Where the Desert Meets the Water

Today is my last full day in Peru. I am very close to the Ecuadorian border and tomorrow I am taking a bus to Guayaquil to visit my Stanfordite friend Carlos Burgos. Where I am it is completely warm, all the time, despite the fact that it's winter. I've been within the tropics for a month now, but here where I am is the first time that it's really felt tropical.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. To pick up where we left off, I took a night bus to Trujillo, about 9 hours north of Lima. Here, you have to go by the time it takes to get to a place, not the distance, because distances can be completely deceptive here. It might very easily take 6 hours to go 150 miles, due to road conditions, mountainous terrain, and other variables.

Trujillo is the capital of the Chimú culture, which rose and fell before the Incas took control of everything from southern Colombia to northern Chile. The Chimú capital city, Chan-Chan, is right outside Trujillo. Unfortunately it wasn't very well preserved, mostly due to periodic El Niño-related flooding that had the tendency to sweep everything away. The fact that their buildings were basically big piles of sand right next to the ocean didn't help, either. But hey. Now they are restoring Chan-Chan, bit by bit, and I took a tour of it. Here is a picture of its main square:

Trujillo itself is a pretty quiet place. It does have good ceviche though. I must have that stuff on the brain, as I have eaten it for lunch every day for the past week. And I haven't gotten sick once!

From there, I took another night bus to Máncora, which is where I am now. Máncora is a completely laid-back beach town, and I have spent the last two days a) sitting under an umbrella by the beach; b) swimming in the warm, warm water; c) ordering ceviche for lunch; d) ordering beer and/or Inca Kola whenever I get thirsty and/or the ceviche is too spicy. Life is good.

Tomorrow: Ecuador.

Alerta: Esto está en castellano

Varios amigos hispanohablantes me han escrito para reclamar la falta de entradas en castellano en mi blog. La verdad es que tenía todas las intenciones de escribir más en castellano pero como estoy atrasado en lo que debo estar escribiendo en inglés (acabo de publicar algo sobre Lima, por ejemplo, y dejé esa ciudad hace como 5 días) no estaba entre mis prioridades escribir en español hasta poder ponerme al día con el inglés. Pero, me encuentro con tiempo y ganas de repente, así que me lanzo. Téngase en cuenta que no he hablado en castellano mucho últimamente (salvo para decir cosas como "¿me puede traer otra cerveza, por favor?" y "pero ¿cómo va a estar tan atrasado el bus?") así que ojalá perdonen cualquier falta inevitable de ortografía y/o gramática.

Lo primero que quiero decir es que--y esto es para mis lectores chilenos--ustedes no saben lo bien que lo tienen en Chile. Mientras nosotros nos quejamos de Transantiago, hay combis en Lima que corren por las calles a altísima velocidad sin ningún recorrido fijo aparente, y los taxis en todo el Perú no tienen taxímetros, así que antes de subir a cualquiera tienes que negociar la tarifa. En Bolivia, apenas se ven los combis de La Paz a través de las nubes negras y espesas que emiten. De hecho con cueva paran cuando se lo pides. En Chile todos somos muy buenos para reclamar las cosas molestas, pero vivimos con un nivel envidiable de tranquilidad, incluso en las partes más caóticas de Santiago.

Segundo: Perú, sobre todo, está muy, muy pujante últimamente. Es un país muy power. La gente es muy creativa, y tienen un empuje turístico muy fuerte acá. Aprovechan muy bien de la diversidad geográfica del país (porque no sólo tienen playa, cordillera y desierto, sino también selva amazónica, ruinas majestuosas, y mar tibio), y su situación económica está mucho mejor que antes. Tienen mucho que ofrecerle al turista. Así que Chile tiene que seguir compitiendo mucho.

Mientras tanto, ustedes deben viajar al Perú ahora ya. Ahora que GOL va por $150 ida y vuelta, deben aprovechar de visitar Cusco y Máncora, en el norte (donde estoy ahora). Hay ceviche muy rico, buenísimo, por algo así como 1.500 pesos el platito. Acá se puede vivir como un rey por unas 10 lukas el día.

Tercero: estoy con mucho orgullo de la empresa chilena, que acá es muy visible. Hay Falabella y Ripley por doquier. Se vende Casillero del Diablo en incluso las licorerías de esquina de pueblo chico. Hay mucha capital chilena invertida acá. Además de esa sensación agradable de familiaridad (que me pasa doblemente, ya que Ripley y McDonalds también son como "de casa" para mí), es un orgullo ver que somos respetados y conocidos acá por las buenas empresas. Así que eso.

