In transit...Iquique, Arica, and back to Peru!

We made the border crossing at about 7am, once again, high up in the Andes.  This was to be our last Chilean entrance, and that was pretty exciting on its own...

Once on the other side of the border, we jumped back on the bus, and headed into a very familiar stretch of highway...It just so happened to be the same stretch of highway we were on, after leaving the Uyuni tour in Southern Bolivia, and entering into Chile, headed for San Pedro de Atacama.

We, infact, pulled into the bus terminal in Atacama for a few minutes, then continued on, north, to Iquique.

As we approached Iquique, we started seeing massive sand dunes, and finally started to feel as if we were near the coast again.  We came to the summit of a large hill/dune, and at the top, you could see all of Iquique, just as the sun was setting.  The view was spectacular, and the diminishing light over the Pacific was gorgeous.

We spent the night at a shitty hostel near the beach, which was 10,000 pesos for a dorm bed...We were so ready to be back in Peru...

Next morning, we flagged down a cab to the bus terminal, and jumped on the next bus to Arica, which took us about 5 hours to get there.  Endless desert sand 360 degrees, with massive dunes and drop-offs...

The desert-scape of Iquique

Still in Chile, on the way to the border...

Non-stop desert

Once in Arica, we exited the terminal, crossed the street, and found the collectivo station for heading to Peru.  After figuring out which bus to get on, we were off.  One Chilean exit stamp, and one Peruvian entrance was all we needed...

Easy border crossing, and we were in!  Once again, and now it's really closing in on the end of the trip...Amazing.

We pulled into Tacna, Peru, at about 7pm, and found the office window for "Civa Bus" that travels all over the country...At this point, we had no plan, other than a possible volunteer gig a few hours south of Lima, where we wanted to head, but had to choose another stop in between...

We figured we'd head back to Nazca for a night, and therefor, skip traveling into the Andes again.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the bus terminal, in the form of more empanadas, and then jumped on our 7:30 bus to Nazca.

We awoke to the sound of "Nazca, Nazca" being yelled by the bus driver, and we hopped out, onto the heated sands of the Nazca desert once again, only this time, coming from the opposite direction.  We found a fairly cheap hostel for the night, at "Nasca Inn," only about 5 blocks from the center of town, where we cooked some dinner, and hung out with two other travelers for the evening, a guy from Japan, and a Swede.

With wifi access, I emailed the HelpX posting once again, and told the owner we were on our way, which he had said was fine, whenever we wanted...Our trip was almost over, but not before doing a little more volunteer work, thankfully, because we're getting pretty broke!

Happy New Year from the end of the world!!

There were two buses heading to Ushuaia that morning from Rio Gallegos, the first being "Marga" and ours being "Tecni Austral."  The buses left at the same time, but ours was held back at the Chilean border for some time, because one man had trouble with his papers.  We sat for almost an hour while he sorted them out

Back on the road, we were on our way.  The bus was filled with backpackers heading there for the same reason as us, to ring in the new year, as far south as you can pretty much get, (at least by bus).

The island of Tierra del Fuego is huge.  It's about half Argentina and half Chile.  Getting there is not as easy as it looks on the map.  It took about an hour from Rio Gallegos to the Chilean border, where we had to stamp in, and get our bags all checked by sniffing dogs, apparently looking for fruits and veggies, more than contraband.  Once stamped into Chile, we drove about an hour, until we hit the Strait of Magellan, where the bus boards a massive freight ship, with a ramp on the shore.  We all walked onto the ship, and the freighter crossed the Strait of Magellan, covered in a stormy looking sky, that made me imagine past explorers and conquistadors navigating the southern seas.

Once on the other side, the bus drove off the boat ramp, and onto solid ground, on Isla Tierra del Fuego.  We re-boarded, and we on our way to the Argentinian border again.  Another hour or so, and we had to all check back into Argentina, and stamp out of Chile, which luckily, is a much smoother, and quicker process than the other way around.  I thought that we were pretty close after that last border, especially after we made it to Rio Grande, the smaller city on the island.  We were still pretty far, and the day was turning into night, slowly.

