Catch Up (Part II)

After Chiloe I had two weeks and a weekend to enjoy in Santiago before I sent out again. Those two weeks were the chalk full of essay and tests for the most part which is of course always a good time. I did get to go work at my internship though which I am enjoying. I am working with Mano a Mano, a HIV research initiative that is through the nursing school at my university here. So far I’ve mostly done catch up work to learn about the project and the two socio-economically disadvantaged communities in the southern part of Santiago where we work. I also got around to inputting data a little bit as well and actually got to accompany the project directors to a Mapuche Convention at a real Mapuche Roco (hut) in the city. Its kind of funny because you just sort of drive down the city street pas all of these shabby buildings and shacks and all the sudden there is a (relatively) big plot of land with a traditional indigenous hut in the middle. The day was a lot longer than expected seeing as the meeting started probably 2 hours later than it was supposed to, just because nobody really cares too much about time, but it was really interesting hearing everything they had to say about their experiences with HIV and sex education and how they think things could get better. There was one very interesting 12 year old boy who, like the rest, came from far away to be at the convention, and had come alone and yet despite his age he spoke very charismatically about his value of the mapuche culture and point of view on education. He also go up the courage to practice his English with me over lunch which was very basic but I thought it was cool. He asked me afterwards to take a picture with him on his phone to show to his English teacher but I kind of doubt it was as much for that as it was to show off his blonde gringa friend. Whatever though, I’ve had many a stranger chileno ask to take a picture with me randomly. At least I talked to this kid a while. The convention all in all made for an interesting weekend though. We also celebrated my friend Geoff’s birthday by going to his host brother’s band’s (Los Chiches aka The Bedbugs) concert on Friday night and having a mini party with his host family on Saturday.

That Wednesday began my series of big trips, three in a row: Bolivia, Iguazú Falls, and Buenos Aires. Bolivia, I think, was one of the coolest and craziest but most difficult trips I have ever been on. We left out home in Santiago at about 3am Wednesday morning in order to catch a plane to La Paz at 6. From La Paz we hopped onto an 18 hour bus to Rurrenabaque in northern Bolivia, in the Amazon Basin. Everyone was complaining about the bus ride since everything after the first hour was dirt or gravel but I didn’t think it was too bad besides the layers of dirt coming in through the window and settling on us. The trip was gorgeous though. La Paz is the highest capital in the world at about 13,000 feet so the trip to Rurrenabaque is all downhill going from snow peaked volcanoes and mountain plains down into think, humid jungle. They used to drive a different road know as the “Most Dangerous Road in the World” for its high altitudes and instability but somewhere in the last few years they built a better, supposedly safer road to go by so we were only on the “Most Dangerous Road in the World” for a little while before we split off onto the “safer” road. I can’t really imagine how bad the old one must have been however because even on the safer one there were definite moments we all envisioned our lives ending as the bus tumbled off the edge. Nevertheless, we ended up making it in good time and good safety. Once in Rurrenabaque we found a local tour agency to set up a tour for us.I knew having a tour was necessary but I didn’t know why until we set out on the little motor-powered banana boat we had to ride three hours up the river to enter the park. The plan was to have one day/one night in the jungle and three days/two nights in the pampas (flooded savannah grassland type thing). The first night we spend in Madidi National Park where we had a really cool tour guide named Lucho. He was one of those guys that learned everything he knew about the jungle when he started walking through the jungle at age 10 with his father who learned it all from his father who learned it from his father, and he knew an incredible amount. He led us wandering through the jungle for hours with a machete in hand and stopped periodically to show us things – ants as big as my thumb that were apparently very poisonous, bats hiding in a hallow tree, giant termite nests, vines that you can drink water from when the rains are scarce, mud holes where the wild boars play, the wild boats themselves, leaves that turn into a red mush to pain your skin with, little yellow monkeys, and so much more. Lucho also took us on a separate jungle night hike late in the evening when we found huge tarantulas. He was a pretty funny guy though and likes to mess around with us, especially with the boys. At one point he told Pat to lie down on the ground such that his head was inside this hollow tree, and look up to see the spiders and bats. Meanwhile he grabbed a long piece of grass and slyly tickled Pat on the ear while he wasn’t looking, totally freaking him out and making him jump up out of the tree immediately. Lucho just laughed and laughed. Another time, he kept making jokes with Geoff about slicing him with the machete, understandably making Geoff a little uneasy. So when Geoff looked up to see the moneys, Lucho put his finger across Geoff’s throat as if it were the machete and totally freaked him out. Again, Lucho just laughed. What a guy…

Lucho:


Anyway, after our day and night in the thick of the jungle we headed on to the pampas. After really having to search to find the cool things in the jungle, the pampas seemed like some kind of Disneyland ride with all animals on display for us. It was crazy just cruising up the river while off to either side it was like alligator, alligator, capybara, alligator, bird of paradise (the bird, not the flower), crazy red parrots, alligator, family of capybara, alligator, bird with neon yellow feet, alligator… I remember distinctly being kind of jealous the first time someone saw an alligator because I missed it and really wanted to see one but by the end we were almost sick of seeing them. Of course we weren’t actually sick of seeing them but what I mean to say is it was just too normal.