Yo he estado acá en el Perú por casi dos semanas ya. He ido desde Puno (donde el Lago Titicaca) a Cusco, Arequipa, Lima, Trujillo y ahora Máncora. Es un país lleno de buena gente, con una tranquilidad nueva que parece que todos disfrutan. Es más seguro y más próspero. Lo he estado pasando como el vino en caja (o sea, la raja).

Una amiga mía del colegio, Kaitlin, estuvo conmigo hasta Lima, y después se volvió a Londres. Ahora me voy a juntar en Guayaquil con un amigo de mi magíster--un ecuatoriano llamado Carlos Burgos. Pero por ahora he estado disfrutando estos días de playa. Hoy, por ejemplo, me senté en un puesto bajo un paraguas enorme en la playa principal de Máncora, y había una señora que me trajo Inca Kola en la mañana, un riquísimo ceviche para el almuerzo, acompañando por un litro de Pilsen (la cerveza del Callao), y otra Inca Kola en la tarde. Hasta vigilaba mis cosas cuando quería ir a nadar en el mar a ratos. Quién como yo, ¿cierto?

Me despido señalando lo chévere que es mi vida últimamente. Saludos, abrazos y cariños a tod@s.

Lima: La Horrible?

Lima, like most other Latin American capitals (like, for example, La Paz, ahem) is not an easy place to be a tourist. It's enormous, its public transportation apparatus is all but indescipherable, it doesn't have a ton of tourist attractions and it's kind of ugly in parts. Actually, most of the nice parts of Lima are hidden behind 10-foot high walls topped off with electric fenses, particularly in its most exclusive district, La Molina.

That being said, if you know where to go, you can have a really nice time. Lima is full of restaurants where new, amazing things are being done with food. Ceviche, for example, is at its peak here. For the uninitiated, ceviche is raw fish (it has to be fresh), which is chopped up and then "cooked" in lemon juice. Then you add in a slice of sweet potato, finely chopped red onions, a slice of pepper, some dried corn kernels and maybe (in some regions) some yucca, you have yourself a plate of heaven. Might sound gross, but it's not. This is a mix of the robust flavors of fish, the spices of the peppers and onions, and the tartness of the lemons that just can't be beat. The gourmet cachet of Peru lies in the fact that four cultures have been mixing in earnest there since colonial times--Chinese (who were brought over to South America as slave laborers on the railroads and plantations), Africans (ditto), Indigenous and Spanish (and other European countries as well). Ceviche incorporates influences from Europe, Africa the Americas and Asia.

So Kaitlin and I had a good time sampling the local cuisine, seeing as how Peruvians are really undergoing a renaissance in this area (judging by the number of new culinary academies sprouting up all over the place, anyway). And, since Lima is right on the coast, the fish is fresh. We also were able to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and this was last Thursday, before it was even out in the US.

We explored the center of Lima, including the Barrio Chino (where we ate at a chifa, which is what they call Chinese restaurants here), as well as the districts of Miraflores (where we stayed), San Isidro, La Molina and San Borja. One really cool attraction was the Larco Museum, which had quite a collection of Pre-Columbian erotic pottery. Here is a photo just of its storage area, which is open to the public: lots of pots.

The thing about Lima is that it concentrates such a large number of people from so many different economic and social backgrounds pretty close together. In a city that has grown from 1 million to over 8 million in the span of about 50 years ("¿En qué momento se había jodido el Perú?"), this means that the upper classes have been constantly trying to move further and further away from the lower classes that continue to filter in from Peru's mountainous and jungle areas. So on one end you have the aforementioned walls and electric fences, while on the other end you have the northern and southern "cones" of the city, full of "human settlements" (shantytowns, and sometimes just campsites) where migrants have literally just set down their stuff and said "Aquí me quedo."

But whereas 6 years ago on my first visit to the city it practically seemed like it was under a state of siege, with people afraid to even walk down the streets, there are signs of progress. Malls have been built in the cones (many with Chilean capital), because the "human settlers" have increasing adquisitive power and have proven themselves to be good credit customers, paying what they owe on time. There are really nice street cafés in the district of Miraflores, a sort-of upmarket suburb of Lima, where you can sit on the sidewalk without too much fear of having your stuff snatched. And any place selling shawls made out of baby alpaca for US$200 can't be too bad off.

