Calama

we arrived in calama early but had time to take some pictures in the early morning light. i think i mentioned in the previous post that this part of chile is very arid and also mining country. these pictures attest to that fact:

since we were arriving early in the morning, we hoped to catch a bus out that afternoon or night just so we could get to salta and back into argentina. after wandering around town looking for the correct bus company that provides international service (a trip which took us around a small town for about 45 minutes, dragging all our bags and lengthened due to the fact nothing was open yet), we came upon the correct company which had been down the street about 2 blocks from where we had initially been dropped off. they informed us that no buses left that day and we'd have to spend a night in town, but there were three seats left. we took it in a caffeinated rabbits heartbeat (probably from dr. pepper) and began looking into arrangements for the night.

since we had already spent the three previous nights on buses and there weren't really hostels in this town due to its status as a non-tourist location, Elizabeth and i spoiled ourselves a little bit by staying in a small hotel. all in all the damage wasn't too bad and there was no breaking of the budget. they even provided us with breakfast for two days, internet, and a nice soft bed. we were so tired that after showering and cleaning up, nap taking took precedent over eating. and i like eating a lot. resting up led to wandering around town looking for food and it was nice to take a leisurely walk around town when it was a little more lively, though still decidedly sleepy. we ate twice in the span of an hour (delicious) and brought some ice cream treats back to the hotel. we ended up watching an interesting documentary about the rise of jazz music in harlem and both had fallen asleep well before 9pm. heck, we had to. our bus left the next morning around 6 am.

while the day seems kind of like a throw-away among many of the more exciting days i had, i remember it very fondly in my mind. the leisurely pace of the town, finally getting to relax a little bit, and knowing the next couple steps were in place led to a great serenity i felt in that town. the highlight was sitting in a public park that had oldies music piped in. it was the late afternoon, warm, but we were in the shade. just chatting and being still.

i leave with two pieces of information: apparently che guevara had stayed in this town while he was doing his motorcycle traveling. the other piece is far more frivolous. this is the napkin of the bus company. i can't remember if it was here or on cruz del sur, but on one of these trips they actually fed us alpaca. i can't think of too many other companies that actively try to get you to consume their mascot/logo.

Bad U.S. Movies on South American Buses #5

it was alluded to before but now you finally get it: Caravan of Courage: The Ewok Adventure. oops! check that, turns out the movie we really saw was The Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. crazy. who thought there were two of these bastard children of the star wars universe? first making their appearance in the last good star wars movie, episode VI: return of the jedi, the lovable teddy-bear type creatures were given their chance to shine in not one but two(!) TV movies that were eventually released on video. so easy to confuse, they packaged both together!

while not actually viewed on a south american bus, we did view it in a south american bus station in puno via its original medium, the television broadcast. sleep-deprived and with chicken grease on my brain, i was in the perfect state to enjoy this work of (f)art.


normally, a movie focused around creatures who do not speak a discernible language would cause problems, especially since there was a cinematic precedent of not using subtitles. the clever writers of this film sidestepped that by imprisoning all of the ewoks except for one and placing an aged man and an insufferably "cute" orphan into prominent roles. this does not round out all the characters as a strange pseudo-pet also figures in the action for the good guys. here is a picture of said creature.

so the young girl, the old man (surprise coming about him later), the one ewok, and the awkward pet thing pictured above have to save the rest of the ewoks from weird face guy and evil crow/dragon lady.

as you are likely to guess, the scrappy band of four is able to infiltrate the stronghold, release the captive ewoks, and then wage war on the bad folks on home turf. while i thought this commercialized spin off to make a quick buck would have nothing to do with George Lucas, turns out instead that he was one of the primary writers. i guess we should have known early on how much the rest of his collected output would disappoint.

high point: the fact that Wilford Brimley, the noted rapper Mr. Diabeetis himself, plays the role of old crazy hermit.

low point: when the weird face guy has his final battle, he holds his prop sword backwards. i thought there was no chance of finding a screenshot of this but it turns out it makes it into the trailer of the DVD release. watch the whole thing, but watch closely at 2:16 until 2:18. or skip ahead if you are impatient and the sight of ewoks doesn't warm your heart.

"yeah, right" moment: Paul Gleason, principal from the breakfast club, has a small role as the father of the girl. who thought that after trying to make those high schoolers hate detention he would take his family on an intergalactic journey that would ultimately cause his death? i'm not buying it.

Tacna, Border Crossings, and Arica

the next morning Elizabeth and i woke up in the peruvian border town of tacna. a helpful taxi driver offered to take us into arica, the town on the chilean side, for way cheap so we gladly got into his taxi. all he actually ended up doing was taking us to the bus station and tried to get us on the bus with his friend for a steep price. Elizabeth, sensing some shadiness towards the estadounidenses, refused his bullying and sought a better deal, which we found. we were soon ushered onto a bus filled solely with locals. turns out the trip to the border was a lot further than we had expected and the ride to the border checkpoint was at least an hour through arid desert. it was the middle of summer and the short school bus had no air conditioning. i remember my lower back breaking into a sweat almost instantly as my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me as i struggled to fall asleep.

when we arrived at the check point the lady running the bus took everyone's identification cards as we continued to sweat on the bus. i felt a little unsure about the whole proposition of being separated from my travel document and as we waited i became more and more uneasy about it. turns out i had nothing to fear though and shortly my passport was returned to me. however, when Elizabeth ran her bag through the x-ray machine, she was called out for trying to smuggle popcorn seeds across the border. DENIED! but that was the only problem we encountered in our travels with customs.

