Richard's Travel Blog

Hello again from Chongqing. Myung and I were here in March of 2009. If you want to see pictures of Chongqing and some of the people we have met here, click on the March 2009 link on the right side of my home page, right to the right of where you are reading now. Of course, other China pictures will be in the surrounding months, if you are interested in that.

Also, I still suggest you click on my Chinese television link to CCTV, the government TV network. Though the news is hard to swallow, there are loads of interesting things on that site, including a program on Chongqing in the “Travelogue” section. Or just Google “CCTV” some other time. Wikipedia on Chongqing is interesting too.

One last thing about communicating, Facebook and YouTube are still blocked here, and likely will remain blocked for the foreseeable future. Anybody who reads this and wishes to contact me through Facebook should email me instead.

Western mouths should just pronounce Chongqing as Chong ching . It was formerly known in the west as Chungking because it’s the home of the fantastic canned delicacies which used to come with a pastry on top of the can you could ladle the contents onto. Just kidding, of course. Chongqing, formerly Chungking, is a city of about 10 million in south central China. It used to be part of eastern Sichuan Province but in 2007 it became the center of a small “municipality” of it’s own. By “small” I mean the municipality has “only” 30 million people. It’s most famous for being the WW II capital of the Kuomintang government, which ruled much of China from 1928 to 1949. There are interesting sites here, for the WW II buffs or if you are interested in this being the place where the southern Song dynasty held out for 32 years against the Mongols in the 13th century. Other than that, there is not much here for the average tourist other than it’s sort of on the way between southern China’s tourist spots and Chengdu, Sichuan, and it’s pandas. Chengdu is about 3-4 hours west of here.
We’re here because we liked Chongqing before and met some friends here. You can see some of them in that March 2009 post. Since then, Pi Pi and Xue Xue have had a little girl. Here are Pi Pi and Myung, then Myung with Xue Xue and her daughter, then Xue Xue’s father, grandmother and daughter.

We’ve met some other people, but I don’t have any good pictures of them. Here’s a bad one I took at a restaurant. There are the usual suspects. To Pi Pi’s right is Lu Lu. He’s been great help to us in getting organized here in this apartment, especially with some internet glitches we had. The two Europeans are an Austrian/Slovakian couple we met in Gyongju. They are now traveling around China and came here to visit and start their Three Gorges river tour from here. Oh yeah, that’s the other reason people come to Chingqing.

We’ve rented an apartment here, right in the middle of the main plaza of one of the districts of Chongqing, called Shapingba. Myung’s thinking about maybe doing some business here, so it’s cheaper to rent a place than to stay in a hotel all the time. If we stay longer, we’ll probably get cheaper digs than this, but this suits us for now. It’s certainly centrally located. Here’s the view out the window and from the plaza below.

Here’s the place inside. It’s newly renovated, but like many things in China, they don’t get it about some of the basics. One thing is they put a western style sit down toilet in, but the shower drain is higher than the middle of the room. Asian bathrooms often don’t separate shower from the toilet/sink area. This I can deal with (reluctantly), but why create a lake? My only guess is that the lake used to be around the squat toilet and one was to push the shower water down that. But the drain on the side surely isn’t new. Who knows? Welcome to China. Also, the walls are new, the place is nicely though minimally furnished, including an HD digital TV, but they didn’t do anything about the microscopic kitchen, with it’s little sink and one burner gas burner.

Oh well, it’ll do for now. We may be getting another place in 2-3 weeks anyway. Here’s the rest of the inside.

Here’s the grub Myung was making. Because of the kitchen situation, prep has to be done on our little table. Here it is served on our little table. Stir-fried black mushrooms with minced pork with garlic oyster sauce, stir fried green beans with maybe the same sauce, I can’t remember, and rice. Fortunately, we have a rice cooker. Myung does almost all of the cooking now. She has skills with the food that’s available here, at least at a areasonable price. This layout cost no more than a dollar. We can both do without my cooking, for the most part.

Here are some shots of the plaza below. For the most part, it’s a six square block pedestrian walkway. We live on the 17th floor of the tall building in the center of this first picture.

The rest of the pictures are of various areas within a couple of blocks.

Underneath all this is underground shopping. This is air conditioned and a nice route to go here and there when it’s 40 degrees (over 100 F.) outside. Usually, under those multistory department stores, malls, office buildings and condos are two basement floors of shops and garages. They build down as well as up.

What are I doing here. Well, I’m enjoying the rest from backpacking. Only in the last week or so does it feel like my body has recovered from the grind. I often wondered if traveling like that would add years to my life or take them away. It’s true I have gotten loads of exercise, a reasonable amount of which was aerobic. And I’ve generally had good nutrition. And I am at peace with where I am in life and have healthy company in Myung. But… I’ve learned my body can only take so much. You see and hear about all kind of older people who can do phenomenal things with their bodies. I’m pretty good for my age, but I can tell I’m going to have to take into consideration what is possible for me. Building up so that I can do what the young guys do doesn’t seem possible in my case. Some things, like my knees especially, are wearing out. My other joints feel the stress, too. There are other things, too, like my balance is even worse than it ever was. I’m thinking, like father like son, I’m going to kill myself in a fall, only I won’t be 93 when it happens. I’m having to be more and more careful not to injure myself rock hopping over creeks or hiking along ledges. Shoot, I’m already the absolute slowest walker down an uneven surface. Anyway, finally my knee and right middle finger are feeling nearly normal after my bicycle mishap on “The World’s Most Dangerous Road” in Bolivia, (and I wasn’t even going that fast, like the extreme riders I was with.) I’m fine with kicking back right now. While myung is doing her thing, I may really try to learn Mandarin and write my memoirs or something.

