Latinoamérica 2017

Huacachina is probably one of the strangest places I have visited so far. It's a lagoon surrounded by a desert of high sand dunes. Around the lagoon runs one street with hostels and restaurants. That's it. People come here to do sand buggy tours in the desert and go sand boarding. As it is also really close to the "ruta de la pisco" another highlight are the pisco tastings.
My taxi driver from the bus station in Ica tried to sell me all the tours at once. I had already booked the tour to the desert so I wasn't interested in that but I didn't mind going to the ruta de la pisco with him. I asked him if there would be other people on the tour and his answer was "I'll bring you there and there are a lot of other people.".
I met a group of nice people at my hostel and tried to convince them to join me but they had all done the pisco tasting.
When "Edgar" picked me up he wasn't driving his taxi but had actually gotten an extra driver. He only spoke spanish but it was a good way to practice. He only wanted to go to one bodega but I convinced him to do at least two as the people from my hostel had said that's usually the standard. So he took me to another one first. It was really nice as they had the whole process on display. When a guy came out and asked "Inglés?" he answered that I spoke spanish and he would do the tour with me. He explained a lot and made sure I did understand everything. After the walk through the process of making Pisco we went to one of the bars in the bodega and the bar tender gave me 4 different piscos to try. Piscos is made from grape most. There was the "real" pisco with 41% that you use for pisco sour. But there were also 2 piscos that were more like port wine and one with cream and vanilla.
The bartender was the best part of it. He talked about pisco with so much passion and explained everything with a lot of gesture. He even told me how to drink the strong pisco to actually get the flavor and not just the strong taste of alcohol (didn't work for me though).
After this we went to the bodega he originally only wanted to go to. I understood quickly why. There weren't a lot of other foreigners. The only other girl I spotted was also accompanied by a guide. There was a bar with tables and a dance floor in the front. In the back they had to room with lots of stone containers with Pisco and a really strange selection of "artwork". There were stuffed animals, images, sculptures and other relicts. There wasn't anybody pouring the samples but Edgar would do so himself. He explained that as he wasn't driving he would also try a few. The whole situation was so obvious that it was really comical. We tasted about 7 different piscos till he suggested we should get carafe of my favorite pisco and he could teach me how to dance salsa. When we came to the bar area the guide with the other foreign girl invited us to their table. Edgar said we should get our own table but I told him that I didn't mind staying for one glass of Pisco but that I didn't need him to teach me salsa and I would really like to sit with the others. We ordered a carafe of pisco and joined the other two. The girl was from Bulgaria but lived in London. After a while she told me that she had just broken up with her boyfriend and this trip was something she always wanted to do. I started to sense that she might actually enjoy the situation with her latino guide hitting on her. When the guys wanted to dance she was more than happy to dance with both of them. When she started kissing her guy I decided it was time to leave. I asked her if she was sure about this and if she would be fine. When she reassured me I shouldn't worry I told my guy I wanted to get back. He asked me if I wanted to go for dinner but I told him just home. He was friendly and didn't even want to have money for the pisco we bought (all the samples are free anyways). I didn't know if I should feel bad for him but he probably really enjoyed "taking me out" even though he didn't score like his friend.
He brought me back to the hostel where I had dinner and went to bed pretty drunk (after all the pisco). It definitely was a cheap night for me.
The next morning I changed to a fancier hostel, that had been booked the night before. They had a pool that was freezing but nice to hang out at. From here I took the tour into the desert for sunset. First part was the dune buggy tour. It was like a crazy roller coaster through the dessert. It was scary but fun. Sometimes we would drive over the edge of the sand dune and on the other side it would suddenly get down really steep.
After a while we stoppen on top of a pretty steep dune for the sand boarding. The boards were like prehistoric snow boards. Our guide told us to first try sitting down. I went so fast that I did go up the dune on the other side again. This was good because I could walk around from here and didn't need to climb up all the way I went down. I had just gotten back up when a girl started going down and fell of still being in the top part. She rolled all the way down. Even though she didn't hurt herself lots of the girls got scared. Our guide said it's actually less dangerous to lay down head first. No one wanted to try so they let me go ahead even though lots of people hadn't even had their first go. Head first was even faster I think. I had 2 more runs on that dune before we moved on to another one that was even higher. Here we went down and were picked up by the buggy at the base so we didn't have to walk up again.
From here we went to watch the sunset. After the sun was down it got cold pretty quick so our guide rushed us bag on the buggy and flew across the sand dunes to get us back to the hostel as quick as possible - again so much fun!
To get rid of all the sand I went straight for the shower - which turned out to be cold! I just didn't get warm again after this and ended up getting in bad shortly after dinner reading to finally get warm.