The Republic of Arequipa

We then took a night bus and arrived early on the morning of the 21st (I think) in Arequipa, Peru's "white city." Its inhabitants are so fiercely proud of their city that there's a sign at the entrance to the city saying "Welcome to the Republic of Arequipa." Although I later found out that it was an ad for the newspaper La República, I think it was a good echo of people's sentiments. Lima, like Santiago, and Seoul, and Paris, and other important capitals in the world, is where the vast majority of the country's economic and political clout is concentrated. Arequipa wants to change all that. Its inhabitants once demanded that they be given their own passport and flag, to distinguish them from other Peruvians!

It's called the white city because its main buildings are made out of white volcanic rock. So all around its main plaza you can see a ton of gorgeous, shining white archways. Looming above everything is Misti, the local volcano and source of the rock. The cathedral is one of less than 100 in the world that is authorized to put the papal flag on the altar. It takes up one whole side of the square.

Arequipa is also the native city of Mario Vargas Llosa, arguably Peru's most famous author. Aside from his books, he was recently in the news because a photo was revealed of the black eye that he gave his Colombian literary contemporary Gabriel García Márquez about 30 years ago. A round of applause for the Arequipeños, everybody.

The coolest part of Arequipa, for me anyway, was the Santa Catalina Monastery, which was much more than a Monastery. It was basically a small city within Arequipa, with tons of rooms for colonial nuns from upper-class families (read: they included servants' and slaves' quarters!). Apparently it was more of a sorority house than a nunnery for a time, but then a new bishop or something came in and cracked down on things. (Dude, if you want a real, touristy explanation, you can look at the website...I don't have to be perfectly accurate here.) Kaitlin and I had fun quoting Shakespeare at the monastery. First, the obvious "Get thee to a nunnery." And then, "Out, out, damn spot" at the mass laundry area. Hope the nuns that still live there (cloistered, still, in 2007) weren't offended.

Peru: New and Improved

I will start off this entry with an apology (to all 3 of my readers) for the lack of entries in the past week or so. I just haven't had any decent time for updates, because in Kaitlin's and my efforts to cover so much ground in so little time, there wasn't a ton of time to sit down and write a decent blog entry. So here is my attempt to make up for that. Maybe even the first of several attempts.

From Copacabana, Bolivia, where we last let off, we took a bus across the border to Puno, Peru, and then to Cuzco. Cuzco is really Peru's showpiece town. It is dramatic and gorgeous: an amazing main plaza whose architecture combines Inca-era stonework (enormous stones--who knows how they carved them and moved them to where they are now--that interlock perfectly, without any need for mortar) and colonial Spanish cathedrals. The cathedrals themselves are a bit politically incorrect, with a ton of depictions of St. James (Santiago is St. James, right?) riding his horse roughshod over bloody (defiant) brown natives, but this can actually be overlooked if you focus on the elaborate stone carvings in the entryways of the buildings, and the bright Andean touches given to traditional Catholic iconogrpahy (ie, the Virgin Mary whose head is surrounded not by a halo but rather by a sun, a nod to Inti, the sun god of the Incas).

Cuzco's main plaza is also surrounded by restaurants on balconies where you can sit and have ají de gallina and a pisco sour (sorry Chileans, but the Peruvian one IS better than the Chilean one) and watch the Cuzqueños chase after the gringos trying to sell them tour packages and/or postcards, and watch the gringos' awkward responses (will they just ignore them? try to engage them in a clunky English-language conversation? run away? We saw all these, and other, variations). You can also dign into some cuy, or guinea pig--an Andean specialty. We didn't, though. I have too many memories of Wickers Berkeley, my fourth grade class's pet guinea pig. May he rest in peace.

Following our explorations of Cuzco proper, we took excursions out of town as well. First to the Sacred Valley, where we saw the Sunday markets in Pisac and Chinchero (pictured)
. There was cool stuff but I didn't get much. We also went to the lesser-known (in comparison to Machu Picchu, at least) Inca archaeological sites of Ollantaytambo and Pisac. Ollantaytambo is one of the few sites where the Spanish colonizers lost a battle to the Incas, so it's an extra special site. It's also lit up really beautifully at night. Here is a pic of the terraces of Ollantaytambo:

And then, of course, Machu Picchu. This was my third time there, and it was just as cool as ever. The sun was shining and we got some amazing photos. One thing I did differently this time was that we went and had lunch at the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, a 5-star hotel located right next to the ruins. We paid something like $30 each for it, which has to be close to a week's minimum wage in Peru. It was good food, and a look into a whole different approach to tourism in the third world, which basically involves protecting yourself in an uppity little bubble that manages to block you off from all the ugly poverty surrounding you.

Peru has really developed since I first went there in 2001. The changes are really evident. There is much better road infrastructure, nicer green areas, more tourist facilities, and a general feeling of stability and safety. We had a really nice time in Cuzco.

