Chilling in Chile

* Iquique (2nd to 4th April 2016) *

We managed to find the bus company, Trans Salvador that was going from La Paz to Iquique via Arica for the same price as the other companies were going to just Arica, also a sleeper 160 degree Cama bus which departed at 1pm, to arrive at Iquique at 7am. We boarded and was relatively comfortable, we made it to the Bolivia/Chile border to pass through customs and immigration. Shahn was suffering very badly with altitude sickness; severe diarrhoea, cramping, nausea, light headed and disorientation - basically a huge mess! A lovely Chilean man gave her a hot coca tea and that helped immensely. We had to change buses at Arica despite being told that it would be a direct bus. Then an hour later the new bus broke down, we were stopped for two hours stranded in the middle of nowhere until the same bus that left us in Arica to pick us up and take us the rest of way to Iquique.

A nice German guy named Daniel whom was travelling by himself, was also looking for a hostel to stay at but was more organised than we were. He had a couple of addresses for places to stay so we walked with him to the hostel and we booked in there for one night.  Backpackers Iquique was actually a lovely place to stay, they had awesome facilities, good Wi-Fi, activities available and had a great spot right near the beach. We went to the supermarket which was close by too and had a huge breakfast, we cooked all of our meals there and Eak used the charcoal bbq to cook our sausages and large 1kg beef steak, as always he did a great job. 

We walked around the town, which we found quite beautiful - the houses were colonial with brightly painted facades, due to the dry mild climate the buildings are preserved quite well though the fire risk is very high with these buildings.

As always, whenever we are close to the ocean/water, we wandered to the beach and stopped to look at a boat for Eak.

We booked the 11.45pm bus from Iquique direct to San Pedro de Atacama via Calama on a cama night bus, using AndesMar Bus.  The bus was new, clean and the two drivers were very good, the seats were comfortable and we slept very well. We did have to stop somewhere to get our bags x-rayed which was about 1 or 2am, so we were a bit of a state.  The Chilean roads were far more superior to the Bolivian road so we slept most of the way and arrived to San Pedro pretty refreshed and chipper.

* San Pedro de Atacama (5th & 6th April 2016) *

Arriving at San Pedro de Atacama we needed to find the best option to take us back to Calama so we can catch a flight out to Santiago.  We decided that we would prefer to stay an extra night in San Pedro de Atacama rather than in Calama, so a taxi transfer was most logical and the same price as the bus as well as more convenient.  

At the bus terminal we had a lovely breakfast of hot fresh bread and a ham & cheese omelets each. During our breakfast we were serenaded by two nice Chilean men with a guitar.

We wandered around for a good hour before finding a hostel, La Ruca, which we negotiated a decent price for as we found it cheaper using bookings.com, the room was nice with a very comfortable bed and private bathroom with excellent hot water. After dumping our bags we walked down the main street, which feels like a wild western type town with wood cladded exteriors, some with flaking paint and the dusty roads. As with all tourist towns there are many agencies with something to sell but we had checked Trip Advisor prior to our walk so we knew the better agencies from the worse ones. Due to it still being the low season, there wasn't any sold out prior and prices are competitive, many operators closed or are selective of their customers due to tour group sizes so often will cancel their tours or move you to another tour. Eventually, we settled on doing two tours with Whipala Expeditions, we did Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) in the afternoon and the Laguna Antiplatico tour the following morning. 

The Valley of the Moon tour started at 4pm and finished at 8pm, we had a varied group of nationalities and had a great guide who was very knowledgeable about the geology of the area.

We began with the short drive to the national park, then headed to the Mirador (lookout) which had an incredible difference in geology, a massive sand dune blended against a huge valley with ancient rock from the sea floor embedded with salt, sulphur, lithium and other minerals.

Unique geology with the tectonic plates over millions of years subluxing and causing the volcanoes on either side of the salt flats. We finished off the tour with a beautiful sunset at Mirador de Ckari, a high vantage point sitting on top of sandstone to see the salt river with salt flats in the distance.

We were meant to go on a star gazing tour as well at 10.30pm which unfortunately was cancelled due to cloud cover, though as far as we could see there wasn't a single cloud in the sky.  Unfortunately we did find another tour to do on our last night in San Pedro as its' famous for the clear night sky with no light pollution but out of no where it started raining so that too was cancelled.

Our last full day in San Pedro de Atacama we went on the Lagunas Antiplanicas tour with Whipala Expeditions, they picked us up from hostel at 7am and transported us to the Lagunas Altiplanicas (lagoons in altitudal plains).  We had a crisp morning of 1°C at 4,200m a.s.l where we saw the beautiful lagoons nestled among the mountains. We had a breakfast at Laguna Miñiques, hot tea & coffee with eggs, bread, avocado, ham & cheese with some biscuits.

