Blogs from Arica, Arica & Parinacota, Chile, South America - page 5

On my first day of classes here in Arica I discovered a very special aspect of my campus- Alpacas. On the Velasquez campus of Universidad de Tarapaca, live two adorable alpacas. Who new university in Chile was so awesome? I began classes in Spanish and various aspects of public health last week. Our schedule changes daily, and many of our classes involve trips to the center of town, to clinics, and to areas of Chile with indigenous populations. Our Spanish classes are also culture classes, and we get a Chilean explanation of Chilean culture. Our first day of Spanish we learned how to say useful things like ghetto (flaite) and boring (fome) because Chileans use a lot of slang. Our public health classes focus on the intercultural issues that occur between rural and urban populations in ... read more

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 ... read more

As we woke up in the morning and looked out the window, a dramatic change in the landscape was apparent, with endless deserts, sand covered hills and sand dunes. We'd been going for nearly 24 hours but would still have another five to go on this 2000km journey into northern Chile. We had slept pretty well (all things considered) in the 'semi-cama' reclining aeroplane style seats. Buses here can be very luxurious with some of the posher options even having seats that stretch out completely horizontally, forming a full on bed! Not for us long-termers though. As we reached Arica at 1pm and stepped off the bus, we were hit by the nice warm weather and sunshine that was rather lacking in Santiago (at least in our opinion). Once inside the terminal we attempted to locate ... read more

We hired a cab the see the geoglyphs in the Azapa valley, it was a trade route and pictures of Llamas are engraved on the face of the surrounding slopes as a kind of map for travelers in the area. We stopped at a small church and as soon as we were out of the car we herd and dog yelp then a bang and then the most horrendous wails, we ran around the corner and found a young man laying on the side of the road in distress, We think he had swerved to miss the dog and plowed into a fence on his quad bike, the result was a dislocated shoulder and a nasty compound fracture on the same arm, since he was wearing only shorts and a t shirt he was covered in ... read more

Crossing to Chile We left Arequipa on the morning of the 26th April on an early bus, The terrain to the border is monotonous just desert, grey ugly desert so we snoozed. We jumped a cab in Tacna on the Peruvian side and our driver was a star, he helped us with our papers, lugged our bags and advised us on crossing the border, turns out it was pretty uneventful, We had no food stuff on us as they are very strict about no fruit and veg and also other food stuffs, the list is on the back of the migration card you have to fill in, We heard stories of some travelers trying to smuggle fruit over but getting caught, why would you? The fine is $250 and is not worth it for a few ... read more