Alligator


Monkeys


Extraordinarily Large Bird


The whole pampa trip was crazy cool like that though. By day we would go wading through alligator and piranha infested waters to hunt for cobras and anacondas (we found one that was like 10 feet long!), or fish for piranhas (Meg and I both caught one), and cool off by going for a swim with big pink Amazonian river dolphins, except in the heat of the day when we had the chance to relax and kick back in the hammocks to wait it out. In the evenings too they had two sort of bar/hut things up the river where they took us to play some grass volleyball and grab a cold beer.

Anaconda we caught


It was amazing and we were all pretty high on life as we headed back to Rurrenabaque three days later. The plan was to fly from Rurrenabaque back to La Paz that evening in order to be back in La Paz for our flight to Santiago at 10am the next morning. When we got to the airport in Rurrenabaque however, it started to torrentially rain for all of 3 minutes and they had to cancel the flight because the runway was made of grass. And that was where the string of bad luck started. Since we couldn’t fly out, and there were no buses, and the buses would have taken too long anyway, we had to organize for a jeep from the tour company to drive us back. The jeep was supposed to take 12 hours, as opposed to 18 on the bus or 1 flying, but cost the same as the flight which sucked but we didn’t really have any other choice. It as awful too because we were all covered in mosquito bites and sun burned and hadn’t slept too much in the past few days because we had to get up early to do the different activities so all we wanted to do was shower and sleep but the jeep was super uncomfortable. It was so bumpy that nobody could sleep, especially those sitting in the back seat, and there was virtually no way to get comfortable. So on this jeep trip, first the jeep broke down 3 different times and the drivers had to get out and play with the engine a while. Then we got a flat tire. Then at about 5am we asked how far away from La Paz we were and the driver said we were still 5 hours away which wasn’t going to work if we were going to catch our flight at 10 so he told us he would hurry and started driving like a maniac. About an hour down the road though we ran into a huge line of traffic, only to find that there had been a mudslide and the highway was closed for the next few house. So saying goodbye to catching our flight, with nothing else to do, we had to wait it out. We finally got back to La Paz a couple hours later, a full 18 hours after we had left. When we got there we decided to go to the airport anyway to see what our options were. However, because we had bought the cheap tickets, LAN would not give us our money back and would not put us on another flight. And, if we were going to try and fly back, the next flight wouldn’t leave for another two days anyway and would have cost us around $1,500 each. So that was not an option. Starting to get a little stressed out about the whole thing, we headed to an internet terminal to assess out options and write to all our professors and internship bosses to let them know that we were stuck in Bolivia and didn’t know exactly when we were going to be back. We figured out though that we could take a bus to Arica, in northern Chile, and then fly back to Santiago from there because the national flights were a lot cheaper than the international ones. However, we were told that the bus for the next day was sold out and that the bus terminal had closed for the day. Just to make sure, Meg, Molly, and I headed to the bus terminal to double check while the others headed off to find a hostel for the night. About 30 seconds after walking into the terminal however (which was closed anyway), we realized that we had left all out luggage in the taxi. We ran back out to see if the taxi was still there but he was gone. We waited until dark to see if he would come back but he never did. Exasperated to the max, we had a very hysterical group hug moment that I think was pretty much the low point. Fortunatley none of us lost our cameras, wallets, or passports but I did lost all my clothes, my backpack, my ipod, and my notes for the geography midterm I was supposed to take that week among other things (bday/Christmas presents anyone??). With nothing else to do, we headed back to the hostel to meet up with everyone else. We showered and borrowed what clean clothes they could lend us and got some dinner and then headed straight to bed since exhaustion was really the only thing we could control at that point.

After we lost everything...

From there we decided to go to the bus terminal in the morning anyway to see if we could get on a bus. We were actually able to get on a bus but the plan was to then get on the last flight out of Arica at 4 but we didn’t get there until 3:45 so we ended up being stuck in Arica for a night too. Just being back in Chile at that point was so homey though that it didn’t matter too much. The pharmacies on every corner were comforting and we could eat the fruit and veggies again which we were all craving since we had to be super careful about what we ate in Bolivia.

Stopped Llama in Arica:

We walked around Arica a bit that afternoon and then finally got on a plane back to Santiago the next morning. I don’t think I have ever been so happy to walk into Santiago before in my life. That was probably the best feeling of showering and changing my clothes that I have ever felt.

