Arica part 2

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Thanks again for the comments, I laughed out loud reading some of them!

Now to try to finish summing up our time in and around Arica...

The next morning we woke up in the hotel for breakfast at 8am. I drank tea which I typically hate but I was freezing! We were so lucky to be able to have a hot shower there though. That morning we headed to the Salt Lake. As we began to ascend from Putre up higher into the mountains the views began to change and the mountains around us were incredible. There are 7 active volcanoes that can be seen from the area and they are just hugeeee. The tops of 6 of them are the border of Bolivia and one of them is completely in Bolivia. Some of them were close to 7000 meters which is 21,000 feet so I don´t think anyone is going to be crossing them from Bolivia into Chile! Jose asked how I would describe the scenery and the only word that I could think of was sublime. It reminded me (get ready for the dorky English major reference here that Aunt Dana will love) of Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein. The way the mountains were around us just reminded you of how incredibly small we are...just read Frankenstein (the real book, not the movie) and you´ll understand!

We got to see tons of animals on the way and our guide stopped constantly for me to take pictures. I have incredible pictures of the landscape as well as of animals. The most common animal that we saw were vicuñas. We saw them on the Colca canyon tour too, but we got to see a lot more on this trip. We learned that their way of life is very similar to antelopes in that they live in family groups with only one male and there are bachelor herds of young males just waiting for the opportunity to overtake a herd.

We stopped at a little town on the way that can´t really be called a town because it had about 8 people in it. It was just a couple of shacks. These two girls came out and our tour guide took their pictures promising them that he would come back with printed photographs for them. These girls were about 20 and had never had a photograph of themselves before. Jose and I went around the back of the shacks and saw 2 llamas and 2 alpacas in a pen so I was trying to make them love me of course. But then we realized why they were there...they were being fattened up to be killed. We realized that we were standing in an area with lots of bones and wool and various other things that came from dead animals. Poor little guys :-(

Next we went to a deserted town. It used to be a mining town but now there are only 2 people there. A military check point and a little old man who is 90 years old. He was so impressive. At 90 years old he has 70 alpaca that he takes care of every day. I can´t even imagine! The town was really creepy. Jose said it reminded him of the movie The Hills Have Eyes. The houses were tiny with their roofs caved in. The doorways on most of them were so small that Jose and I would practically have to crawl to get in. We took tons of pictures!

Then we went to the salt lake and saw lots of flamingos and vicuñas drinking from the water around the lake. It was beautiful. Though it´s called a salt lake they apparently don´t mine real salt there (NaCl, table salt) instead they mine borax. We were offered the opportunity to go into a natural hot spring but it was really windy and cold outside (I actually got wind burn on my face that day) so we decided it would be miserable to get in our bathing suits and be wet, even if the water is warm. After lots of pictures and seeing a road that Bolivians use to illegally come to Chile we went to the Park Ranger´s cabin where we saw the new love of my life: vizcachas. They´re like a mix between a bunny and a kangaroo. Amazingggg. We fed them cookies. They were so cute, I took probably about 100 pictures of just a few of them. They´re wild though so I couldn´t cuddle them. But they´re so amazingly cute. We ate lunch at the Park Ranger´s cabin and it´s a good thing that we weren´t sleeping there because the altitude was 4200 meters or 12,600 feet and Jose was feeling really out of breath. I asked the ranger lots of questions about poaching the vicuñas (they´re protected) and he told us that it does happen but even if the rangers see it happening theres nothing that they can do since they don´t carry firearms. By the time the military arrives the poachers have run off.

After this we went back to Putre and did a little bit of shopping. The woman was so nice in the store and impressed that we were American so she gave us little pins. That night we had dinner but it was nothing overly special.

The next day we headed to Lake Chungara which is the highest lake in the world! It was 4500 meters or 13,500 feet. Jose felt pretty bad with the altitude. The view was amazing and what´s really cool about the lake is that when there´s no wind you can see a perfect reflection of the volcanoes in the lake. Unfortunately it was windy when we went so we couldn´t see it. The only people allowed in the lake are people trying to break world records and they have to have government permission. It was beautiful but a bit too high for our liking. There is a mountain there that would be a great place for mountain climbers but the Chilean government was having problems with Bolivians trying to cross the mountain illegally into Chile so they planted land mines! Now no one can go on the mountain for fear of blowing up! We saw a UN truck coming and our guide told us their job is to try to dismantle the mines. Ahhh gotta love third world country mentalities!