We pulled into Ushuaia at 10:30 PM, making it a 14 hour bus ride in total, from Rio Gallegos...We were beat, but ready to party, if there was anything going on!  We literally ran from the bus stop up the hill towards our hostel we had reserved.  We arrived at the door of "Cruz del Sur Hostel," and they opened the door to a ton of people partying and eating inside, where they handed us empanadas.  We put our stuff in the dorm room, and came back upstairs to join the festivities, and met a group of Brazilians, who were super cool, and offered us "Cynar," a strangely good liquor made from artichokes.  Suddenly we realized that 2013 was minutes away from being over...Wow.  A new year, and sadly, the quickly approaching end of our amazing journey...Not so fast, we've still got a lot of ground to cover!

We made some new friends at our hostel, and ended up having a blast there.  The owners were the nicest people ever, and after our 2 nights that were reserved, we didn't realize there was nothing available in the whole city, due to the holiday season.  They let us crash on the floor in the living room for a couple more nights, and thanks to them we were able to make the most of our southernmost trip!

We walked all around the city, in the freezing cold 'summer,' with rain falling in and out of the day.  Ushuaia reminded me much of some cities I visited in Alaska several years ago, due to it's surroundings and temperature.  It was gorgeous.  Situated right on the Beagle Channel, with Chile just across the way, and some scattered sailboats and cruise ships, as well as Argentine naval vessels about the waterfront.  We walked up to the Martial Glacier, as it's called, and had the most incredible view of the city on our last day there, and were pleasantly surprised by the sunshine that greeted us atop...

 

 

We spent 4 nights at the hostel, and like I said, met some really cool people.  The group of Brazilians were awesome.  The night before we left, they gave us a shirt from their Sao Paulo Pub Crawl business, and told us we were welcome there if ever in Brazil...Next trip!  The mother at Cruz del Sur Hostel, Marisha, walked up to me with a bag of goodies for our bus journey, which was so nice of her.  What a great place to visit, and an amazing hostel.  We really lucked out.

Next morning was going to be a long one.  All the way back to Rio Gallegos with all the border hopping madness included.  We would wake up at 4 am to get packed up and head to our five o clock bus.  The sunrise over the very calm Beagle Channel was unbelievable.  Turned out, the drivers were the same as on the way there, and were 2 really nice guys.  Alejandro, the assistant, was so cool.  He spoke English very well, and loved talking to us.  I had told him the following day was going to be Danica's birthday, and during one of our many stops, he get everyone on the bus to sing for her, it was awesome.

 We made it back across the Strait of Magellan, this time with some pretty fierce and freezing wind and waves crashing aboard.  Back on the mainland, we once again stamped out of Chile, and into Argentina, hopefully the last time for a while anyways...We hit the bus station in Rio Gallegos at 7:15pm, just enough time for our continuing bus, aboard "Via Tac," up the Atlantic coast, to Puerto Madryn for Danica's 25th birthday, taking a huge chunk out of the country going north, and far away from the land of fire.

Border hopping, and more border hopping...South.

We had a couple weeks of window (actually more like a couple months), after we decided to go to Ushuaia for New Year's, to plan the whole thing out.  But, who really wants to spend their travel time figuring out buses and what-not?  Not us.  Infact, I've always been a procrastinator, but the funny thing about it all, was that we actually thought to book a hostel in Ushuaia for New Year's, but not a bus/flight/boat,etc. to get there...

Well, while still in Bolson, we did a little (a lot) of research on bus prices only, and I was actually at one point, a week before Christmas, super close to buying our bus tickets through a company called 'Taqsa' that passes right through El Bolson, all the way down to El Calafate.  It was pretty pricey, and infact, would have cost us about $300 US to get down to Calafate, then we'd still have to get to Ushuaia.  Bottom line was that buses in Argentina, although very nice, are the priciest so far on this trip...Yes, even more expensive than Chile!