From there, we headed to Arequipa.

To be continued...

Bye Bye, Bolivia

My friend Kaitlin arrived in La Paz early on the morning of May 16, and we hit the ground running. After a day walking around the city (including a trip to the Zona Sur, the uppity part of the city--it was almost like Las Vegas), we set off for new horizons.

Let's be honest: La Paz is a difficult city. It's so high up that you have to be careful not to exert yourself too much, yet every street besides the main one is on a steep incline. The poverty is overwhelming. It was (for me) a very unintelligible place. I wasn't sad to move on. (Neither was Kaitlin.)

So, with the help of our faithful and newly hired guide Alejandro, we departed the city of La Paz early on the morning of the 17th for the ruins of the ancient city of Tiwanaku, located about an hour to the west of La Paz by vehicle. We walked around there for a couple hours, and it was amazing, although it doesn't compare to the archeological sites of Peru. The problem is that the Tiwanaku buildings were looted by the Incas, who conquered them around the 1100s or so. But it was cool to see how the Tiwanakus set the stage for later Inca innovations, in terms of irrigation, astronomy, building technologies and the arts. Here we are at the largest-surviving monument within the city of Tiwanaku: the door of the sun. On the winter solstice, the sun rises directly over this.

We spent that night in Copacabana, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This is the sunset that night:

The next day, we sailed to the Sun Island, where supposedly the Sun God Inti Raimi comes from. There were some amazing Inca ruins:

And then we left Bolivia, and crossed into Peru:

We have been in Cusco now for a couple of days, but that's another whole blog entry. So stay tuned...

Welcome to the Jungle(s)

I have been in Bolivia since Friday night, first in La Paz, and then in Coroico. This country is the kind of place that assaults you the second you arrive, with new smells, people in your face, and a general sense of foreignness (at least in my case). It has not been easy.
I guess one problem is that I'm used to being in Chile, and to me, Chile has become metonymic for Latin America. Chile is familiar, and easy, and I guess I sort of expected that the rest of this continent would be too. So I was taken by surprise at how different everything is here. It was sort of an unrealistic expectation, though.
My only consolation is that even Bolivians are foreigners in their own land, on some level or another. This country is full of divisions that cause its citizens to look at one another as "others": Divisions between east and west (La Paz and Santa Cruz, collas and cambas), divisions between the rich and poor (this is something Bolivia has in common with the rest of Latin America), divisions between politicians and those they represent, divisions between whites and indigenous people (I read in the newspaper that this country has been living a "de facto apartheid" since colonial times), divisions among indigenous groups (Quechuas, Aymaras, Guaraní...), and geographic divisions that make it very difficult to move around the country. So, there is basically no way for anyone--Bolivian or foreigner--to ever fully understand all aspects of this country.
I do feel very detached from this culture, though. This is partly because both the US and Chile are countries "non gratos" here: Chile because it usurped Bolivia's coastline (and an area full of copper and other natural resources) during the War of the Pacific, thereby (as Bolivians see it) permanently crippling its ability to export its goods and generate wealth; the US is not so well looked-upon either, due to its ongoing meddling in Bolivian affairs (spraying coca crops in the name of the War on Drugs, and imposing neoliberal economic systems, etc. etc.).
Anyway, I got to La Paz on a bus from Putre (Chile) on Friday evening, and walked around the city's main streets on Friday and Saturday. La Paz is built inside a deep canyon, 4000 m above sea level. So one's first approach to it is looking down into it. There is one main street that runs along the bottom, and then all other streets go uphill on each side. The city itself seems like it's threatening to slide down onto you at any minute.
Most of the sidewalks are taken up by stands, where mostly women sell everything from dried llama fetuses (!) to weavings, to adult diapers, to flowers, to powdered milk, to hot foods. Most sidewalks on the streets leading away from the main street are stairways because they are so steep. There are very few traffic signals, so you kind of have to cross the street and dodge cars (kind of like that Frogger episode of Seinfeld). Indigenous women with gold teeth, in thick skirts and bowler hats, carrying enormous loads on their back, sell pocket-sized kleenex packages in front of Burger King. That is a very La Paz image for you. I haven't taken any pictures of them, because I think it would be disrespectful.
Here is a picture of a park in La Paz:
Then on Sunday morning I took a bus to Coroico, 2000 m downhill and over mountains into a new Department of the country, the Yungas. Coroico is built on a mountain, which means that it has spectacular views. It had a lush feel to it (and the ensuing bugs--thank you Lisa Whelan for taking me to REI to buy repellant in April!), with amazing flowers and animals. I stayed at a beautiful place called Sol y Luna, where I had a hammock with a view, and a private room and bathroom, for like $4 a night (Bolivia is cheap). It was a nice place to just read and relax. I am reading "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño. It's awesome, and I think an English translation just came out. I highly recommend it.
This is Coroico:
Take care for now!

