Advertisement
Published: September 29th 2009
Vina del Mar
The view from Kuni's houseI’ve just arrived back in Mendoza (home sweet home away from home) from some amazing spring break travels with some amazing people. Caitlin, Garrett, and I left Mendoza on the 17th of September. The Chilean “Independence” Day is the 18th of September. It was thus a whole weekend of party, party, and more party in Valparaíso, Chile where we stayed with Garrett’s extremely accommodating and all around epic friend, Justin Kunimoto. Although the only thing separating Chile and Argentina is the Andes mountain range, the two countries are very distinct. I found Valparaiso to be a much more laid back place than Mendoza with amazing graffiti, friendly locals, the ocean (!), a large youth population, and lots and lots of character. It seems to be the San Francisco of Chile! We linked up with some CC homies, Rob and Chris, and then hit the fiesta. Boliches, carnivals, and more were rampaged by stampeding gringos. Valparaíso has a much more Western, modern feel than Mendoza, evidence of the economic stability that Chile has enjoyed over the past couple decades due to the government's decision to privatize many nationally owned companies and push for free trade agreements. Gah, more capitalism. That being said,
Los pibes
Kunimoto, Garrett, Rob, and Chris it is definitely a place I will return to.
After staying for a good 4 nights, we embarked on the next leg of our adventure on Monday night: a 20 hour bus ride from Santiago brought us up to the far north of Chile to a sizable town of 285,000 called Antofagasta. Although a bit less modern than Valpo, it still had a distinctly Chilean feel to it. After a short bus ride from Antofagasta, we arrived in Mejillones, a tiny town that has the goal of becoming a tourist destination, but at the present moment is completely fueled by industry. A concrete company and a large geothermal energy plant draw a large number of young trabajadores who work for a few months out of the year. Mejillones is made up of restaurants, residenciales for the workers to stay in, and little else. Not one stop light in the entire pueblo! We arrived late at night with absolutely no plan and we quickly learned that all the hotels were full. Options were considered and we ended up liking the idea of sleeping on the beach (a bad idea as we would learn later) more and more. However, a worker
Garrett and I
We swam, we survived, we ate avocado asking for a light eventually led us to a nautical school-turned-residencial where we could stay in some extremely heinous beds for 3,000 peso a night (very cheap). We learned that our savior’s name was Malcom, and he immediately sat us down for a long spiritual chat. Due to his drunkenness and the fact that his brother is an ex-Rastafarian (and that I have dreads), he was convinced that our meeting was an act of god. He told me he loved me and that I had a beautiful soul. He told us we would never forget him. Forgetting Malcom will certainly be hard… It is true though; without Malcom we would have slept on the fly-infested, seaweed-filled beach. On our first full day in Mejillones we explored the beach. The majority of it is covered in a mass of red and yellow, extremely smelly seaweed, sometimes a foot deep. I have never seen so many flies on a beach in my life! Garrett and I had our first swim in the South American ocean. After one more night, we headed back to Antofagasta to catch a bus back over the border to Argentina early Friday morning.
We logged 15 more
Calilegua!
Amazing trip bus hours on our way to Jujuy, a vibrant pueblo in the northwestern part of Argentina. We woke up early Saturday morning in Jujuy to make our way north to Libertador General San Martin and Calilegua National Park, just 10 kilometers away. Libertador greeted us with a lively market with spicy tamales (picante food doesn’t exist in Mendoza), all sorts of vegetables, and excellent sugar cane juice. The town is home to an enormous sugar cane industry with seemingly endless fields of the stuff. At around 10 in the morning, we arrived at the Aguas Negras ranger station of Calilegua and began our trek around the park. It is an absolutely amazing ecosystem! It is home to 60% of the bird species and 1/3 of the mammal species in all of Argentina. The vegetation is extremely dense with vines connecting the over 200 species of trees that grow in the park. Calilegua is part of a much larger ecoregion called Las Yungas, which is a series of subtropical "cloud forests" that stretch from Venezuela down to Argentina. Sadly, we never caught a glimpse of any of the mammals; however the birds and butterflies were abundant and beautiful! An absolutely unforgettable
Mejillones
Smelly seaweed rainforest trip. A friendly local brought us back to the Libertador bus station in his truck (his dog ran half of the way, a good 5 km).
Getting away from Mendoza has been great, but 72 hours of bus rides and a small budget will do wonders for one’s stress levels. Now it’s back to school and springtime here in Mendoza! Once again, big up to my parents, all of my friends and family, and everyone who helped us out along the way!
Paz y Amor
Advertisement
Tot: 0.111s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0686s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
