First Chilean Stop: San Pedro de Atacama

So I ended up staying 10 days in San Pedro de Atacama. That wasn't originally the plan but a series of factors led to me to extend my stay so many times that when I actually packed up this morning, the ladies who worked there were like, "No Yenni! You're leaving?!" In any case it was actually a much needed vacation from my vacation. Even though it's super awesome and I recommend that you all quit your jobs and jet off to random corners of the globe, traveling can be exhausting. By my count I slept in 20 different places in August, so 9 straight nights on a non-moving actual mattress was a nice change. And San Pedro was a relaxing place to do it in.

As I mentioned in my last post, the tour company arranged my transfer across the Chilean border. I got my Bolivian exit stamp and hopped on a bus with Sarah that would bring us into Chile. We had the weird experience of briefly not officially being in any country as it was about an hour before we reached Chile's border control. After being asked literally zero questions by the Border Officer and having our bags searched for contraband (which seemed to be defined as any sort of fruit - goodbye trail mix) we were in Chile!

Sarah had originally planned to head right out of San Pedro back up to Lima, but some trouble with the ATM resulted in her having to stay a night in town before heading out the next day. No complaints from me! Another day together to do fun activities! Along with our hostel roommates we rented some bikes to ride around La Valle de la Luna which was more hilly than anticipated though very beautiful, and I convinced her to go on a horseback riding tour with me in the morning so I could get my horse fix in. Then of course the inevitable came and she hopped on a bus to bring her journey around South America to an end. I had greatly enjoyed our meetings every few weeks as we roughly traveled the same path through Peru and Bolivia and it's sad to think I won't see her popping up in a few weeks somewhere in Chile.

I spent the rest of my time in San Pedro pretty low-key, I did check out an Astronomy tour and the Meteorite Museum, but mostly I read, watched a couple movies, and started grad school applications - yuck real life! I can already tell Chile is very different than Peru or Bolivia. I mean as soon as you cross the border you know something is different. The roads are well paved, with actual road signs, and for the first time in two months the bus driver told us to put our seatbelts on. It is a weird feeling though, the fact that I'm privileged enough that my time in developing countries can be regarded as a fun adventure. That I can use it as an opportunity to grow and challenge myself, but when it comes down to it, I don't have to stay there. I can return to a world of seat belts and drinkable tap water. Most people don't get to leave.

In any case, I'm off again, to La Serena, before backtracking several hundred kilometers to Taltal where I'm doing a workaway that was just one day too late getting settled to allow me to move across the country in a logical fashion. Update will be coming soon!

Salar de Uyuni and Goodbye Bolivia

Doing a tour of the Salar de Uyuni was also on my original to-do list for my trip to South America, so after Sarah and I finished our mine tour in Potosí we collected our things from the hostel and hopped on a bus towards Uyuni. I had been recommended the company Red Planet by several people, mainly on the basis that it's the only company where you get to soak in the thermal springs on the second night and enjoy the Milky Way stretching across the sky as the moon seems to rise out of a lake vs. first thing in the morning the third day with about 100 people from the other tour groups. One of those is clearly better than the others. With that in mind, Sarah and I boogied over to the office as soon as we found a hotel in Uyuni to stay in. Despite them most likely being closed, we barged in anyway and were able to get a tour booked leaving the next day. Lucky! And probably obnoxious!

Our group consisted of two full Land Rovers led by our intrepid tour guide Oscar who was perhaps more enthusiastic than factually accurate about the sites we were seeing. As in, yes I'm pretty sure NASA did come study one of the lagoons, but no I'm pretty sure the reason isn't because they found life on Mars. I think I would have heard about that before you told me Oscar.

Nevertheless the scenery was stunning and in some cases very alien looking. And despite spending two and a half days in a car, I never got bored with the landscape constantly changing outside my window. Also it was nice to have my transfer into Chile arranged for me and to have friends to cross the border with on the third day after my previous border crossing experience. Yes, that's right, I'm now in Chile! Bolivia was beautiful but it got the better of me with multiple sicknesses/stressful occurrences so I ended up leaving a little earlier than originally intended. The really cool things list just never seemed to get longer than the crappy things list. Still a really interesting place to visit and I would recommend it, just go prepared. And maybe be less adventurous regarding the food you eat than I was. I've been relaxing in San Pedro de Atacama and will fill you in on my Chile first impressions next blog post!