Bienvenido a Bolivia

Después de 6 horas de viaje desde Putre, llegué a La Paz ayer en la tarde. La Paz es como la mina Chuquicamata, en el sentido de que es un enorme rajo abierto, pero en este caso hay ciudad adentro--abajo y creciendo arriba por los costados. Con la montaña Illimani al sur, encima de todo. Las calles cerca de mi hostal son como La Vega, si la hubieran puesto en la Alameda de Santiago. Y si todos los puestos fueran atendidos por mujeres aymaras con sus sombreros negros y cargando bultos enormes en sus espaldas.

Llegando a la ciudad era algo impresionante: hay una carretera que va alrededor de la ciudad por como medio kilómetro y ahí puedes ver toda la ciudad desde encima. Y después bajas al cañón.

La gente ha sido súper simpática, por la mayoría, a pesar de mi acento chileno. El tipo que atendía en el Museo del Litoral Boliviano ("El mar era, y será, de Bolivia") me preguntó con tono de sospecha si era chileno, y casi dije que sí pero al final le dije la verdad nomás. Y había otro tipo en la calle, un borrachín, que me dijo que volviera a mi país (creo que se refería a EEUU). O sea, estoy cagado si me hago el gringo y estoy cagado si me hago el chileno. Jajaja. Tranquilo, pues, hermano.

Es un cambio porque físicamente no me parezco a ningún boliviano y de repente me siento súper conspicuo. Pero nada que hacer...me voy a acostumbrar.

La comida es interesante. Comí ahora para el almuerzo un guiso de cerdo y ají amarillo, con choclo y papa. Comida bastante criolla. Y una Paceña. Excelente.

Estoy disfrutando mis caminos por las calles, observando la gente (desde las mujeres indígenas pidiendo limosna hasta los funcionarios públicos saliendo del trabajo) y sacando fotos. Las cuales se subirán al blog muy luego, se lo prometo.

Saludos.

Stuff I forgot to mention before

As I run from town to town, cybercafé to cybercafé, I always find myself way to hurried to write all the stuff I want to. My mind is always on other things, like answering emails, making reservations for a hostel in the next town, etc. So I forget to mention things that I later think, wow, I wish I had put that in the blog. So here are some of them, with photos as well. (Especially because some of the photos turned out really good.)

While in Codpa, I participated in an age-old Aymara ceremony known as "dressing the cross." I went with Tibor to a plot of land a bit outside of town, where the family was in the process of putting up their cross on an altar overlooking their farm. First, they dressed it in sort of pink fabrics and blue gauze, and there was a round of praying in which each person had to kneel in front of it, drink a beer, and pour some of it on the altar in front of the cross. Then you had to throw coca leaves onto it and make a wish. They also poured onto the altar some wine made from Codpa grapes (harvest was at the end of April). The point was to pray to the Pachamama (which is the Altiplano earth god, as far as I know) for a good harvest in the coming year. Then, they took some flowers and plants and put them into bushels, which they tied onto the cross (that is what the picture is of). And then there was another round of kneeling, wine and beer, except this time you had to eat candy as well. The cross then stays up for another year, until it's time to change the plants again next May. They have been doing this every year for more than a century, since they first got to Codpa.

After the ceremony we ate chicken cazuela and picante de conejito. It was good stuff.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I saw some petroglyphs in Codpa, or actually in Timar, to be exact. Basically the valley itself--one of few fertile areas in a massive desert--was a major travel route for the Incas, between what is now Bolivia and the Pacific coast. So the engravings on the rocks there--mostly pictures of llamas and men, pointed towards the ocean--were messages for travelers. I put my hand near one so you can get a better idea of their size.


Here are some pictures from Lauca National Park as well. First, Lake Chungará.


And then, one of a vizcacha, which is kind of like a rabbit but not.


That is all for now. I have now left Chile, so here's one last patriotic photo.

Up in the Altiplano

I am writing this from Putre, Chile, almost 4,000 m above sea level. My head aches and my brain is a little cloudy from the altitude, so I ask for your patience if this comes out a bit illogical. I have put off writing because every cybercafe I've gone to recently has either had keyboards that don't type the e key anymore, or have computers that are so slow that putting up a picture would take like 35 minutes. And really, who wants to be stuck in a cybercafe if you can be outside exploring, right?

