San Pedro de Atacama is a small town on the border of Chile and Bolivia, where it almost never rains. A proper desert with 365 days of sun a year. It is oriented on tourism as the nature is quite extraordinary. Out of all the options we chose to go sandboarding and explored the Valle de la Luna, but one could also go stargazing, biking or horseback riding in the desert or hike any of the nearby volcanoes.
Sandboarding was so much fun as the gear was proper and it was quite easy to get the speed up, man I have missed snowboarding, sandboarding gave some of the feels.
The Moon Valley is know for the moonlike landscape of dunes, rugged mountains and rock formations. It's a beautiful, easy hike in the hills and caves between the dunes. Make sure to stay for sunset and appreciate the changing colors.
Ria cooked us some beautiful Indian food for a couple of evenings.
After a couple days we were determined to go to La Serena for a few days before making it down to Santiago region. Life had other plans. It was a holiday weekend in Chile, so all the buses were sold out, also it was hard to find accommodation in any of the coastal towns. We wanted to test our luck, so left Ria and Daniela and took a two hour bus to Calama. We asked from all the bus companies and were searching for a train that doesn't even exist any more but there simply wasn't any transportation to get us on a bus that day. Desperately started searching for a place with wifi now, found it for half an hour at some park and managed to book a room in a cheap hostel (or so we thought) called Apartamentos Norte Grande. When somebody gets stuck in Calama, this is the best place to be. For some reason any taxi in Calama did not know the name of the hostel or didn't recognize the address even when I showed them the map. Only after my angry outburst when my patience didn't hold up any more, one of the taxi drivers agreed to try to find the place. It was literally second street to the right and straight for less than 2 kilometros. When we finally reached the place we were tired, hot and pissed off. The family that managed the hostel was the nicest. He even offered us a bowl of chocolate ice cream before leading us to our room. And te room was a full on apartment with two rooms, fully functioning kitchen, flat screen tv, private bathroom, fast wifi, tea, coffee and cookies. Heaven! We watched all the episodes of "How to get away with murder", drank wine and cooked a delicious meal (corn with cheese and butter + chicken breast, we are extremely proud of the corn invention as it is quick, cheap and delicious). Got bus tickets for the next day and life was good again. We didn't even have to check out, they let us enjoy the apartment until our bus left in the evening.
After 15 hours on the bus and quite an interesting movie called "The runner" we got to La Serena at 9 am. As it was Sunday and a holiday weekend, the town looked dead. Literally deserted. The bus company we were going to continue towards Valparaiso the same night didn't want to take our bags for the day and the actual luggage storage in the bus terminal was not working due to technical reasons, and they were not quick to try to fix the problem. Thankfully there was a guy from another bus company who after seeing our struggles offered to store the bags for a day for a small fee. Finally we were able to explore the town.
The old town was lovely despite most of the places being closed. Found some Sunday fair where they sold fresh mixed juices and got a relatively cheap menu del día lunch deal on the main square. And this is where I got addicted to seafood empanadas!!! Although empanadas are much more expensive in Chile than in the previous countries, I enjoy them way more. All these varieties... my current favorites include salmon-cheese and mixed seafood! PS: in Valparaiso there is a place called 'Delicias Express' that serves 80 different kinds of varieties of empanadas, most of them oozing with cheese! A lot are veggie friendly too! Breakfast lunch and dinner!!
After a short beach-time and long walks we headed to the mall and the cinema. La Serena has the weirdest schedule. Most movies were at night, the latest started 01.20am and ended at 3am. Who wants to go to a cinema that late on a Monday night? Apparently a lot of people, as hour movie ended around 10pm and the line to buy tickets was loooonng when we exited the building. Watched "The Accountant". Didn't know anything about the movie before but it's actually very good. Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick and J.K Simmons were excellent!
Rum and raisin ice cream, which I surprisingly loved, raisins in Chile are edible!
We arrived to Valparaiso early in the morning and spent 4 days in the coastal town including Halloween. Valpo is a beautiful city with such a fun vibe and amazing street art. We did a free walking tour of cities highlights with Tours4tips company. The guide Ignacio was excellent and knowledgeable. The tour starts in the port area and continues through downtown taking to the hills Cerro Alegre and Concepción where all the magic is and by magic I mean the colourful houses and heaps of murals.
A dodgy little alleyway bar called J.Cruz that is a total must, the walls are covered with ID photos of random people and it serves only Chorrillana and Terremotos. Yazz!
Luckily we were able to take the funicular up to the hill as this is one of the highlights. Most of these days the funiculars don't work as they're on strike. As are everybody else in Chile. The day after the holidays started with a huge parade walk by what seemed like thousands of people. It was about the medicine system. There are always signs about AFP everywhere (against the pension system) and in Santiago in a week we haven't been able to visit the museums as they are all closed for public because of some strike. Oh, and apparently the immigration office is going on a strike for an indefinite period of time.
We stayed at 'Escarabajo hostel' in Valparaiso. I wasn't crazy about the vibe there at first but then again we ended up playing cards and drinking wine with people every night until late hours and had a great time. Another great tradition they have, is that every night someone of the staff cooks food for everybody interested for quite cheap. The hostel is situated on a Bellavista hill and is reachable through s long set of stairs. Booking.com warns it's a difficult walk up but if you're coming from Peru or Bolivia and have climbed so many stairs and mountains in high altitudes, this one is just a piece of cake.
We also did an alternative tips based street art walking tour, but as we were showing the town to Ria before the same day and had coincidentally done pretty much the same route already, we weren't too impressed. Also, the guide could have tried a bit harder to actually be proud and passionate about his city.
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