Potosí: A Visit to the Deadly Mines

Potosí is something else. The main reason tourists go there is to tour the infamous mine in Cerro Rico the funded Renaissance Spain's wars and courts and at one point made Potosí the most glamorous and populous city in the world. Of course the silver flowing out of the mine was paid for in the lives of the slaves used to mine it (more than 8 million deaths occurred in the mines under Spanish rule, around 300 years) and none of the riches actually stayed with the population who mined it or lived in the area, resulting in the abject poverty despite immense mineral wealth you still see today. I wasn't really sure I wanted to see the mine in light of all this tragedy, but many people I met along the way said it was worth a visit, plus one shouldn't be willfully ignorant of things that are ugly or make them uncomfortable, especially if you benefit from the system. I have silver jewelry and electronics that contain minerals mined in conditions that I would bet are very similar to the current conditions of Potosí. You can't just pretend they appear out of nowhere with no human struggle involved at some point of their creation so it's better to really look at the system. Also, Sarah wanted to see it, so I signed us up for the tour.

The whole tour was once again an example of not being in Kansas anymore. We walked through the refinery first where the metals are extracted from the ore. If any regulatory body from the U.S. saw it, it would be shut down in a minute. Dirt and caustic chemicals everywhere. There are pools of toxic sludge left over from the mining process that are apparently moved to a site outside the city to just sit. There's no attempt at cleaning out the mercury or arsenic or anything from the water, which I'm sure then seeps back into the ground water. The whole place could be classified as a superfund site. That got to me and also the fact that they're still sending out the metals to other countries to be processed.  Five hundred years after colonization and there still isn't the infrastructure to take advantage of the country's own natural resources, they're still being sent abroad and the full economic impact isn't being realized in a country that desperately needs economic development.

Ore waiting to be processed with Cerro Rico in the background

After the refinery, we headed into the mine. It's still a working mine, though by this point in time the miners run a cooperative and work for themselves, which our guide, an ex-miner was very proud of. The place is just like you would imagine a mine in the olden days, or in the movies, which is to say, not at all up to modern safety standards. The tunnels were held up with old wooden or rock supports and there was no ventilation system to speak of in place. Some of the time we were crawling through tunnels that were just small passages blasted out of the rock, or walking through puddles containing who knows what kind of chemicals. Compared to the cavern I had explored in Toro Toro the other day, it felt crawling through a corpse of a mountain. Given these working conditions, it's no surprise that the average life span of a miner is about 60 years, especially given that some of them start working in the mines as early as 12 years old. Officially, you have to be 18 to work in the mines, but there is no oversight and no body cares enough to stop the children from going in and working. The mines are where the jobs are and a salary is seen as more important than an education. And thus the cycle continues.

Exit from one of the mines

Like I spoke about in my Cusco post, the grinding poverty that in this case is driving children to the mines, is so discouraging because theres nothing an individual can do about it. It's a helpless feeling, but again huge systematic change is needed if the mines would ever be brought up to what we in the developed world would consider acceptable safety standards. But more importantly, 500 years on, the mine is still eating people and taking their futures because there isn't the education and other economic opportunities that would need to exist to lure people away from the death trap of the mines. But because it took centuries for the situation to get to the state it's in now, I'm afraid it'll take centuries to fix it all back up again. And thats if there's a competent, non-corrupt leadership in place, not always a guarantee. Not all of South America is pretty.

Offerings left to Tío the Devil/God of the mines 

And with the conclusion of the tour, I'm off again, this time with a travel buddy, my friend Sarah. We're off to Salar de Uyuni to see what supposed to be some of the most beautiful and alien like landscape in the world. So expect some lighter fare for the next blog post!