It's Cool in Chile

Our family just got home from a trip to Santiago, Chile.  It was originally supposed to be a trip to Mexico City to visit with Tom's sister, Debi, who is living there.  Tom and I had previously been to Mexico City but the little boys had not been born then and missed out on the pueblas and climbing the giant pyramids that dwarf Chichen Itza.  I had extra vacation, use it or lose it, and we found a great deal on airfare to Mexico City from Dayton.  2 months after we bought the tickets Debi called to tell us that they were moving to Santiago, Chile 1 month before we were to arrive.  Doh!  We weren't too thrilled about visiting Mexico City without a guide.  The traffic is horrible and I am a little worried about the violence.  We decided to change our tickets to Santiago, Chile, instead.  Lucky we got a good deal to Mexico City because upgrading to Chile erased that good deal.  Bummer.  This was actually our first foray across the equator so we were pretty excited.  

Cathedral built in 1500s by conquistadors

We got to leave cold autumn rain for sunny spring when we arrived in Santiago.  Since Debi had only been there for one month and their stuff had only arrived 1 week prior to our arrival, Debi and her family hadn't really had any time to look around the figure it out for themselves.  Since we were imposing on their moving chaos, I didn't want Debi to stress out about being a tour guide so I just bought a guide book, did my own internet research and planned our days for her.  Bruce, her husband, and Caleb, her only child still at home, were still at work and school so it was just Debi that we dragged around the city.  We rode the subway all over.  I think this was pretty new for Debi but old hat for Tom and my boys.  We found our way to the historical center, cool parks and hiked to gorgeous look out points.

Over the weekend we talked them into coming with us to the Atacama Desert just a 1 hour domestic flight north.  This is the driest place on the earth.  There are places in the Atacama Desert that have never had ANY recorded rainfall.  When I think of desert, I think of Southern Utah sagebrush and barrel cactus.  No way.  This place was absolutely devoid of any life at all.  No plants, no lizards, not even any birds.  There were some flies in the hotel but out in the desert itself, no bugs either.  We hiked around Valle De La Luna, a desert made of rock salt.  Seriously, if there was any rain there it would all dissolve away.  Everyone had to pick up a rock and lick it to make sure it was salt... We also hiked in the Valle De Muerte, an area of giant mud mounds and sand dunes that we jumped down.  You could hire a guide to take you sand skiing but we decided to just jump down ourselves.  Since the place is without any big cities and only a few days of cloud cover a year it is a great area for astronomy.  This is the place where the international space telescopes are located.  We managed to score a tour where 10 telescopes were set up and we got to see things such as the tarantula nebula and ring nebula as well as small galaxies.  That was the best part of Atacama for me. 

Yup, tastes like salt

The Atacama Desert is surrounded by the Andes mountain and some volcanos.  Atacama, itself, is about 8000ft elevation.  (Ohio is about 600ft) We all had headaches for a day after arrival but were fine afterwards except for Nick who vomited for 2 days.  I am not sure if it was the altitude or just some virus he picked up along the way.  Luckily, no one else got that sick.  We visited an area of active geysers, similar to Yellowstone.  Since Chile is still in the building stage, especially outside of Santiago, there were very rustic trails set up.  We could get very close to the geysers and were also able to swim in a hot pool fed by geyser water.  The geysers were at approx 13000 ft elevation and it was very cold and windy.  Nick was just fine for this, no headache or nausea.  Tom and Isaac, on the other hand, got terrible headaches.  The next day we drove up to 16000 ft to check out flamingo flocks on some salt flats up in the tops of the Andes.  Tom got dizzy at that elevation and had a headache.  We tried to play tag on the swamp hassocks but got out of breath pretty quickly.  It was pretty cold and windy at that elevation as well.  Nick and I didn't have any problems with this elevation, except getting out of breath more quickly than usual but Isaac had a terrible headache and didn't perk up, even with ibuprofen, until we decended back to our base camp at 8000ft.  That was the highest elevation I have ever been to outside of an airplane.  It was pretty cool.  I did get a blistered sunburn on my nose and hairline, even after applying 45 SPF sunscreen.  Dang, I guess closer to the sun = more burn. 

Any 3 rocks in a row are named Tres Marias in Chile

Jumping down the sand dunes

Santiago was much more developed than I was expecting.  It was pretty much like being in a European city.  We were reminded about it's 3rd world status, however, when we got locked inside our apartment as we were trying to go to airport to catch our flight to Atacama.  There is only one door in or out of the apartment and when it was locked the previous night the lock got stuck.  We didn't realize this until we tried to leave the house in the morning to catch our taxi to the airport.  The lock wouldn't move.  Tom has severe travel anxiety and he was about the lose his mind.  Our plane left at 7AM so we had to climb out of the 2nd story window at 5AM.  Tom and I and the kids put our climbing skills to good use that morning as we climbed into the window box, held onto the drain spout and then grabbed the top rim of the 1st story window to get ourselves down. The last person threw down the suitcases over the railing.  Nothing worse than what happens in baggage handling, I think.

Walking from the car to see Flamingos at 16000ft

Thank goodness no police were called.  It might be hard to explain getting locked INSIDE your own house.  Bruce's personal assistant took care of changing the locks while we were gone and we did manage to make it to the airport about 5 minutes before the plane left. 

I loved Chile.  There wasn't enough time to do everything.  I REALLY wanted to go to Easter Island but ran out of time.  Tom promised that we could go back and do an Easter Island and Patagonia tour.  Can't wait.  Hopefully, Debi will still be there.  It was so nice to explore with family and my boys idolized Caleb.  I am so glad Debi moved and our tickets got changed.  I guess we will still need to visit the giant pyramids, but for now, this was perfect.