So, after some research, and talking to our friends in Chile at the time, we decided to do a little bit of back-tracking, back up to Bariloche, and across the border to Osorno, where we'd spend the night, wake up, and jump on a Chilean bus, hop the border in reverse, and jump right back on Ruta Cuarenta, and head down through Argentina before crossing again, into Punta Arenas, Chile.  Also, on the map, Punta Arenas is pretty damn close to Ushuaia, but as much as I love maps, it's much more difficult than that, especially in this season (Hoidays/Summer in the south).  We hadn't booked anything further than Punta Arenas, and just sort of figured we'd be fine, and due to the distance between the two countries, and the fact that they literally 'share' Tierra del Fuego, we really thought it would be easy.

Upon our arrival to Punta Arenas, after our brutal 28 hour bus ride from Osorno, and our numerous border crossings, of just basically filling our passports with useless stamps, and not to mention useless searches (with dogs) of our luggage coming from Chile, and back into Chile, we were back IN CHILE, in Punta Arenas...Quite a beautiful sky upon arrival, and numerous cruise ships lining the shoreline, we had actually made it down south, real far south.  We found a hostel for the night at "El Mirador," a family run place with an incredibly friendly and helpful woman working the desk, frantically trying to find us transportation to Ushuaia.  I told her our plans to spend the end of the year there, and our reservation at a hostel, but she still ensured me that if for some reason we were unable to, Punta Arenas was (also) a great place to bring it in...Sweet lady.  We had dinner at "Lomito's," a 50's looking diner with hot dogs and beer.  Kind of a cool place, especially after such a long bus journey.

Heading out of Punta Arenas, with a view of Tierra del Fuego in the distance, across the water

We found some info, mostly letting us down, believing we couldn't get there in time.  I remember going to bed, pretty bummed, thinking that we'd get there after New Year's, but not for it, and that's been our plan for a while...

We slept like champions in one of the most comfortable colchones (mattresses) in a while, and woke, had some Yerba Mate.  I walked straight to the company doing the trip that morning to Ushuaia, to see if maybe someone had canceled, but to no avail it was a huge tour group, with months of reservations ahead of us...

When I got back, I decided to see if maybe we could figure out another route.  Instead of Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, I thought, well, maybe Rio Gallegos (Argentina) has more buses, or at least options on getting there.  First I searched for buses from Rio Gallegos to Ushuaia, and sure enough found the company "Tecni Austral" was doing the journey the next morning, and had spaces left.  I kept the page open as I attempted another search for buses from Punta Arenas to Rio Gallegos, and sure enough, found one as well, aboard "Pinguino," leaving at noon.

I quickly typed in my credit card details as if they were going out of style, and felt excited and relieved.  The nice woman at El Mirador offered to print out our tickets for us, to save us from going to an internet cafe, and we had done it.  Next stop, Argentina.  Again.  Of course though, not before crossing the same border again.  Wow, it seems our passports will not have any room left in them after this trip.

As for our decision at this point, to travel through a Chilean company, even though it was cheaper for the tickets, we ended up paying more in the long run.  Sure, we had a comfortable journey, and got to see the famed city of Osorno, which was actually kinda fun, it was unnecessary to say the least.  We could have been picked up in Bolson, hopped aboard, and left out the whole border crossing nonsense, and went directly to Rio Gallegos, but guess what, we have much more of a story to tell this way!  Oh, and the Chilean buses do not serve meals.  They gave us a bit of white bread, with a pinch of ham and cheese for lunch the first day, and the second, they just pulled into some expensive rest stops and said "Almuerzo."  Let's see...$30 for lunch (empanadas and a shitty glass of wine.  And, I almost forgot to mention, the horrid movie selection that began with a movie called "Journey to the Mysterious Island," featuring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, and continued with a movie starring none other than Brendan Frasier, where raccoons and squirrels are trying to drive his family out of town...Wow, thanks Chile for all of that!  At least the Argentine buses served us a hot lunch.  I'll try and keep all that in mind for the next decision making process...

Spending a week with my family in El Monte!

On the day marking our 8 months of travel, my family arrived at the Santiago international airport...They had been planning this for a while, and I was very excited to see them.  They found a place for a week in El Monte, just outside of Santiago in the wine country, and we were gearing up for the visit.

