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Published: March 21st 2009
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delfin!
credit to kati (mostly by Mark)
From Valpo, we toured the Pacific coast of Chile. On a beautiful bus ride (yes, they do exist) we had the mountains on our right and we watched the waves crash on many a beach to our left. As I write this, we are in a golf ball. It is a dome made of tarp right on the white sand beach of Bahia Inglesa, where I am about to go for a run.
This is our third major beach location of the past week, and with an excursion to the mountains, we have really enjoyed Norte Chico, Chile. In March, the summer crowds have thinned but the warm air and tranquil water remains. We have been eating fresh fish and ceviche, and drinking pisco sours.
There are two highlights here, Isla Damas and Pisco Elqui.
Isla Damas is one of three islands that make up the Reserva Humboldt - the name of the cold current that sweeps up from Antarctica to the Galapagos, and also the name of another species of
pinguino. The weather patterns create a
camanchaca, a fog that rolls up the coast most mornings. In this reserve, we took a boat
la serena
off season... ride to camp on a desert island. The boat took us out to the neighboring island - Isla Choros (Mussel Island), where we saw tiny Humboldt penguins, cormorants, pelicans, elephant seals, sea lions, seo otters (
chungungos) and a pod of bottlenose dolphins that swam with our boat.
We camped on the neighboring Isla Damas, a spit of cactus-covered desert island we could walk around in a little under an hour, with two beautiful white sand beaches, one of which we camped on with 3 other Chilenos who we enjoyed hanging with and practicing our Spanish with a box of wine. It was definitely off the beaten path as we lost the hoards of tourists boats by around 5 pm. From our campsite, we sat on the sand and watched dolphins swim in the tiny bay in front of us, and in the morning a frisky
chungungo was playing the shallows and looking for fish. It was paradise.
On the way back, the van that was transporting us from the tiny coastal town of
Punta de Choros was also transporting a couple who had been married on the beach the day before. They requested that the van stop in
a little town so they could buy olive oil. We wondered, why do they need to stop here? Turns out that this little town held lots of olive groves and was the best place in Chile to buy olives as well as hand-pressed, extra virgin olive oil--about $2 for 250 mL. The bride also showed us a fruit tree that produced an unknown black fruit she called
higo. We peeled the fruit like a banana and ate its red and white fleshy insides. We thought we had eaten some exotic fruit only available in Chile, but a Spanish-English dictionary later revealed it as fig!
From our base university town of La Serena, we then spent two days in the high Andes town of Pisco Elqui, which has gotten its tourist attraction name due to the fields of grapes that line the valley floor wall to wall. These grapes are grown to make, not wine, but pisco, a type of grape brandy that is mixed to make the famous pisco sours. We stayed at in a private
cabaƱa with a pool and curvy garden paths lined with flowers and fruit trees. The highlight of this area is the density of
astronomical observatories that take advantage of exceptionally clear skies, the remoteness from any city, and the southern hemisphere's abundance of stars to set up shop. We went to a new one in the hipster community of Cochiguaz. We got a brief tour of the constellations by laser, then saw a great presentation of the "latest" understanding of the universe with the conclusion -
"somos nada" - we are nothing. Then it was upstairs to the new digital telescope to view several nebulae and seemingly dark areas of the sky that are actually filled with stars. The highlight of that part was seeing the rings of
Saturn, where people live to be 205! (or so says Stevie Wonder)
Ah, the beach, swimming in the ocean. Me gusta!
In the Southern hemisphere, will March go in a like a lamb and out like a lion? It is still the wet season in Bolivia and Peru, so we surely will face some tougher going than we've had in Chile. Next stop, the driest desert in the world!
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Domes and sea lions
That picture with rocks - I can't find the bloomin' animals. Is it a rock eater like in neverending story or some kind of pika-like marmot? If it is a rock critter, please bring one home.