Dusting off the Sand

I have returned from my desert adventure up north. The day before was an exciting day of chilling out by the pool and sand surfing. It was totally awesome! Climbing up the sand dune was no picnic but flying down was a really cool experience. I tried to go off the jump but all I managed to do was land on my face. In fact, my greatest feat was hitting the jump and getting flinged off like a catapult ten feet beyond and rolling down the hill. Of course, while I was being reckless with my life and limbs, Julie popped her knee cap on the first run, go figure.

I would say that sandsurfing was the highlight of the trip but I was also impressed by the Valley of the Moon. It is covered in salt which makes it appear as if there is snow in the ground. What was really amazing was traversing the old water channels that flowed through the desert, millions of years ago. We walked through the cave system and saw some amazing rock formations. At the end,of the day, we walked up a gigantic sand dune and sat on top of the mountain next to it in order to watch the sun go down. Quite beautiful.

Also interesting was El Tatio which were the geysers that were 4300m above sea level. I never realized before how thin the air is at such heights. At first, I did not feel anything but after 4 hours I started to get a headache. One of the girls on the trip actually needed to have oxygen. It was cool to watch the water bubble and steam that blew everywhere. It gave the mountain top a movie feel. I have heard that many a frenchmen has met their end by falling into the geysers. I cannot imagine how, but they manage. Before we left I managed to embarass myself in front of some Brazilians. Apparently, they were warming milk on one of the smaller geysers. The milk down here comes in a box so when I saw it on the geyser I thought it was trash so I removed it. They then came over and started arguing with me in Portuguese. I turned three shades of red and proceeded to do my best to apologize in Spanish. Hopefully, they thought I was Canadian.

After El Tatio, we went down to refresh ourselves in the natural hot springs below which was a nice way to end the day.

While in San Pedro we visited the museum, the Atacamen ruins, and the Incan ruins. The Atacamen ruins were interesting because they were mostly intact. The Incan ones were just rocks in the ground.

In Iquique, we hung out around on the beach mostly.

Humberstone and Santa Lucas were interesting. They were the old mining towns up North that flourished on the saltrite fields won by Chile after winning the war against the Bolivian-Peru Federation. The fields enriched Chile and turned it into the ´Éngland of Latin America´ as called by the American Ambassador in the late 1800´s. Actually Chile´s success stems from this point as the riches from saltrite mining fed the economy and encouraged massive migration from England, Germany, and the rest of Europe which gives Chile the unique culture it has today.

Today, Chile´s economy is powered by copper mining. Copper as you are aware goes into every penny but besides US currency, copper wiring allows us to access the interne, and is used in constructing houses. Consequently, the price of copper has skyrocketed further powering the Chilean economy as developing countries like China and India demand this critical resource. We saw the largest copper mine in the world which was amazing. It took the trucks 40 minutes to drive down to the bottom of the hole, it was so deep.

Well, that was basically the trip. Besides Ben falling in the stream outside our hotel and Geneva falling in right after him (that'll teach them not to drink excessively), that's all that happened.