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.