9 de febrero de 2010
From Ica I flew to the Chilean border, crossed to Arica, which sits smack on the Peruvian-Chilean border. It also sits on the edge of the Atacama Desert which is the driest place on earth. It never rains, which is fine with me. I would spend just a night here--to ground myself in Chile and to spend a day in the sun.
In the end, Arica gave me two gifts--a day at the beach, as planned, and a gastro-intestinal thing/pneumonia which would plague for weeks to come, which was not planned for.
Chile´s coastline is probaly the longest in the world. From Arica, where I crossed, its coast extends 4,270 kilometers south. On a map, it looks like a long ribbon reaching from the middle of South America's west coast straight down to the southern tip of the continent, where it curves slightly eastward.
My goal was to be able to say that I had travelled the full length of this ecologically diverse country. My journey would begin at 17° south and drop to 56° south. Half of it would be on land, the other half by water.
After a night in Arica, I bussed 4 hours to Iquique. It was the beginning of the weekend and three nights in the city would give me ample time to spend one full day on its black, volcanic sand beach and another at two UNESCO sites
nearby--the abandoned ghost towns of Humberton and Santa Laura--saltpeter mines in the desert. Both of these towns, a good distance out of Iquique, lie in the dry Atacama and have thus been spared the ravages of time. In a place where it never rains or snows, these towns have retained the look and feel of what they were when they were developed in the 1920´s. Writing is still on the classroom walls; houses still look as if you could move right in.
Best, though, were a series of 1,000 year old geoglyphs carved into the sandy hillsides in the desert. Giant llamas and other animals have retained their shape in this dry zone for almost a millenium.
In Iquique I went to a pharmacist and got help for my stomach, but a cough was beginning to develop that would only get worse.
Another absolutely stunning bus ride, 95% of along the rugged, wild Chilean coast, brought me Antofagosta. It´s not often that I respond negatively to a place, but this was one town I´d get out of ASAP. It was cloudy, the city was dirty, I was sick and just wanted to leave. By now the cough was so bad that my back hurt from the non-stop brutal coughin. I went to the hospital, saw a fine doctor who was relieved that she didn´t have to speak English to me, although much later I´d wished that she had. More medicine to combat the ongoing stomach problem and an antibiotic for the cough.
I got out of Antofagosta as fast as I could, bought a top-of-the-line bus ticket for Santiago. How else to endure 18 hours! One of the best things about travelling in Chile and Argentina are the busses. Because distances are so long, bus lines are top notch. On the first floor are bus camas--wide seats that convert to a bed at
night. Plus, on long hauls passengers get fed two or three meals--even a glass of wine before bedtime.I relished this long ride. We slid through the Atacama Desert--its sands black, the sky a brilliant blue--a dry,lunar landscape on Earth. It was gorgeous! Day faded to night. The sky a pallet of silver. By noon the next afternoon I was in Santiago.
I´d booked a room at Casa Amarilla--a place I´d stayed before. Maria, the owner, is from Austria and during the school year her two adjoining houses are rented to students. In the summer, however, she opens it to tourists. I could cook my own meals, lounge in the spacious back yard, enjoy her friendly dog and do my laundry--all for less that $20.00 a night.
The days were magnificient--hot, dry and cloudless. I was enjoying my last two days alone for awhile. Santiago´s not the most exciting city in the world, but in the summer its public pools, high on a hill overlooking the city, are great places to hang out. I still didn´t feel great, but the medicine I´d been taking had at least gotten rid of the deep cough. It took several days for my back to feel normal again.
I met Glenda on the 16th of January. As exhausted as she was from a fourteen hour, overnight flight from Montreal, we spent the day touring the city--her only day in Santiago--seeing as much as possible, and enjoying the long twilight of a Chilean summer's night. She'd not be back this way again.
The next day the cruise we´d waited for for eight months would start. The coming of a dream come true.
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