This computer isn't much better than any of the others, but it's time to put something up, because I've been to so many places in the past few days that if I wait any longer I'm going to have a really high bill at the cyber. So here goes.

I got to Arica and spent a night there. It's a small-ish city, but is well-located as a jumping off point to La Paz, Bolivia (which is connected to Arica via a paved highway) and also Peru: the city of Tacna is right across the border. Tacna is the Tijuana to Arica's San Diego, as far as I can tell: Ariqueños cross over to go to the dentist, eat better food and get cheaper pills. It was always sort of a strategic area, because it was the site of a major battle in the War of the Pacific, Before that, the area had belonged to Peru, but Chile took it over. The same war is also the reason for the paved road to La Paz: Arica is Bolivia's port, because Bolivia became landlocked when Chile took over its coastline. The Chileans took over the Morro de Arica, pictured here:

From Arica, I headed inland to Codpa, where a friend of mine is running a hostel. Codpa is in the middle of nowhere: you have to take a total chicken bus down a dirt road for like 3 hours to get there. But it was like Shangri-la when I got there: fruit trees with mangos, guavas and grapefruits, and no phones or electricity. So at night, you could see the Milky Way. I slept like a baby the entire time. The pictures in the previous entry correspond to Codpa: one in the central plaza (in front of a church dating back to the 17th century), and the other in the Hostería that my friend Tibor runs there. Scroll down so I don't have to put up the photos over again.

Then I went back to Arica, I returned last night. Today, I took an all-day tour of Lauca National Park, which is way inland from Arica, in the province of Parinacota. This excursion included a ton of stops to see llamas, vicuñas, alpacas and vizcachas, which are the different camellids of the Americas. They just walk right up to you and eat out of your hand. The highlight of the trip, though, was Lake Chungará, which (according to our guide) is the world's highest lake. It's very shallow though, so maybe that's why it's not as well known as Titicaca--it's not navigable. Anyway, this lake is full of cool wildlife, including Andean flamingos. Condors flew overhead, as well. The only downside? It was 4,500 m up. Thus, the headache and the shortness of breath. Here in Putre it's a little more bearable...more and more so with some tea made from coca leaves and a pair of Advils.

Tomorrow I'm off to La Paz, which is also considerably high up. So I'm just trying to get acclimatized. And, dealing with the fact that tomorrow I am leaving Chile behind in a rather definitive fashion, after almost 2 and a half years. It's sad, but it's time to move on.

Dejando Atrás Mi Querido Chile

Por fin alcanzo a postear algo en castellano en este blog, para mis amigos en Santiago y el resto de Chile (y cualquier otro que lea este idioma). He estado desconectado del Internet varios días porque he estado en el Valle de Codpa (Camarones) por dos noches. Codpa fue todo un descubrimiento. Me había reído de mi amigo Tibor, un antropólogo que renunció de su trabajo en la Conadi hace más de un año y se fue a vivir en Codpa. O sea, ¿quién se va a meter en un pueblo tan apartado, sin luz, teléfono e Internet? ¿Cómo puede uno vivir así en esas circunstancias?

Pero al sólo ver dónde está viviendo, me cambié completamente de opinión. Codpa es espectacular. Cualquiera que diga el contrario está profundamente equivocado. Situado entre medio de un valle pequeño, el pueblo mismo no tiene mucho más que un retén de Carabineros, una iglesia del siglo XVII y un almacén que Tibor llama el “Líder Express.” La Hostería que administra Tibor está un poco afuera del pueblo, y tiene 16 habitaciones, una sala de reuniones y un comedor. Ahí reina la tranquilidad absoluta: puedes leer en paz, con sólo el sonido del río acompañándote. Puedes estirarte en el pasto, bajo el sol nortino (ya que casi nunca está nublado y el clima es muy temperado todo el año). Hay frutales por todo el recinto, así que puedes agarrar un pomelo y una guayaba y comerlos todavía tibios por el sol. En las noches, se apaga el generador de electricidad, junto con las luces de todo el pueblo, y ahí está la Vía Láctea.

Ahora la Alcaldesa de Camarones (esa señora que andaba desaparecida por un rato y después volvió cuando la absolvieron de los cargos que se le habían imputado) dice que va a traer luz al pueblo, así que esta tranquilidad no va a durar mucho más. Hay que aprovechar ahora ya. Pucha que la rayé con Codpa, me encantó.

Ahora voy a Putre, y después de esto, La Paz. Es decir, no falta mucho para que me vaya de acá. Igual me da pena.