We walked around the edge of the largest lagoon in the area, Laguna Miscanti which is under the 5,600 meters high is Miscanti mountain. Aguas Calienetes, the active mountain is the middle mountain, hot springs from volcanic activity.

Socaire village - 300 people live there with the main industries of lithium mining and agriculture (potatoes, quinoa, lima beans and alfalfa). The church is built from volcanic rock and cactus wood, it's over 250 years old. There were woman there selling their wares, while knitting using six pieces of wooden sticks as knitting needles. We told them that it looks difficult and they just laughed saying it wasn't.

Salar de Atacama - the largest salt flats in Chile (third largest in the world?) 2,000 square kilometres in area.

Laguna Chaxa -  Where the flamingos feed on Brine Shrimp that are in large volumes considering the small amount of glacial water available there. The Flamingos live here all year round along with many other birds and lizards.

Toconao - "place of stones" all the rock that the small village (pop 1,000) using.volcanic rock from the Andes to build most of the town. Only place that produces red and white wine over 2,600m as it is such a harsh environment.  The church was built in 1747 from stone and bell tower built from cactus wood, both are a national hertiage. 

The Cactus is protected now as it grows at a rate of 1cm per year so some of the very large cacti are hundreds to thousands of years old!

After returning from the tour we found some lunch at the only vegetarian restaurant in town, had a gigantic mixed vegetable and cheese empanada as well as a soup and lentil hamburger with salad.  After our fill we wandered the street to find further things to do, walked through the market and ended up at the Meteorite Museum, such a well done place by a young guy who had spent his life this far searching the Atacama desert for meteors.  We spent an hour here which was awesome, worth the visit and the CLP$3,500.

We had flights booked from Calama to Santiago using Sky Airlines, we were pumped to fly two hours instead of the long bus journey. Though luck was not on our side, less than 12 hours before our flight I received an email saying our flight had been cancelled and could be rebooked for two days time. Sky Airlines staff were on strike and that grounded their whole fleet nationally for two full days. Frustrated and incredibly annoyed at the prospect of spending 22 hours on an overnight bus to Santiago instead of our well planned flights.

So we cancelled our taxi transfer to Calama airport and trudged to the bus station to sort out the overnight bus required to get to Santiago.

* Santiago - (7th - 9th April 2016)

We arrived in Santiago very unsure about where to stay and what area was safe etc, we got a taxi down to Plaza de Armes as there was an information centre there and figured it would be a good place to start. We got there and found that there was no internet available to use, our Scribd offline lonely planet guide wasn't working and we were in the shit.  We managed to find a cafe that had Wi-Fi, we walked in and the women there were wearing very short skirts and dolled up beautifully, we thought we in a weird place as it was darkly light with only coffee and sandwiches being served. Turns out we had stumbled into a Chilean coffee club that uses "coffee served with legs" to distract people from complaining about how bad the coffee is, once we knew this it explained a lot yes but they were everywhere!!

We decided on a hostel called Chile Pepper Hostel, it was a bit out of town but turned out to be very accessible for us with the subway system, the hostel was a bit weird because it was so quiet, they had breakfast there for us as well so one less meal to think about! 

 We felt like sushi for dinner and found many sushi restaurants, we had a nice dinner but they put cream cheese in all of the sushi instead of avocados, personally we prefer the avocado as a fat component rather than cream cheese, still good though.

 We got involved in the free walking tour which was four hours in duration and we saw a lot of the city that we probably would have missed due to not knowing. Having done a terrible free walking tour in Cusco, Michael wasn't so keen to do it but our guide Omar was awesome, spoke well, gave excellent history and let us stop to buy ice cream at El Rosa.

Santiago was founded by the Spanish conqueror, Pedro de Valdivia on 12th of February 1541. The city was organised initially around the main square now called Plaza de Armas (as many main plazas in South America are called due to their history after the conquistadors executed many local people).

We also posted 7kgs of stuff back to New Zealand as we had bought ourselves; a couple of table cloths, a very heavy rug, beanies and a couple of alpaca & sheep's wool jerseys.  Sorry family haven't for the space to buy presents!!! So it was excellent to post those and rid ourselves of some weight in our packs, though it did cost a bit of money to send it is still cheaper than excess baggage!

