tell you. Really, what’s up with that?
Oh, I also got to go to a party with my host family, which rocked. It’s nice because all the kids and all the parents were there and I just got to kind of space out and listen, which was really all I could contribute because they talk really really fast. And then last night, my host dad and I made plans to go teach at his interpreter school, which will be fun and strange. He also offered me a place to stay if I ever decide to come back and study in Chile, “of course, after you finish university and then, Boston,” which is incentive enough to come back to Santiago for another stretch of an unbelievably long time period.
Okay, yay for rambling, glad I got the vague update done. Maybe next week it will be better.
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