He conocido harto del país sólo en la semana y media desde que me fui de Santiago. Primero Calama y San Pedro, donde codeé con los hippies (santiaguinos y gringos). En camino hacia Iquique, pasé por la mina de Chuqui (ahí se ve la foto abajo) que me impresionó. Como que miré para abajo y vi que desde ahí venía me sueldo esos años.

También pasé una noche en Tocopilla para ver el mar de nuevo.

Iquique estuvo bonito, como Miami chico un poco. Grandes edificios, y mucha plata dando vueltas. Aproveché de ir a la oficina salitrera de Humberstone, donde visité el teatro, la escuela y el hotel que tenían para los trabajadores ahí. Ahora se ha convertido en el Museo del Salitre. Después a Arica, donde subí al morro y me sentía todo un patriota chileno, con el orgullo que tenía viendo las maquetas de la batalla ahí.

Bueno, les dejo por ahora porque me estoy muriendo de hambre y ya se me hace tarde. Mañana me pasan a buscar a las 7:00 para el tour del Lago Chungará.

Abrazos a tod@s.

Raw Materials

I have spent the past couple of days in Chile's extreme north, visiting the places where the country's wealth is (or was) extracted in mineral form. The profits are then diverted straight to Santiago, where they are then redistributed by the State to the rest of Chile. I guess it could be worse: at least Codelco, the State copper company, is State-owned, meaning that its profits remain in Chile. In many other countries, foreign mineral companies rip out the minerals, pay a modest tax to the country they're in and then their profits go back to the developed world. And actually, this happens a lot in Chile as well, since some of the mines are privately-owned, and in the past, all of them were.
I guess I am struck more than anything by what I now see as a veneer of gentility that we use to cover up the real sources of our wealth. And by "we," I'm talking about Chilean elites in Santiago just as much as elites in the developed world who make their profits off the extraction of raw materials in poorer countries. We sort of tell ourselves that we are living in nice, comfortable surroundings because of our own merits, our own abilities. But really, it's thanks to a bunch of dudes working in pits, often for very little wages and in crap conditions (although that's not the case for Codelco miners, who make tons of money, they do almost invariable die very young, shortly after retirement: "un minero sale de la mina pa' puro morirse," goes the saying).
Hope the same thing doesn't happen to me (I figured out how to put up my photos!):

As I toured Chuquicamata, the world's largest open-pit copper mine in the world--it's a little outside of Calama, where we last left off on this little travelogue--I was struck by this. It was almost like seeing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz: now I know what really goes on behind the scenes. So this is how we got everything to be so nice in Santiago. Ah.
Not that the place isn't impressive in and of itself. The mine is 1 km deep and 5 km long. It has a spiral of roads going down into it. There are 6 trucks with hoses that drive around all day and all night (it operates 24 hours a day) hosing down the roads so the dust doesn't blow up over Calama and pollute everything. There are massive earth moving machines (for every massive rock, like a little speck of copper gets produced) whose tires alone cost US$12,000 each. It is a massive operation. I took a tour that started in the actual town of Chuquicamata, which is right next to the mine. From there we got on a bus that took us to the edge of the pit, which was awesome. Chuiquicamata itself had to be evacuated of residents about 5 years ago (everyone got moved to Calama) because it was too polluted. All around the town, and the mine itself, are literally mountains of "sterile" earth that has been stripped of all its copper. I guess they'll just leave it there, I don't know.
This is what Chuqui looks like (this is not my photo):

By the way, Chuquicamata was started by the Guggenheim family in the early 1900s, before the copper mines got nationalized by the State. So I guess that's where a lot of the money for their museums came from. Maybe they should put a museum in Chile?
After Calama, I went to Tocopilla and am now in Iquique (inexorably northward). Both Tocopilla and Iquique got their start as cities by the boom in nitrates and saltpeter that could be mined in the northern pampas here. The problem was that the US figured out how to make synthetic nitrates, which left Iquique and Tocopilla pretty much SOL. So now there are a bunch of nitrate mines, called oficinas in Spanish, in these far away areas that are just abandoned.
Today I went to the best-preserved oficina, which was about 45 minutes inland from Iquique. It's called Humberstone, named after this guy who invented a new method of processing nitrates (I think). Humberstone, at its height, must have been pretty cool (for a town dedicated exclusively to mining and miners). It had a swimming pool, schools, a general store, a hotel, a lit soccer field, a rail transit system, a huge theater, and housing for workers and their families. All set up by the company to provide workers with good (or, good enough) conditions so that they wouldn't unionize. Now Humberstone is a little long in the tooth, but you can still go around and get an idea of how it was. Plus it was just named a UNESCO Heritage Site so it's undergoing a process of preservation now.
So, between the copper and the nitrates, it was cool and educational to see where the money for my salary came during the two years I worked as a Chilean Government functionary.
Tomorrow, I'm off to Arica: Chile's northernmost large city. From there: Bolivia!