after another 45 minutes of dry, dry desert we arrived in beautiful arica. beautiful, because it was right on the pacific ocean. at the bus station we immediately looked for a ticket to get back into argentina. we figured it would be pretty straight forward but were surprised to find that hardly any places offered service to salta from where we were and the ones that did had already been booked up. we were told we'd have better chances booking a bus further south in calama and so we scraped together what little amount of chilean pesos we had left because they didn't accept credit card. we were short and had to exchange all the peruvian soles we had left to pay for it. when all was said and done, we had about 3 u.s. dollars in local currency left, roughly 1500 chilean pesos. 0ur bus left that night around 9pm and we were allowed to leave our big luggage behind the counter and set out for our day in arica. the beach was a 15 minute walk and gave Elizabeth a chance to "bathe" in the pacific while i sat in the shade of the tree. here are the two pictures i have from the day:

with no food and a scant bit of water, we kept moving to follow the shadows and just laid around in the sun. we took turns trying to nap while the other tried to resist the sweet allure of ice cream. after spending about 5 hours at the beach, we decided it was time to migrate and see some more of the town. we went to a covered market and spent our money on a bunch of bananas and crackers, leaving a little left over for another water. more time in the day meant more traipsing around and with two hours until our bus left, we decided to pass the time in the bus station. i began reading "the adventures of hucklberry finn" by mark twain and Elizabeth kindly sewed the strap on my small shoulder bag that had broke while i was bouldering around machu picchu. we each enjoyed the delicious, simple tastes of some crackers and a banana and passed out as soon as we had our seats on the bus.

i can't think of too much more to add regarding this time apart from this fun fact regarding arica. apparently, with the ocean on one side and desert on the other, it causes some kind of phenomenon where it rarely ever rains. the guidebook made the claim that "there are some grown ups in arica who have never even seen a rainy day." this seems preposterous to me but the day we were there really was cloudless without a hint of precipitation. just thought i'd share that.

Puno and Lake Titicaca

we were able to get tickets in cusco for puno in southern peru, the town that lies on the peruvian side of lake titicaca. as we slowly descended from the green, mountainous landscape over the 8 hours in our ride, we treated ourselves to doritos and peach juice. delicious. i think it was around this time that doritos became our sweet indulgence and special treat. man, something about that queso taste and crunchy texture hit the spot every time. too bad that was going to be the highlight of the day.

we rolled into Puno around 3pm, excited for the prospect of seeing the floating islands and maybe killing four or five days in this place. what we were greeted with instead was decidedly less than that.

that was it from the peruvian side. apparently from the bolivian side, it's a right spectacle. you go to a place like copa cabana and things are very nice and beautiful. however, bolivia started instituting that US citizens needed $100 visas the month before we arrived. needless to say, we didn't have time to adjust our plans and so we opted to skip out on the floating island tour (which seemed decidedly sketchy from this side) and make our way out of town that night on a bus. still, that gave us about 7 hours to kill. what to do? see the sights of Puno of course:

you may notice that we did take one of the bicycle taxis, which was moderately enjoyable and our only experience with those in south america. we ended up lunching again in another dirt cheap chicken place, enjoyed glass bottled cola, and watched some incarnation of dragonball-z dubbed into spanish. after perusing a couple shops for knit things, we returned to the bus station with about two hours to kill. lucky for us, there was plenty of things to keep us entertained there. for instance, the best logo of all time ever!

yeah baby! look at the flames! you know that bus line is going to be fast! and when the amusement of a finely crafted font ran dry, God smiled upon us and The Ewok Adventure, Caravan of Courage was on public tv. while i was aware this movie existed, i had never seen it. however, Elizabeth had fond memories of this film from her youth. in my strange mindset, this was quite possibly the most entertaining movie i watched in my entire south american stay. Elizabeth managed some pretty sweet pictures:

depending on the response of you, dear readers, i may decide to give this movie its own write up although i didn't manage to see it in its entirety. our bus was late, but cheered by the prospects of such a fortunate fate, we started making our way to the peruvian/chilean border.

An End To Plans

from the moment we spent our last night in aquas calientes, we no longer had any plans set in stone as far as hostel reservations, bus tickets, or anything else. we just knew that by march 1 we needed to return to buenos aires to move into the new apartment.

unfortunately, Elizabeth and i were unable to find a room in the hostel where we had spent our first few days in town. this brought us back into town around 9pm with no place arranged to stay for the night, but at that point we just decided we wanted it to be inexpensive. we were only going to be there for one night and were leaving early in the morning for puno (hopefully...we didn't have a ticket for that either). this led us to a hostel that was not listed in our book nor on the website hostelworld. however, the cost for a room was dirt cheap and they had availability. the worker brought us to the room we were staying in. overcome with hunger, we decided it was fine, paid, and went looking for food, which we found at a place that would give us an 1/8 of a chicken and fries for something ridiculous like 2 peruvian soles. it was delicious and so sleep was the next thing on our minds after a long day that started with a 1.5 hour hike.

upon inspecting the room on our return, we realized it smelled heavily of marijuana (we think the staff had been smoking with some of the residents while watching simpsons re-runs), and the beds were dicey at best. Elizabeth had brought her sleeping bag and decided to sleep on top of the blankets in all her clothes in her mummy bag. I, not having a sleeping bag, decided to sleep in all my clothes, tucking my shirt into my waist and pulling up my socks as far as i could. i used my bag instead of the pillows and kept the hood up on my jacket. after a night of restless sleep, not wanting to catch any communicable disease from the bed, 6am could not come early enough to head for the bus station. i took a quick assessment of my body to make sure that none of my open skin had touched any of the sheets but i did end up with a few bites on my legs. yup, i'm pretty sure i was bitten by bed bugs. still, Elizabeth woke up unscathed and we both agreed it was better than spending a night out on the streets - which got cold enough to be uncomfortable at that elevation - and headed for the station to try to purchase our tickets to puno and lake titicaca. oh man, were we exctied.