Valparaiso and San Pedro de Atacama

I go to bed at night, close my eyes, and just seconds later its the morning. I must be working hard.

I had a great final couple of days in Valparaiso. Tom, Pablo, Sarah, Anna and I scaled Valparaiso's steep streets, ate it's Chilean food, and visited the former house of poet Pablo Neruda. But before long the crowd was moving on, and after a little deliberation I opted to buy a bus ticket north towards the border town of San Pedro de Atacama.

The journey north was 24 hours long, but Chilean buses are of good quality, and my seat reclined to near horizontal. As we made our first on-route stop I met Julian from Denmark, my new instant best friend until the next one! Julian helped further my basic Spanish on the bus, and proved a great aid when language barriers arose.

San Pedro de Atacama is a small rural looking town on the Bolivian border. It's rustic feel still persists somewhat, but it has naturally morphed into a tourist hotspot full of hostels, international restaurants, and most notably, tours to its scenic desert surroundings.

On my first evening in San Pedro I embarked on a tour of Valle de la Lunar, a good tour of the rocky desert, culminating in a seemingly lunar landscape. The following day I joined Julian on a tour of various lagoons and salt lakes. I found this tour less interesting, and I was certainly less excited than the South Americans on the return journey who frantically danced and sung along to the grating Spanish pop songs blurting out through the minibus speakers.

That night, however, I felt uneasy. I wasn't 100% why, but it was possibly because I had been a little out of control lately. I had been joining San Pedro tours almost by default, riding on the tourist line. In addition to that, I have been constantly niggled by the fact that I didn't purchase flight tickets in which the date is movable, meaning that if I were to reach my final destination in June too soon, an early return to England would not be an option without purchasing a new flight ticket. For the first time on my travels, I didn't close my eyes at midnight and immediately awake to the morning sun.

The next day I chose to explore alone. I visited the few corners of tiny San Pedro I'd yet to see, booked myself onto a unique sounding evening astronomy outing, and researched for myself exactly how and when I wished to proceed. The most obvious next step was to take a three day trip across the salt flats to Bolivia, but with many horror stories about the journey on the internet, including fatal road crashes, I was insistent on ensuring I chose the right company and the right departure date. After much deliberation, I booked my journey for a couple of days time, leaving the rest of the afternoon plus all of the following day to relax and recharge. And that afternoon I did just did that, and in my laid back state, unrushed and untroubled, I felt right again.

Just one hour later I found myself rushing through the streets of San Pedro! As fast as I could I scampered to find an ATM, a money exchange place, and the agency for my tour. My few hours of relaxation had almost worked too well, and all of a sudden I knew no less than seven people who were doing the tour with my company the following day; one day before me! I was now ready for it and wanting to join my friends. And so a few hours of downtime was followed by a madcap rush to rearrange my plans and get myself sorted for the next day's big journey.

I just had enough time to prepare my things and join Julian for a meal before we attended our nighttime astronomy tour. Being our last day in Chile, we had some spare pesos to use up, and so we opted for a three course meal. Time was short, but in the heat of my recent rush I failed to recognise the error of our ways. What Julian's excuse was, I don't know. After making our order we realised we had set the clock too tight, and what resulted was a last minute madcap shovelling food race! Never before has fish, potato and mushrooms been devoured so quickly! After a small sprint to the tour bus there was little else for us to do but laugh!

Space, a night lit evening with French astronomer Alain, was well worth the fast scoffing and short sprint. Not only was it a totally original experience compared to the usual tourist fare, but Alain clearly had a great passion for his subject. At his small observatory in nearby Solor, Alain introduced his crowd to the basics of astronomy, before aligning his telescopes to various planets, stars and constellations in the night sky. The telescopic views of the moon particularly, in which he kindly took pictures of with our own cameras, were really stunning.

Later that night, and with little rest, I prepared to cross into Bolivia on a three day journey through Salar de Uyuni. It is there where my next blog entry will continue.

Santiago and Valparaiso

Things change fast. Just a few weeks ago I was sat in Leeds at my desk at work with no future plans. Now I'm in South America. Sometimes I catch a moment to pause and suddenly realise that it's real, I really am back on the road ... and there's still well over three months of it left!

Even over the last few days things have changed fast. It's incredible how you can say goodbye to people each and every day like they are your best friends, almost forgetting that you had no idea they even existed when you woke up. And its new people each day.

My first few days in Santiago included a walking tour, a museum, a cathedral visit, and a couple of lofty hilltop views of the city. One of the first people I met was a Brazilian guy called Eric, who I joined for some food and drink on the first night, and amongst other things, we talked about travelling in South America. Prior to leaving home I had anticipated that my lack of Spanish, and indeed my inadequacy at learning languages, may become an issue on my forthcoming journey. I therefore bought a Latin American phrasebook in preperation. However, chatting with Eric made me realise that I can remember Spanish words easier by thinking of English words and names that remind me of the Spanish word.

It was Sunday evening when my language skills were first really put to the test; I went to a cafe for a cheese burger alone. After somehow bumbling through a couple of options the waitress offered me, I hit a stumbling block. 'Quen-ta?', asked the waitress, or a similar sounding word to that effect. 'Quen-ta?' I replied, scrambling to the Q section of my Latin-american dictionary. A few seconds later the waitress herself was scouring for the word on the pages, but even after moving me to the C section, we failed to find it. "Errr ... si!" I answered, giving up the ghost and blindly accepting whatever I had been asked. As it turned out, 'Quen-ta' appeared to mean 'Would you like your chips placed literally inside your burger, and have the whole thing swimming in a sea of a light mayonnaise?'. Despite the mayo-sea though, it was rather good!

After finishing my meal, I proudly prepared myself to redeem my language frailties; Eric had taught me the word for 'bill' a couple of nights earlier. To trigger my memory, I knew I had to think of the first name of my favourite film director, Quentin Tarantino, and remove the last letter. The word for 'bill', it turned out, was 'Quen-ta'! I later discovered that 'cuenta' (as it is really spelt) means 'bill', and 'cuanto' means 'how much'. Possibly I had been asked one of these, and maybe I actually was defining the quantity of sauce on my burger!

I've now moved on to my second destination in Chile; Valparaiso. Valparaiso is the city of hills, graffiti art, and friendly street dogs. I met a bunch of people on a great walking tour yesterday, and today we caught a bus to nearby Concon to try sandboarding on the ocean-side sand dunes.

After the trip we found a couple of locals whose truck was stuck in the sand, but there was little help we could offer. It turned out that they had pulled off the road to smoke marijuana, but now were stuck in the sand ... but at least they were chilled out about it.

I've now returned to my hostel to plan where I will go next. Only time will tell cuanto fun it will bring. Ciao mi amigos!

A New Journey

Israel. Italy. USA. Tunisia. Iceland. Taiwan. Turkey. Morocco.

Eight countries visited in the four years since my year-long journey in 2009. All short journeys, and all unblogged. I didn't honestly think I would embark on a large backpacking adventure again, and yet here I am, ready to embark on three and half months in South America.

It's difficult to say what will be the same and what will be different. I predict I will travel at a slower and more relaxed pace than last time. I predict I will no longer slum it in £1 hotel rooms with dirt smothered walls and plagues of mosquitoes. And I predict day one will not be a lonely and worrying experience for both me in my first locale, and for my luggage left behind in Heathrow airport. But with travelling, only one thing can be foreseen; nothing will be as expected.

This is my journey from Santiago to Quito ...