Sorry for the delay on San Pedro - I've been busy traveling to tropical islands and what not. The following is an adaption of the paper I wrote about my trip for my Spanish class with the theme of surprises.
My trip to San Pedro de Atacama was full of surprises. Starting with the flight to Calama and all the way through to my final day in the north, everyday there were unexpected discoveries awaiting me. While some revelations were entertaining, others were enlightening, and a few were disappointing. However, no matter the surprise they have all made for excellent stories.
The trip was only a little under two hours long so when I saw the television screens I thought they would only be on for the emergency instructions at the beginning of the flight. However, the televisions stayed on and Toy Story 3 began - in English! Everyone in the program was shocked when the film started and the characters were all speaking in English, there were not even Spanish subtitles. I think that only us gringos enjoyed the entire film. The only time everyone on the plane laughed during the movie was when one of the toys spoke in Spanish.
During the flight, when the attendants came around to serve snacks, I was again surprised. In the US after September 11th airline companies have had trouble staying profitable. As a result shorter flights normally do not serve food or beverages and if they do one is expected to pay - and the prices are not cheap. LAN Airlines, although owned by American Airline, does not seem to share the problems of its mother company because I got a drink and 3 snacks, by Havana no less, for free! I was very content during the flight. I had one last plane related surprise while I departed the plane. I got to walk right out onto the tarmac of the airport. I felt like I had just gotten off Air Force One!
That night while walking back to our hotel after a delicious dinner we all became aware of how far away we were from “civilization” when we looked up in wonder at the sky and saw a plethora of stars shining down on us. I had not seen the stars so clearly since before I left the US. It was nice to look at all the constellations, although they were trickier to find than normal. I did not think about the fact that being in a different hemisphere would change the orientation of the stars until Joe found the big dipper facing sideways from how I normally see it. I could have looked at the stars all night long but I eventually went to bed. I wanted to have energy for the next morning when we all went sand boarding!
Sand boarding itself did not offer up any surprises. I knew before hand that I was going have some spectacular crashes and get sand on every inch of my body. However, on the way to sand boarding something happened that none of us expected. Our driver had warned us that there was a difficult patch of “road” ahead and that he would have to drive quickly through it. Apparently he did not go fast enough because the van got stuck in the sand! Luckily there were enough of us to be able to push the van back onto more solid terrain.
While sand boarding was my favorite activity my least favorite activities surprised me as well, but not in a good way. On our final day in the Atacama Desert we all woke up at four in the morning so that we could see the Géyser del Tatio during its hours of peak thermal activity. I had thought that this would be my favorite part of the trip because I thought the geysers would be like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park in the US. This was not to be. After traveling on very bumpy roads for three hours we finally reached the geysers. To the disappointment of all of us the geysers did not shoot up into the air like Old Faithful. Instead the largest one only shot up about 5ft before the freezing cold air turned the water into steam. I think that if we did not have to get up so early that we all would have enjoyed the geysers more. Still they were not what I had expected and I will not recommend them to people traveling to San Pedro.
When not out exploring in the desert we spent our time in San Pedro doing what girls (I am excluding Joe) love to do, shop. San Pedro has become somewhat of a tourist trap and as a result there were a lot of places to shop at selling kitschy tourist goods as well as some places selling products that reflected the culture of the area. In fact I found that the standard tourist items like t-shirts that say Chile on them were actually more expensive in San Pedro than they were in the Santa Lucia market in Santiago. The more local products that one cannot find as easily in Santiago turned out to be cheaper at the San Pedro shops. Many of us bought a lot of alpaca products because the prices in San Pedro were the best we had found. Especially in comparison to the US where an alpaca scarf can easily sell for hundreds of dollars, in San Pedro I got one for the equivalent of 10 USD!
The shop owners also shocked me with another line of products they sold coca leaves. I associate coca leaves with Bolivia because of President Morales strong stance on allowing people the right to use the coca plant for cultural purposes. The coca plant is also illegal in the US because its leaves are used to make cocaine. Therefore it never even crossed my mind that I would find coca leaves, tea, candy, etc. in about a third of all the shops in San Pedro. There even was coca tea in the lobby of our hotel! Coming from a country with such a strict drug policy it was weird seeing coca, a plant which has lead to strained relationships between the US and countries in Latin America, sold openly for very cheap prices. The uncompromising stance the US has taken with coca made me think that to ingest the plant in any form would result in even a small narcotic effect. However I tried the coca tea at the hotel and I felt no different afterward. I think it is senseless that if I were to drink the same tea in the US I could be put in jail on drug possession charges.
Most of the things that surprised me during my trip to the Atacama Desert centered on the differences between the US and Chile. I suppose by now I should be getting used to the dissimilarities between the two countries but I like that I have not yet adjusted. I love being amazed by unexpected sights and slightly confused by cultural differences. It reminds me that they way I have lived my life for the past 20 years is not the only way. The number of unexpected events that occurred I was able to experience in four days is a testament that there is plenty of Chile and the rest of the world that I still need to understand.
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