De-Santiaguinating Myself

...And he's off!
I left Santiago on Monday afternoon, after I managed to coordinate the movers coming and packing up my stuff (it will be sent to my parents' house in Camarillo...sorry guys, it looked like a garageful!), handing my keys over to the property manager, and getting to the airport on time, all within a span of like 5 hours. For those of you who have ever been to Chile (or anywhere in Latin America, I'm sure), you know that this kind of logistical coordination is almost impossible. So I was pretty proud of myself when I got on my plane. Or at least, I was for like 10 minutes, before the accumulated exhaustion hit me and I fell asleep.
Yes, by the way, you did read that right: I went to the airport. Yes, I know I reneged on my commitment to not take a single plane on my trip, right from the get-go. But really, the first place I was going, Calama, was a 24 hour bus ride from Santiago, and you could fly (in 3 hours) for basically the same price. And I have already taken busses more than halfway up there, so I felt like I paid my dues. Anyway, this is my trip, and I can do whatever I want.
However, I think my urgency to get out of Santiago as fast as I could came from a mentality that I am (at least for now) trying to escape from on this trip: the urban mindset of always needing to do things as quickly as possible, always being in a hurry, always running from place to place. Santiago is like that. The rest of Chile is...not. At all. So since leaving, I have tried to put myself through a process of detox from the fast-paced way of life I was leading up till now.
This process began in San Pedro de Atacama, a sleepy adobe town near an oasis in the Atacama desert, the world's driest. It's sort of a backpackers' paradise, with a ton of hippies decked out in Inca knits and checking each other out as they lounge in the plazas, trying to figure out who's traveling down the so-called gringo trail in a more authentic fashion.
North American and European "more granola-than-thou" pretentiousness aside, it's a beautiful little town, where the white adobe contrasts amazingly with the deep blue, cloudless (it hasn't rained in like 5 years) sky. From there, I was able to take several cool day tours. One, yesterday evening, to the Moon Valley, and another, early this morning, to the Tatio Geysers.
I was at the Valle de la Luna, so-called because of its cratered, uneven landscape, in the early evening, and so I was able to watch as the setting sun bathed everything in orange-reddish-gold colors. Meanwhile, behind me, the moon rose. It happened to be a full moon (or at least almost full), so it was really striking and it seemed like the valley was just as illuminated by the moon as it had been when the sun was up. The moon even cast shadows, which I don't think I've ever seen before. A lot of stars were also out, as well, and were particularly visible because of the atmospheric conditions there. In fact, apparently there's some huge project underway (ALMA, I think it's called) by Japan, the EU and the US to set up a series of telescopes there to find out "the origin of the universe" (according to our guide). Who'd have thought that would be possible here in little ol' Chile?
This morning, a bus picked me up at 4 am (ouch) to go to the Tatio Geysers. They aren't really geysers, though, as far as I could tell...my idea of geysers comes from Yellowstone, with forceful jets exploding every which way. The Tatio ones were more like steaming pits of sulphur. It reminded me of Bumpuss Hell in Lassen. In fact, that's why you have to get there so early--because later on it gets warmer and you don't even see the steam coming out, and it's just (I assume) a barren yellow field of smelly pits. And no one wants to see that, so that's why they make you get up so early. Not that it wasn't cool, anyway. I don't want to be a jerk about it. I liked the geysers, despite my bleary-eyed, crabby observance of them. Apparently some Italian energy company is going to try to harness the geothermal energy of the "geysers," so they might not be around for too much longer. But those copper mines need their power, and we sure ain't gonna get it from Bolivia!
And on the way back (for you animal lovers) we saw ñandus, vicuñas and vizcachas, which are all altiplano camellids. So check that out.
Still figuring out how this all works, so be patient! I will be posting often now. I am going to figure out how to upload photos, too, because I already have some good ones.
Now I am in Calama for the night. Calama is a city, but it's smaller, so as you can see I am slowly weaning myself away from my fast-paced city kid mentality. Calama is the capital of miners (it's near a big copper mine, but I'll get into that another time), easy money (copper prices are up right now), and--the result of putting the previous two together--whorin'. But I guess I will not be partaking of that particular aspect of this ugly, ugly town tonight, as I have been up since 3:45 and I'm a bit tired. I know--disappointing!
So, for now, buenas noches.