We took a bus from near the terminal 'Los Heroes,' in Santiago, headed for the airport.  Having not had a lot of sleep the prior night, we were a little out of it to say the least...We boarded the bus, and the driver pointed to a crate behind his seat for our bags.  There was hardly anyone on the bus, and I decided to also put my guitar in the storage space.  All of a sudden a ton of people boarded, and began putting things on top of my guitar bag.  Stupid of me, but I was watching carefully, and figured it would be fine.  Turns out, something chipped the nut on the headstock of my guitar, and the high E string is unplayable...The search for a new nut continues, and my previous paranoia of keeping my guitar with me will continue...

Anyways, we made it to the airport at about 10 am, and found the international arrivals terminal, which was much smaller than I expected from a big city like Santiago.  We waited in a crowd of rowdy taxi cabbies trying to get business, and finally, after being asked if we needed a cab for over an hour, I spotted my brother Michael walking out of the terminal exit!

We were both very excited to see everyone, obviously, and I was happy to finally meet Thom, my mother's boyfriend, who I had heard so much about, as well as Meg, my sister's girlfriend.  We waited while Thom and my mom went to retrieve the rental van, and we headed off into the Chilean highway system to find our home for the next week.

After only a couple wrong turns, we pulled into beautiful little El Monte, and into the driveway of the house.  None of us expected what we would find there, as it was an enormous property, with a pool, and gorgeous gardens and trees, home to 5 big dogs, and two caretakers...

Roast beef dinner I made...

A massive kitchen, and an awesome outdoor barbeque area with wood burning pizza oven, would be the site of our meals for most of the next week.  Danica and I did most of the cooking, as we missed our awesome kitchen in Manglaralto, Ecuador...

We spent a lot of time hanging out by the pool, and roaming the property, which had a creek flowing through it, and pond, and some massive trees.  We spent an afternoon visiting the  neighboring town of Pomaire, which is the pottery capital of Chile, and a nice small village to wander through.

Later in the week, we ventured out to the coast, and spent the day visiting Viña Del Mar, and Valparaiso, which were both very beautiful in their own sense.  We took the long way back, down the coast a ways, and got some incredible views of the ocean cliffs, very reminiscent of California...

Valparaiso Marina

 

 

 

We found a microbrewery down the road from El Monte, called "Szot," run by an American guy and his Chilean wife and son.  They had a great selection of beers, and we really enjoyed their Barley Wine and Double IPA, amongst others.  As mentioned in previous posts, we love finding good beer, as it is often hard to come by!  The owners were super friendly, and we visited them twice on our trip.

My brother Michael in part of Szot's beer commercial...awesome

More delicious dinners were eaten, including one my mom made, stuffed chickens baked with stuffing and roasted veggies.  Grilled Salmon, and beef tacos.  We had an awesome time seeing and hanging out with everyone, and didn't want them to leave!  What a perfect place for it as well, the property was amazing!  Thanks guys!

Hanging out in Vina del Mar

We all boarded the van at the end of our week there, and headed to the airport to see them off.  That night wse boarded a bus 'Andesmar' and headed for Mendoza, Argentina...The end of a beautiful time in Chile for now, perhaps we'll cross over again, down the road...

Chile's Capital - Meeting up with family!

Danica's uncle lives in Santiago, and has for years.  We planned on visiting him there a while back, and my family planned on meeting us somewhere along the way to visit, and chose Santiago...

We took an overnight bus from La Serena to Santiago, after our camping excursion, and pulled into the Tur Bus terminal at about 5:30 AM.  We were a day early to meet up with her uncle, and had to find a hostel for the night.  Juan, our Colombian friend was somewhere in the city as well, so we set out to find a cafe for some breakfast and some internet access...

We took a cab into the Plaza de Armas, or center of town, and it was still very early, and a ghost town at that.  After roaming for about a half hour, we found a small cafe that served coffee and had wifi.  We found out Juan was staying in Barrio Brasil, not too far from us, and we eventually went to meet him at his hostel, "Cienfuegos" which turned out to be a nice spot, and the first ever hostel in Santiago.

