10 000

jay, 10.000 hits! this blog will be offline soon (in less than two weeks) and I don't know when/if it will come back online (probably new and improved) as I have to find a flat, job etc.

Hope you all had a good time reading it and there is still email/skype/chat to keep in contact (but never, ever facebook :)

Love,
Christina

San Pedro de Atacama

I have been here before. 16 years ago I visited with my parents and sister on an odysee through the Atacama desert.
Until now the only other deja vu I had encountered from this trip was the distinct South-American car alarm, it used to go off every time we opened or closed the rental car, my sister and me could imitate it perfectly in the end.

The first time I came here it felt like an expeditions and San Pedro seemed to lie at the end of the world. We had come here on a sheer endless ride on bumpy roads through the desert.

The streets of San Pedro were dirt and dust and empty, except for the inevitable sleeping dogs. I remeber the red earthen color of the houses, except for the white wahed church (which still looks the same). There were a handful of hostels and everyone gathered in one of the two restuarants in the evening, serving standard Chilenean food, posing a problem for me as I was a vegetarian at the time. It was my first brush with live outside my comfortable middle class existance, electricity not being available 24 hours, showers not always being hot and toilet paper being thrown in waste baskets.
Today the whole town is white washed. The difference to Bolivia, just 20 minutes away, is starteling. Bolivia looks like South America, San Pedro de Atacama like a picture book version of it. I think 80% of the people in town are tourists and restaurants, hostels, shops have sprung up for them.
I only spent one afternoon there this time, sitting on the shadowy Paza de las Armas drinking beer with a Chilenean who shared a table with me. He was working there for the season as a massage therapist...

After a 23 hours busride (Chile is a long, long country) I arrived in Valparaiso. Walking through its streets up the Cerro Conception I was invited on a rum and coke by someone celebrating his birthday in the bar I passed. Two days in Chile and twice invited on a drink, I think this might just be a good end of the road.