We got back to Santiago just in time however, to leave for Iguazú a day later. With no other choice but to pack light, I set out on the next adventure, again with Pat and Geoff, but this time with the addition of Matt and Nadine instead of Meg/Maggie/Molly. Originally the plan had been to go to Buenos Aires that weekend so that is where we flew into but Pat and Geoff and I decided that we all really wanted to go to Iguazú Falls instead so we parted ways from Matt and Nadine pretty much as soon as we got there and didn’t see them again until the flight back. We had a few hours to kill in the city and get some food before we hopped a bus to Iguazú (I think I need to add up how many hours I have spent on buses after all of this… weeks I think) which left that evening and got us there like 15 hours later, the next morning. The day we got there and the day after we spent entirely in the park on the Argentina side. Iguazú Falls is actually located on a triple border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay although we couldn’t go to the Brazil side without paying for a visa and I’m a little unclear as to where the border with Paraguay is. Regardless, the Argentina side is awesome and I’m pretty sure we must have been in all three countries at least once when we were in on the river. The falls are amazing though. I think they are the falls with the most volume of water pouring over and this year the water level was particularly high. There are two main loops in the park to walk through as well as a couple side trails where you just mill around and see falls of all different sizes. In some spots by the bigger falls you can just stand on the pathway and get soaked from the mist which is actually really fun and a nice oasis from the strong sun. The groomed, wooden planked pathways were a million miles away from the bushwhacking we had to do in the jungle in Bolivia but the walls of water were mesmerizing all the same. We really only had two sort of half days to see the falls although it turned out to be plenty since we had to take such a long bus and we only had a normal sized weekend for the trip as opposed to the stretched out 4-5 day weekends we had managed to work out for our other trips. It was completely worth it though. It think it made me realize how much I like the ecotourism stuff as opposed to just wandering through cities when they all start to seem pretty alike. It was a particularly funny trip as well because for the whole weekend Pat, Geoff, and I decided to introduce ourselves as Cran, Axel, and Falon respectively. It was particularly funny because even though it was Halloween, Geoff and I ended up having to stay in to work on homework so Pat, or should I say Cran, went out alone to a club and ended up running into some people that we had met earlier that day to whom he had already introduced himself as Cran so he had to keep it up for the night all by himself. It was also funny because earlier in the day when Pat had introduced themselves to a guy as Cran and Axel, the guy made some funny comment about how those were “not the most usual names” without actually questioning their validity.

The falls:


Me:


Cran, Axel and Falon:



Our trip to Iguazú was still only the 2nd of the 3 in a row though. The very next weekend I once again headed out to Buenos Aires although this time with Meg, Molly, and Maggie and then half way through I met up with Marianne who was returning from a birding trip in Argentina. The whole weekend was pretty relaxed as we just sort of wandered around the city and had some delicious Argentine beef

and poked in the little artsy shops and parks and randomly got our hair cuts and went to see Evita Peron's grave in the cemetary in Recoleta (after which none of us could stop singing "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" and some other things. Someone told me that Argentinians are Italians who speak Spanish but think they are English and that is exactly how the city feels. It is a cool blend of Parisian architecture with Tengo and Mate and Beef and art and Spanish spoken with an Italian accent and lots of food and things, set in the southern cone of Latin America with all the same economic and political issues that characterize most countries of the region (Chile is exempted from this actually). It is very European over all and very distinct from Chile but we had a great time. Meg, Maggie, Molly and I found some flyers for some bar or something shaped like huge lips so we each grabbed a pair and took pictures with them throughout the city which was funny.


And Marianne and I met up with some friends of her brother who live in a really nice house in Buenos Aires and offered to provide transportation to/from the airport for us with one of their 3 private chauffeurs and take us on a tour of their yacht club and feed us dinner and stuff. It was fun. They were super nice people and made us a lovely meal. And then afterward their oldest son, Valentín, who is 22, took me out with his friends and we went and picked up my friends and checkout the Buenos Aires Sunday night night-life which is actually far more lively than one might expect. Nobody eats dinner in BA until like 10 or 11pm so everything is just open later. Its definitely one of those cities that never sleeps (although I think the original was New York, no?). Marianne and I also went to see an art exhibit at the cultural center done by some Belgiam artists who had never been to Patagonia but had read about it and made a whole series of art things based on how they interpreted what they read. It was pretty funny. For example, to depict the Macaroni Penguins, they made a penguin statue and put macaronia noodles on its head. And the did a whole bunch of stuff with yukalaylee which I guess are originally from the Patagonia region. This was also in the exhibit:

Trip was overall really fun and really relaxing. I stayed in a nice hotel with Marianne which was an awesome treat after so many hostels and things three weeks in a row. Plus, as she is rather infamous for packing way too much stuff, she was able to help replenish my supplies of gear after losing everything in Bolivia so that I would be prepared for future trips to Patagonia and stuff. It was in general really nice to see her. And it was a really fun trip.

I'm not going to lie though, it was one of the craziest/funnest months of my life but I was definitely looking forward to just chilling in Santiago for a couple weekends to come.