thermal baths, desert skies, giants, and ghost towns (domingo, 15 agosto)

After about an hour and a half in the thermal pools, we dried off and wandered along the quiet streets of Pica where there were food markets set up. We bought some alfojores (cracker like cake things with honey and coconut) and chumbeques (a sweet that has sweet bread and guayava layered together). Before buying them I talked to the vendors and made sure they didn´t have milk or eggs in them, and they didn´t. Chumbeques are a traditional food specific to the Iquique / Tarapaca region. They are sooo good and come in other fruit flavors too.

On the way back to La Tirana, where my host cousin´s girlfriend´s family has a house, we stopped at this dinosaur park, which had giant sculptures of a T Rex and a Stegosaurus. It was kind of funny seeing these dinosaurs there so we got out of the car and took some pictures.

Back at Daniela´s house, we unloaded the car, changed into normal clothes, and set up the picnic table and grill outside. La Tirana is a dusty, quiet town, but it´s in the desert and there are INCREDIBLE views of the stars. I don´t think I´ve ever been outside at night and seen as many stars as I saw last night. The only one I could identify was the southern cross.

We grilled some potatoes for me and steaks and hot dogs for everyone else...and I´d also brought some rice, squash, and salad. We mixed up rum and cokes. Manuel and Santiago set up the projector and the laptop and we sang karaoke for a while (I sang Evanescence and Aerosmith because they were in English and I didn´t know any of the Spanish songs they had) before watching From Paris With Love in English with Spanish subtitles. The night there was cold so we were all bundled up. I put on two sweatshirts, my winter coat, hat, scarf, and two pairs of pajama pants. They did a really crappy job translating the movie into subtitles. My host brother and I were the only ones who caught on (the other four don´t speak enough if any English to know what the spoken lines meant) and were laughing about it because every time someone said a cuss word in the movie, the subtitles said something less offensive.

This morning we got up and went back to the main square of La Tirana. I wandered around some artesan markets and bought some earrings for my sister that are made out of shells and dried flowers. I bought a cup of mote con huesillo, a traditional Chilean food. Mote is kind of like oatmeal / rice and it´s sweet, and huesillo is a kind of fruit similar to a peach or apricot. It is served cold with huesillo juice poured over the top. I really liked it! Weirdly, some of the best food I´ve tried in Chile has not come from restaurants, but street vendors:) There are also warm, round type of bread served with super spicy salsa called aji, which is great, and there are all sorts of places that sell warm, honey roasted nuts...yum. I have yet to try the Chilean version of churros, but I need to make sure I can eat it first and that there isn´t milk, eggs, or butter in it.

After leaving La Tirana, we drove to Cerro Unita where there is the largest representation of a human ever made, the Gigante de la Atacama, which is a large geoglyph on the side of a hill. No one knows who made it or why it was made, but they estimate that it was made in the 900´s AD (here it is DC--despues Cristo) in reaction to a series of 3 total solar eclipses that occurred in Chile within 30 years, which is pretty frequent. Scholars think the ancient Atacameños carved it on the hill to scare away the spirits that were causing weird happenings in the sky.

We then drove to Humberstone, a ghost town that used to be a flourishing mining town where they mined salitre (nitrate). That was pretty cool walking around. I learned a little about the mining process and the role mining used to and still does have in Chilean society. After all of the minerals were extracted from the earth in Humberstone, everyone just moved away. Now the entire town is like a giant, town version of a museum.

After that we returned home and I went on a long two hour run while it was still light out and just starting to get dark. My family doesn´t like it when I run by myself at night, but if I go during the day they don´t mind. I guess that´s one of the minor changes I´ve had to make here, but it isn´t a huge deal.

Now I need to finish preparing things for tomorrow´s classes. I´ll post more later:)

written by  Sara Florecita on August 15, 2010 from La Tirana, Chile
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)
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