The hostel hosted a barbecue that night, for $2500 Pesos a piece, and we all hung out on the back patio.  A motorcycle rider named Trevor, was there that night, who had been traveling down the continent, from the US.  We started chatting with him, and it turns out he knew Mark and Carlie, our Aussie friends.  Not only did he know them from his travels, but it turned out he also knew several other people we had met along the way...Very small world.

Next day, checked out of the hostel, and set off to the other side of town, to meet Danica's uncle, and spend a few days with him...

Santiago seemed so far off at first, and obviously was.  We did some calculating thus far, and found that we've traveled about 5500 miles, or 8800 kilometers since San Jose, Costa Rica, and wow, it's been a long way!

 

We stayed at her uncle Steve's apartment for 4 nights, and really had a great time.  He was an awesome guy with a ton of information to share.  I had been looking forward to meeting him for a while, and she hadn't seen him in a few years, so it was really a great visit....

Danica cooking at his place...

the view from his balcony

family feud...

We said bye to Steve, and headed to the airport, with all of our stuff, to meet up with my family...

Camping in Pisco Elqui - Valle del Elqui

We left Vicuña in the later afternoon, and jumped on another bus north east to Pisco Elqui, where we had heard that there was a ton of campgrounds, and a good place to spend a week.

Pisco, the grape liquor that originated in Peru, is also heavily produced in Chile, especially in this region.  Infact, most of the grapes you see growing here won't be used for wine...In Bolivia, (in the Tarija region), they also produce grape liquor, but under the name "Singani."  

Only an hour by bus, we were dropped off in "Downtown" Pisco Elqui, which was tiny.  A beautiful cathedral jetted up in the square, and several little shops scattered the small street.  Our Lonely Planet book (3 years old) listed a spot called "Camping Rinconada," that was about $4 per person to camp.  Sure enough, it had been sold, and was closed down...A guy in the square recommended going to "Solar de Barbosa" to camp, which was a 10 minute walk with all of our stuff.

We walked down the dirt path to the campground and were greeted at the gat by a strange guy from Viña del Mar, who told us to come sit down in the shade, and we'd talk about price...This was confusing, because the listed price on the gate was 5,000 Pesos/person, which is $10.  Very expensive to camp, in my opinion, especially if we're on foot, with only a tent, and no car.  I thought he would give us a deal, but it turned out he just wanted to chat for about a half hour about our trip, then he introduced us to the owner, who was firm on his price.  At this point, we were starving, and decided to stay for one night, then maybe find a cheaper spot.  The place was really nice, right on the creek, and we found a shaded spot for the night.

Next morning, I ventured out to find a better, and cheaper spot, and was successful just down the road.  We packed up, and trekked it out of the shade, and into the hot sun, down the road to "Refugio de Angel."

The owner met me at the gate, and gave us a good deal, as I told her we would stay for 4 nights.

The camp was also on the creek, but this one had a nice water hole, and a ton more shade.  We were 2 of maybe 5 total in the whole campsite for the first two nights, and really enjoyed it.  Collected some wood and had a great fire for cooking on, while enjoying some local Pisco from the valley, which was great.

our campsite

 

bridge over the river

Also the second day, we ran into a couple that had been staying at Maria's hostel in La Serena, Michael and Chiara, from England and Austria.  We spent an evening hanging out with them, and enjoying the campfire, along with some local beers and Pisco.

The campsite was home to 3 massive German Shepherds as well as several massive cats.  One big white cat befriended us (especially Danica), and wouldn't leave our camp.  The tuna remnants probably didn't keep him away either, and she named him Rey.

We stayed through Halloween, and the campsite filled up super quickly with Chileans, getting away for their long weekend.