Bolivian Amazon Jungle and Pampas Tour (27/03/16 - 01/04/16)

Max Adventures Jungle Tour (27th - 29th March 2016)

We arrived at the Max Adventures office at 8am to meet Tereza, an amazing Czech woman, mother of five and running this business with her husband Feizar, whom is an incredibly hard working local man.  Together they built the business from nothing except a dream to show people the Jungle and his home.  It took them 7 years to get the licencing approved to access the Madidi National Park, and have been operating from the site for 3 years now. They have completed an incredible amount of work and have built a few Eco Lodges basing the designs off the natural flora around the area and used the jungles timber and materials to build some beautiful buildings. Tereza said that they only employ local indigenous people as guides because the Jungle is engrained into them, their knowledge of the area, animals, plants and geography is almost inbuilt into them. They have tried to train people but have failed, so they use the local people from the surrounding tribes.

As it was over the Easter period, we were fortunate enough to meet the family, children and extended family as they were using it is as an opportunity to have a family holiday together. Our tour group is just us and another guy, Christian from London, UK - the small group is quite good as it means more interactive time and less dawdling. We piled into the boat and made our way up the river, Rio Beni (the river is 6,045 km in total length) alongside our guide, Miguel. The journey took just over three hours but it went quite quickly.  We arrived at the camp area and immediately went for a short walk and Miguel showed us the fruits that can be eaten, medicinal plants and how to use the vines as building materials. We then had lunch which consisted of hot rice, fried chicken, salad and fried plantain bananas.  

We were then shown our lodgings which are absolutely beautiful - luckily for us we got the "Eco Love Lodge", which gave us a private area near a stream and a very comfortable queen sized bed.

We enjoyed our night sleeping in the lodge, listening to the stream, the howler monkeys calling in the distance, frogs in river, pigs rustling through the bush and insects eating VERY loudly by my head during the night. We slept well in the beautiful tree house until 6.45am when the two small black bats, whom have taken residence in the hut, came back from their nights activities and noisily chatted to one another.

We went on a three hour mission hike through the jungle.  Some sections were incredibly dense jungle, which was very cool to see but really the only downside was the insane volume of mosquitos that are determined to eat you alive.  We had 98.5% Deet, which was excessive but we were still being attacked though I can't imagine not having any insect repellent on at all!

We were searching for some animals, there are heaps of pigs near the camp and where there are pigs - there are Puma!, so we saw a lot of paw prints and heard some pigs but didn't actually see anything.

Due to the 100% humidity and moist nature of the rainforest, everything is always damp and clammy feeling - doesn't seem to dry much especially since we were there still in the rainy season.

We got up at 7am, had a very extensive gringo/tourist breakfast from 8am (pancakes with caramel, pikelets with Jam, little biscuits, fruit salad, tea & coffee). We packed up our bags (we carried all our possessions with us and had one large pack with us, as we carried camping gear and food too - Poor Michael was carrying 30-40kgs in his pack which was ridiculous) then we set off for a hike through the jungle and to a new campsite for a night of wild camping in the jungle. We hiked for about two hours, stopping along the way so Miguel could show us the termites that they lick to reduce mosquito bites, a bush pig sty's near a water hole, puma and jaguar paw prints and how to make a fan from new palm frons. We made our way to the campsite, dumped our things down and walked to the river so we could try catch some catfish for dinner - Shahn slipped on her butt down to the stream as it was incredibly muddy. Not ideal especially since we didn't actually catch anything, though we had a delicious campfire dinner of pasta, hot vegetable salsa and deep fried plantain banana chips. We had a pretty comfortable night sleep in the mosquito nets under the tarpaulin tent - though it was insanely hot in the mosquito nets but it chilled off about 4am which was quite lovely. Lots of rainforest noises again; frogs, Capybara, fruit and branches falling to the ground, crickets, monkeys etc etc.

We woke at daybreak and got up at 7.45am to prepare campfire breakfast which consisted of a yummy deep fried damper with cheese, hot vegetable salsa again, bread & jam, sweet biscuits with coffee and tea. We packed up our campsite and our bags and headed back to the Max Adventures Camp, the hike was short back and quite beautiful as the sun was streaming through the rainforest, it has been overcast the whole time so it was cool to see the jungle in a different way. The boys went off and tried to go fishing again in the river and swimming, while Shahn relaxed in a hammock and wandered around the campsite taking photos and watching the wildlife of birds and lizards amongst the trees. We had lunch then headed out back down the river to Rurrenabaque.

On the 22nd March 2015, a very unfortunate event occurred at the Max Adventures Camp. A huge storm came out of nowhere unexpectedly, a new group arrived as we did and wandered down the path. A huge tornado like wind came through the jungle forest and knocked down a massive tree and killed a young British woman named Louisa. The night we arrived they had just finished completing a memorial shrine to her in the place she was crushed by the tree. They had a beautiful memorial service to her that we were very privileged to be a part of.

