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Published: November 30th 2007
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I´ve decided to take the day off from traveling, and lay low in Arica. I actually wish I could just check into the hotel for the day and then leave tonight, but that isn´t going to happen. I´m just so eager to get to Peru! The more I read about it the more exciting it sounds!
Another day in Chile is much as expected. Overpriced and frustrating (while at first I was happy to get a hotel for only $8, I was later dissapointed to find the hot water was not working again. I´m still dirty. Also, I HAVE to do laundry now. I have not done any in a month, and I have worn the current pair of underwear for three days. Laundry cost $14. $14. That right there... almost ruined the day. And I was so excited about the $8 hotel!!!) in so many ways, completely balanced out by the wonder of the surrounding natural world. Arica is quite beautiful, and actually, aside from the eccentricity of Valaparisio, this is the most beautiful city I have seen in Chile. I very much recommend it.
I´ll start by telling you my journey. Last night, in Antofagasta, I some
how missed my bus! Which was funny because there were only three slots for buses and I was sitting there for three hours watching because I had nothing better to do. So they put me on a different bus free of charge (except this bus didn´t come with a movie or a cookie treat ... phew on that). I´m not sure what happened. Chile continues to be a strange place.
In the middle of the night, we were going through some of the driest parts of the world. I got to see them only during darkness... but I think that was better. Half a moon, which was blinding white in that desert with absolutely no life in it, hung over a completely flat sand landscape. For hours, I didn´t see anything alive. Not a single straggly bush, or leave of grass, or a cactus. Nothing. The mountains were far away and it was dark, and so there was nothing to see but the yellow white flatness. I could see everystar in the sky, and because there was not light for miles, the moon completely illuminated everything. The shadows cast by the smallish rocks littering the surface could be seen
from quite a distance off.
It was really amazing.
On toward morning, things changed, and the sand become more like proper dunes... the way I always envisioned a desert. The road at this time was cut right into the side of some of the dunes. I suppose that makes them not true dunes, but solid rocks in some ways, because I suppose dunes shift. It looks like sand though.
There were still no plants or life to speak of. Just cars in the distance. I feel like if your car broke down out here, you would just die. Its an intimidating landscape.
Closer to Arica, I saw something I still can´t explain to myself. We were on the road cut into one of the dunes, and on my side of the bus, there was a step drop off into what looked like a dried river valley... quite wide across. The river valley was filled with houses. Well... sort of. Everyone had a square of land. Maybe an acre. It was restricted from others with fencing. And there were houses inside the fencing. I guess people lived there. There were only a couple streets between some of the properties (otherwise they were al stuck together), and absolutely no infrastructure otherwise. Like I said, I guess people lived there... but it was so desolate. Still... no plants. How could you live there? And if there are no plants, why does everyone have a fence? It was odd to see the yellow white valley, all made of natural shapes and curves, at the bottom carved up into such a mathematical and devoid grid. Wierd.
Anyway, Arica is an Oasis. There are palms here, and grass and fountains. It is on the ocean. The same deep blue and green ocean that I love so much (it smells really salty!). In some places the waves are really quite large. And foamy white! I don´t know if the city would look as green without people. Just outside the city, the dunes come down right to the ocean. In the pictures, those aren´t the mountains like you see in my other Chilean picutres, they are closer and they are dunes. Around the city on all sides, you can see the dunes as well. The whole city seems to reflect the colors of the ocean, white washed walls, and the yellow, white dunes. The sun is hot, but the ocean air is cool. A haze of clouds surrounds the sun, and the haze creates a rainbow in a circle around the sun. Very nice!
Well, I´m done being poetic... but the place is just so beautiful! Its a nice way to end my travels in Chile.
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