My plan had been to go from Ica further south to Arequipa. When I had asked Edgar about the bus to get there when he first drove me into Huacachina he explained to me there was no bus the next day because a "terremoto" had destroyed the street to Arequipa. The funny thing was that I knew immediately I had heard the word before but just couldn't remember what it meant. When I talked to people at the hostel they told me an earthquake had destroyed the street. Like I said, it takes more than one occasion for me to learn a new word ;)
It turned out it had been quite a strong earthquake and no one knew when busses would run again.
I wanted to leave Huacachina after 2 nights as I had literally seen everything there was. But the only way to get to Arequipa was via Cuzco which meant a detour of 17 hours (from Cuzco it was then the same distance to get to Arequipa as it was from Ica). I had hoped the street would open up and when I finally decided to go to Cuzco instead all busses were booked that day. Even getting a bus for the next day wasn't easy and I ended up buying a ticket for a really simple bus as it was all that was left. At least it was cheap.
Being stuck here at least meant that I finally really managed to catch up on my blogg and while I'm writing this I'm still in Huacachina waiting for the time to pass that I can go to Ica to catch my bus to Cuzco. It's gonna be one of my longest bus rides and due to the cheap ticket it's probably not gonna be the most comfortable. I don't know if I gonna stay in Cuzco for long as I will be back there in the end of my trip on my way to Lima. But traveling means to sometimes just go with the flow and take the things how they come. Just after I booked my ticket to Cuzco yesterday Francis - a guy I met month ago in Nicaragua - posted a picture saying he was on his way to Cuzco. So maybe I'm just taking this detour for the chance to catch up with him again.Meer informatie

San Pedro de Atacama was another strange little town in the middle of the desert. Other than in Huacachina the desert was less sandy and more rocky. But also the town was a lot different. Lots of houses were build from the same stone and matched the color of the desert. The floor was often bare so you would walk on dust. But as it was one of the most touristy places around and Chile is definitely more developed and rich than a lot of the other countries it still wasn't really basic. There were lots of nice restaurants and shops around town. My hostel was nice with rooms arranged around an outdoor communal area. I knew I wanted to do a tour to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia from here so I used my first day strolling around the little town comparing agencies and figuring out what else was there to do here. At night they had a chilean BBQ with lots of meat at the hostel. It was super good and the fire of the BBQ helped a little against the cold that came after the sun went down. The difference between day and night was big here. During the day you could easily walk around in shorts and a shirt but at night you needed a lot of clothes. I went to bed the first night almost immediately after dinner just because I was so cold. The next day I got me a bike to go to Quebrada del Diabolo. I didn't do a lot of research but heard from some people this should be the best site in the desert reachable by bike. The lady in the bike shop told me I would need to cross the river 3 times. As she said it as if this was completely normal I expected the water to be really flat. But when I drove into the water for the first time I got stock halfway and had to push my bike through kneedeep water. In my shoes. After this I realized I should probably take my shoes of from now on.
The Quebrada del Diabolo were rock formations with lots of small pathways through them. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to take my bike in so when I got to a point where a lot of bikes were lying I decided to also continue by foot. The site was pretty cool. The path would split of in more different paths between the rocks. As I didn't bring my bike I could also go for the ones climbing over rocks. After a while I found a spot on top of a big rock for my lunchbreak. I realized that it was completely quite here. Only surrounded by rocks you couldn't even here the usual sounds of nature like wind blowing through leaves or animals flying or running around. When I started walking back I realized that it might not be the easiest thing to find out as I had randomly chosen the path that looked more interesting. But turned out I could follow back my footsteps as no one had entered after me.
Cycling back I decided to not put my shoes back on after the first river crossing but just cycle barefoot. This wasn't super comfortable but still nice and freeing.
At night I did a stargazing tour. They had told me it weren't the best conditions for this tour as you couldn't see to many stars due to the full moon but I decided to do it anyways. And I actually liked it a lot. Especially as we got to watch the moon through the telescope and could see its rough surface with craters and everything. Our guide told us a little about stars and planets but as the tour was in Spanish I didn't understand to much when it got to more complex explanations. He showed us the cross of the south and some other constellations like the scorpion which was interesting as they were completely different to the ones we can see in the northern hemisphere.
He also pointed out jupiter and saturn to us and we looked at them through the telescope. You could even see the rings around saturn.
The next day I walked a bit more around town, treated myself to lunch at a nice little cafe and prepared for the tour to Uyuni. As Chile was really a lot more expensive than most other countries I usually had breakfast and dinner at the hostel. The kitchen here was ok and I actually enjoyed cooking for myself again. The only thing cheaper here than anywhere else was wine - even cheaper that beer!
I met 2 nice French Canadian girls my last night and we talked over dinner and some wine. But when people started going out I went to bed again. I just couldn't be bothered to go out in the cold. But as I had to get up early the next morning for my tour I at least had a proper excuse ;)Meer informatie