Filed under: Chile, South America | Tags: Chile, San Pedro de Atacama, South America
This is a llama. I don’t know its name, so we’ll call him Gregory.
This is me. I’m eating Gregory’s cousin, the delicious and savory vicuña. We’ll call him KaBob.
Last weekend, Arianna and I went to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. But because I took a butt-load of pics, I’m going to divide my travel tales into 2 or 3 posts.
So … San Pedro. Overall impressions, nice place to visit with killer natural sights and attractions, but it’s cuh-ray-zee expensive, New York City–priced meals. There’s also no discernible culture in the city itself, which consists of a main drag made up of restaurants, tour companies, jewelry stores and trinket-sellers.
I mean, there wasn’t even a strip club! I know Mombo, can you fuckin believe it?
Anyway, we had to take a 10-hour bus ride through over the Andes just to get there. At one point we reached something like 13,000 ft., aka, the altitude at which one breaks into cold sweats and starts farting a lot. The Argentines actually have a word for this altitude, the “punas.” Well I say damn the punas.
Nonetheless, both Ari and I were able to prevent all-out gastrointestinal revolt. However, the gawky German sitting in front of us was not so lucky. He toilet snorkled about 20 minutes into the trip, and did so with gusto. In the end, despite a couple wretched hours of nausea, both of us made it off the bus no worse a little worse for wear. We quickly found a hostel that was so quiet and clean that it more than made up for the fetid Dickensian squalor we slept in during our trip to Jujuy.
The next day we went to the Lagunas Altiplánicas.
What can I say, the pictures speak for themselves. Everything was beautiful, and we saw wild flamencos. Oh flamencos, those majestic aviafauna whose effortless flamboyance would make even LIberace sigh with envy. 
Here are the lagoons.
BEGIN RANT: So I’m sitting here in an Internet cafe, trying to slog through the final hours of what seems like an endless day of copy-editing. And in walks this obnoxious band of beer-guzzling Brits ready to watch their favorite “football clubs” on the “telly.”
Now, it’s not that I dislike all Brits, it’s just that this fuzzy-headed bunch, with their “cheerios” and their “iddinit”s, caught me just as Arianna and I realized that we neither have the time nor money to go to Bolivia this weekend.
“But Matt, that doesn’t explain your U.K. hatefest.” Well just hold the hell on, I’m fuckin getting to that.
So in walk these dudes, dressed like they were just cut from an American Eagle casting call, and I realize that they are living like absolute kings in Argentina. The British pound is currently worth about 5 and a half pesos. 5.5 people! The American dollar, on the other hand, is only worth about 2.8 pesos.
Do you see what’s happened here? I thought I was living like a king, exploiting Argentina’s flagging economy with a pocket full of almighty greenbacks. And these pale-faced pseudo-Cromwells walked right in here and kicked my dreams in the nuts. IN THE NUTS, I tell you.
So, here I sit, reduced to a mere Duke of global economic exploitation, while the kings slouch a few tables away, talking about “bonnets,” “lorries,” “torches” and other stupid British shit like that.
Oh well, it’s all for the best I guess. I mean, it’s a good thing I’m an atheistic socialist who takes a certain amount of pleasure in the collapse of the American empire.
Viva la revolucion … as long as it waits until after I buy my plane ticket to Brazil.
END RANT
Last weekend, our Argentine host with the most Nicolas took Arianna, our American roommate Krista, and me to his other country house in La Sonada.
It was beautiful. We drank wine, forded a river Oregon Trail style, then hiked around. The weather was perfect and the house was about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. There were even horses, Peruanos in fact. You know they’re Peruanos cause they do this hilarious little walk that apparently makes it much easier on the rider.
Then on Saturday night a couple of Arianna’s students invited us over to make empanadas. It was … interesting. The cooking was fine, but these kids were pretty young. Like young in the sense that everything we said about our lives in New York elicited ersatz-polite blank stares and a chirping chorus of “that’s so weird”s.
Oh yeah, and one girl decided to enlighten me on how Pres. Bush blew up the World Trade Center. Let’s just say I almost blew up her World Trade.
Here are the pics.
Nicolas’ uncle, Lucas.
And now for the night o empanadas.