We booked into the same hostel in Rurrenabaque, we both had a glorious shower as we were very dirty and sweaty, got our laundry underway and went for a walk around the town, then relaxed in the hammocks at hostel while checking the internet and emails etc.  We had dinner at El Nomadico, an excellent restaurant run by a Australian guy from Sydney with his Bolivian wife. We had a chicken & quinoa lasagne and a Bolivian fish curry dish made with the local River Beni Catfish - it was absolutely delicious. Shahn managed to get the recipe from him so we hope to replicate it when back home!

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in jungle, we found it a very peaceful and beautiful place, yes the mosquitos and other bugs are a pain to deal with but it's an incredible lifestyle. The indigenous peoples have such an extensive knowledge about the land and it's amazing to watch them.  Our guide Miguel, was born in the jungle, he is a trained chef and he also told us that he was a commander or captain for the military and had lead 40 men, was dropped into the Bush in Peru, for three months and taught them survival skills and only ate food from the rainforest. He was pretty much a Bolivian Bear Grylls!

Dolphins Travel to the Pampas (30th March to 1st April 2016)

We got up early to sort out our bags and laundry for our next three day tour. We arrived at Dolphins Travel office by 8.30am and were told to relax as not leaving until 9-9.15am. We went next door to the cafe for breakfast, Luz del Mar, where we had the best breakfast in Bolivia - toasted homemade wholemeal and grain bread with homemade strawberry jam, melon juice and a delicious granola muesli with chia seeds, fruit and yoghurt. So cheap for NZ$5 pp.

We piled into the Toyota Land Cruiser for the three hour drive to the town of Santa Rosa for lunch. Our guides name was Antonio, along with us in the truck was Daniel (IT tech) from Austria and Aya (teacher of P.E and a Pilates Teacher)  from Japan as well as sisters Claire & Helen and their friend Emily from England (all teachers). We then were put into a boat and went another three hours down the Yacuma River, stopping to look at many birds and cute yellow squirrel monkeys that were quite friendly and inquisitive. Our accommodation are lodges built on the river to accommodate the rising water levels for the rainy versus dry seasons. We dumped our stuff, had a snack of popcorn and lemonade juice then into the boat again for some night time spotting of crocodile (caiman), monkeys and birds going to roost at sunset. 

Black-capped squirrel monkey (Saimiri boliviensis) is a native species to the upper Amazon basin in Bolivia, western Brazil and eastern Peru

Of course, there is always a stall in the middle of nowhere to sell you treats you don't need as well as, beer & wine available so we part took in a few sunset beers.

  Dinner was over the top and huge, the cook, her name was Fatima - she does an absolutely amazing job of cooking a crazy amount of food. We played a game of UNO by candlelight and drank local red wine.

The second day of the tour we got up at 7am and prepared ourselves for the day, again was fed a very large breakfast of fruits, pancakes, empanadas and little handmade donut sort of things. We went off the boat in search of anacondas, boa constrictors and capybara that live near a land island in the Pampas. We didn't see any snakes but instead saw many lizards, iguana, wasps and capybara poo. 

We then headed back to camp for lunch then prepared for swimming with the Dolphins. It was incredibly humid and scorching hot in the sun, the boat ride to the Dolphins living area was nice. The water is brown/orange from the tannins and river vegetation, also why the Dolphins have a pink colour to their otherwise grey skin. We were desperate to jump in the water to cool off, it was an excellent afternoon.  The dolphins would circle around you, nibble and bite on your toes, bunt into you and would play around. There were a couple of babies that stayed close to the adults and in total about seven dolphins. We spent two, almost three hours playing around in the water before they got bored of us. So we ventured on to see more animals and birds.  We saw a Toucan, brown and black howler monkeys, a sloth and many different birds. We watched the sun set over the water and headed back to camp with a few more mosquito bites and sunburnt bodies than we would have liked.

The best photo we took of the "Pink" Amazon River Dolphins (Inia geoffrensis)

Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco), the most common Toucan

Black Howler Monkey (Alouatta caraya) - the males are black, females a goldy brown colour.

Our final day, we awoke at 5.30am to watch the sunrise, which was stunning as it has just started showering as we left in the boat. A quick 30 minute snooze in the hammocks and breakfast at 7.30am. We had a morning spent fishing for Piranha, the river was very full after the rainy season so the chance of catching a fish was quite low - thus we went back to camp empty handed. Antonio told that the River system we were using is 225km long approximately and that you can go up and down it in many directions, the pink river dolphins use it as system to gain maximum food opportunities.

We had another massive lunch before we packed up our gear into the canoe/boat and set off back down the Yacuma River to get back in the Cruiser to go back to Rurrenabaque. There was a very fast 2.5hour ride on the rough dirt roads back to the town. Upon arrival we managed to get our bags back in some order and sussed out our flight to La Paz.  It was incredibly hot that day so most of us had patches of sunburn where we had sweated off through our sunscreen.