We went to a little town afterwards because our guide had promised to drop off some traffic cones. The next day (Monday the 21st) was a big festival because it is the winter solstice here. Some important guy was coming so they were putting together a huge party in the square. This town had like 70 people so it was a pretty big deal! They offered to let us stay and our guide wanted to but the tour agency wouldnt have liked it. The guide actually debated calling the agency and telling them the van broke down so we had to stay the night, but he didn´t which was probably a better idea.

Then we went to this little village on the side of the road (probably about 10 people) and there was a llama and 3 alpacas that are used to tourists coming by. They crowd you looking for cookies. We fed them cookies and it was a little intimidating because they wouldn´t leave us alone! One of the alpacas was really crazy and spit a cookie back at me because apparently I did something offensive! It was scary! Then she got mad that Jose didn´t have more cookies so she spit at him too! We tried to stay away from her. The llama was awesome though, his name was Lolly and he liked me so he kept rubbing his head and neck all over me, from knees to my neck. So I ended up covered in llama wool! Anytime we tried to go back to the van all 4 big animals would rush ahead of us and block our way thinking we were getting more cookies for them! Probably not the best thing for them to be trained to do, but it was fun to get to feed them!

After that we headed back to Arica and it felt great to be back at sea level! The next day Chile played in FIFA and won so the town went crazyyyyyy! We took a collectivo to the town square and on the way there there were tons of people hanging out of their cars, running into the middle of the street, celebrating that Chile won! The square was insane! People went nuts. They climbed on top of statues and started lighting fireworks, flares and even that colored gas that army people use to mark areas for bombing. The riot control showed up with their trucks in preparation but at least while we were there no one needed to be hosed down. Kids even were released from school to celebrate! It was an awesome experience to be a part of. Americans never get that crazy for sports so it was really cool to see. Jose bought himself a Chile selection shirt so he could fit in and decided that´s his souvenir from our trip since he was there to see them win a game. And as a side note, for the game everyone had to be present for work and school but they didn´t have to work, everyone just put on the game. They just wanted the workers and students present so after the game they could put them to work. But after the game we saw students and professionals all in the streets celebrating.

After we got tired of watching the crazy festivities (it was noon and everyone was drunk) we wandered around town for a while more and then decided to go see the Agro to see what became of it after the fire. Getting there was an adventure! We had to take what they call a Micro, I call it a ghetto bus! We were on it for probably an hour, totally confused as it picked up tons of kids getting out of school and dropping them off. Finally we made it there. There were only a few stores that were damaged so the majority of the market looked fine. We bought a bunch of fruit there. As we were going to leave this stray dog was scratching itself and a woman with a HUGE heavy cart rolled over his tail. He shrieked in pain and the woman just kept walking. I started yelling in English and another woman started yelling in Spanish about how horrible that was. I felt so bad for the dog, he ran away so I decided I was going to feed him. I bought a bag of food but couldn´t find him so I fed a pregnant dog that looked like she was going to give birth right there. We had to take 2 collectivos to get back to the hostel but we made it!

Today is our last day in Arica so we had to get a few more things done that we hadn´t seen yet. We went to the docks to see the sea lions. It took us about an hour to find the docks but when we did I was so impressed! I swam with sea lions in the Galapagos and thought I knew what they were like but these ones were HUGE! They´re probably twice the size of the ones that I saw there. One of the workers at a local fish place kept throwing them left over fish bits and they went crazy! Bellowing and fighting each other for every last bite! They were very cool to watch. After that we took a taxi to the beach to have a real meal for once. We both got Italian since we´ve been living off of sandwiches and though it was a bit pricey (about 18 USD for both of us - usually we spend like 6 USD on lunch) it was soooo good. We saw a dog there that I fell in love with. I fed him and walked away but he kept following us, wanting food and to be loved. If I lived in Chile, I definitely would have taken the little guy home with me :-( i felt so bad for him. One of his back legs was lame so he was running around on 3 legs. He finally found another dog and left me or else I would have been trying to smuggle him back to America!

After the beach we walked around downtown one last time since we´ll be leaving early in the morning. Arica is such a cute town, we really enjoyed our time here. Though according to our hostel owner these have been the coldest days that they´ve had in the past few years! Brrrr!

Tomorrow we´ll be heading back to Peru. We spend the night in Arequipa and then on Thursday take a bus to Puno. In Puno we´ll be visiting Lake Titicaca and spending the night on one of the islands there. The altitude there is 3800 meters or 11,400 feet so it won´t be quite as nice with the amount of oxygen as we have here!

Thanks again for all of the comments on the blog, we love reading them!

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Photos

Vicuñas
Bachelor herd of vicuñas

Vizcacha
The little animal that looks like a mix between a rabbit and a kangaroo

Comments

[Caitlyn]

Wow-- just reading about all that you're doing is making me tired. Haha