Some good cooking on the fire, including pork chops one night, some lentil stew, pastas, and whatever else we could muster up, proved to be a great time camping.  Only let down was we realized we needed some equipment upgrades, especially if we were planning on heading into Patagonia to do some real camping.  The zipper on our tent broke the first night, and now doesn't close, and my inflatable air mattress pad has a gash in it, and wont hold air.  Other than those things, we survived a week of camping, and can hopefully do some minor repairs.

Vicuña - Valle del Elqui

We took a bus at mid-day, about an hour ride to Vicuña, the bigger town in the heart of the Elqui Valley, a Pisco and wine producing region behind La Serena.

The nice folks at Hostal Maria recommended a hostel that would let us camp there in Vicuña for the night.  The place was called "La Elquina," and was just about 4 blocks from the bus station where we were dropped off...

An older gentleman answered the door, and showed us to the back garden of the hostel, where we could set up camp for the night.  There was kitchen access, a really nice garden, and a comfortable, grassy bed which we would be sleeping on top of that night...

A walk through the relatively small town of Vicuña, and some lunch, would bring us back to the camp for the night, to cook dinner, and hang out.

We had about a week to kill, hopefully camping in the area, to save money, before we needed to head to Santiago, to meet the family!  It was coming up quickly, as my family purchased tickets to come visit us, the second week of November in Santiago.

La Serena, back on the Pacific

Our overnight bus slowly pulled into the La Serena Terminal at about 11:30 AM, and we were greeting by a slight Pacific breeze...

We sat on a bench and tried to figure out a hostel situation for the night, and found the closest one we could to the terminal.

"Hostal Maria" was just up the road, about a 5 minute walk.  We were greeted by the nicest people upon entering into their 'home' turned-hostel.  It was a brother and sister duo in their 60's, respectively Maria, and Pancho.  They showed us our room for the night, and then sat us down, offered us coffee, and gave us the low-down on La Serena, and what there was to do there.

We walked all the way to the beach, which took about a half hour, and were a little disappointed in the result...It was a huge beachfront area, but was pretty littered with trash, and all the way down the beach was high rise apartments and hotels.  Not as attractive as we had hoped, but still a nice walk.  There was a huge lighthouse structure right on the beach, that a ton of tourists were posing in front of, and all the local kids went there to make out.

We walked around for a while, then back to grocery store, grabbed some things to make dinner, and hung out at the hostel for the night.  Next day, Maria and Pancho gave us directions and some tips on getting to the Valle del Elqui, where we wanted to do some camping...

The hostel was a very nice place.  Nice kitchen, beautiful yard and garden with fruit trees.  It was the perfect jump off point for us in the area, albeit it being super expensive...

Hostal Maria's backyard

San Pedro de Atacama - A whole new world

No, not the theme song from Alladin, but yes, a culture shock all in its own...San Pedro was a nice little desert town, extremely hot during the day, and some incredibly clear skies.  We spent a night at Hostal Corvatsch the first night, after our border crossing adventure into the 21st century.  It was Danica, Juan and I, and we got a dorm style room for very expensive.  Luckily the place had a kitchen, and luckily we finished cooking about 9, because they hurried us out and locked it all up.

streets of San Pedro de Atacama

The next day, we decided to look for camping, and obviously something cheaper...Juan didn't have a tent, and he set off to find a cheaper hostel.  Danica and I found "Camping Los Perrales" just down the road from the center, and while still expensive to set up a tent, it was cheaper than a hostel...

Camping "Los Perrales"

We camped one night, and had a lot of fun.  Cooked, then Juan came and hung out with us at the site til pretty late, and we said goodbye to him, as he was heading to Salta, Argentina in the morning, and us to La Serena, down the coast.
 

Next morning, we got up and found a bus company, "Tur Bus," doing an overnight journey to La Serena, which was about 16 hours away.  We spent the day roaming around, and spending way too long at a cafe on the net, before trudging through the town that evening, in the heat, to find the bus station.

We boarded at 7pm, and headed north-west towards Calama, and into the sunset.  The Valle de la Luna was to our Port-side, and what an incredible sight it was.  Even coming from the Bolivian Salar, the Valle was impressive, with its massive desert rocky cliffs and red rocks.  We would wake the next morning in La Serena...