I guess that about wraps it up for now. Next blog will probably come when we decide what we will do next, if we stay here or go somewhere else. That’ll be in a couple of weeks. Until then, be well, all of you.

Just a quick update. Myung and I are going to Chongqing tomorrow. She’s laid some groundwork for doing business there and it’s time to do some stuff on that end. Why Chingqing? Well, we just liked it there and we know a couple there. That’s about it. There is nothing etched in stone, and this may turn into nothing, but it’s not a problem for us. We may just drift along and seize the first opportunity that comes along. Or not. Whatever. Maybe this will be like the nail art business in Buenos Aires, and it won’t get off the ground. Maybe it will. I’m not even going into it till something definitive happens. I’ll write again when I have something to say.
Be well, all of you.

Hi, everybody. It hardly seems like I’ve been back in Korea for over two weeks. Myung and I have basically been kicking back, first in Seoul for a week then in Gyeongju until now. We’ve done the social circles, taken care of a little business and walked around like tourists. I’m fine with doing nothing. It’s time I rested. One thing I noticed is that my knees were getting really sore almost all the time. With rest, they are returning to their usual mediocre selves, which is tolerable. I’d like to say we’re doing something, but we are really just hanging out. Myung’s still looking into things she might want to do, but nothing is decided. She does feel like there will be more opportunities in China, so it’s likely we’ll go there, likely Chongqing. That may happen in the next few days, in fact. That makes now a good time to blog.
As many of you know, we were in Korea from about May of 2008 till about January of 2009. You can click on those links on the right for pictures from then and what was on our alleged minds. There are pictures in there of Seoul as well as Gyeongju. I really like Gyeongju and could stay here if Myung wanted to. So’s not to repeat myself, I’ll post some different pictures, like of a traditional village near here. There are few of these left. This one’s structures are kept up at government expense, but it’s a regualar place with regular people with regular jobs. It isn’t touristy. There are no souvenir shops or anything like that. It just shows how charming Korea can be.

These are lived in places. It’s very traditional in this part of Korea. These jars are for storing food. The people whose place is in the first picture rent out the room Myung is standing by, if you want to spend the night.

Here is an interesting, gnarly, 600 year old Chinese cypresss tree.

There are, of course, many temples. They are almost always photogenic. I know I loaded up this site with temple pictures last time, but here’s one I like.

And here is a 1500 year old Buddha relief up the hill behind that temple.

Oh, as long as I’m at it, here are a couple of pictures you may have seen before. The first is a random shot of part of the large amount of open space in Gyeongju. One of the things I like about Gyeongju is that there are many kilometers of walking areas like this around. You wander all around burial sites and other historical areas from the 1000 year long Silla period of Korean history. Gyeongju was the Silla capital from the 1st century BC till the 10th century AD.

Here is a royal ice house from about the 8th century.

And here is east Asia’s oldest existing observatory, from the 6th century, I think.

And here is a typical golden Silla crown, which is in the national museum here.

I thought I’d try it and the power on for size. It suits me well, don’t you think?

Um, you may have guessed I didn’t get to put on the real crown. Our guesthouse had some traditinal clothes and a tin hat for the tourists to put on and pose for pictures.

We’ve spent a faiar amount of time hanging out with Myung’s friends. She’s from around here and knows people. Her best friends are Young He…

…and Gyung Ja. She’s known them since high school.

Let’s see, what else have uploaded. Here’s me at an ancient site,

There’s a bronze hand in the water of the beach in Pohang.

That’s about it. It’s not unlikely that the next time I write, it will be from China. I’m hoping we settle in one place there for a while. I’m for being a homebody. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do. I think, for one, I will really knuckle down and learn whatever language is used where we setle. Mandarin would be the language in China. I don’t know if my tired old brain can handle it, but at least it’s easier than Korean. I may even write that book I’ve been mulling over for a couple of years, even though it would be unpublishable. Maybe we’ll think of an occupation together. Who knows? The story of my life, eh?
Be well, all of you.

Puno itself is nearly nothing of interest. Most people who go there go to see the Uros people. The Uros live on islands they have made out of the reeds that grow in Lake Titicaca. As the reeds decay, they pile up more on top. These days they have electricity, schools and other infrastructure and, most importantly for them, a thriving tourist industry. I saw it in it’s less touristy state about 8 or 9 years ago. Given my time considerations, I chose not to go out there this time and to preserve my memories. I overnighted in Puno, skipping the several worthwhile Inca and pre-Inca sites around there, and headed for Cuzco.
My original plan (Why do I even think about planning?) was to spend maybe a day around town, go to Macchu Picchu and maybe the Sacred Valley, then go to Nazca and a park north of Lima. What happened was there was a transportation strike here and a pilot’s strike at the airline I am taking to Los Angeles for my connection to Seoul. Both of those are resolved, but the timing of all that prevented me from going to Macchu Picchu or getting to Nazca. It’s a long story, but the gist of it all is that I’ve hung around Cuzco for 6 days and later today am taking a bus to Lima where I will hang out till my flight leaves in three days.
On the bus from Puno I met a Swiss woman, Marita, who has been traveling 13 years.

I am authorized to tell you she got a terminal cancer diagnosis 13 years ago and decided to check off the items on her bucket list rather than prolong her previous life with cancer treatments. Seems like an obvious call to me, but you know how it is. Most people stay home. The cancer disappeared and she’s still traveling. Too bad she doesn’t have a website. She’s done some amazing stuff.
We’ve been pretty relaxed here in Cuzco. There are far worse places to be stranded. We went on a tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Here are pics of that area.

That last place was Moray. We didn’t have a guide, but it is sure interesting how they decided to build those terraces on a circle like that. The terraces they built are interesting, but NOTHING compares to those in China

Here is the 16th century church in Chinchero.

As I said, we didn’t get to Macchu Picchu. It’s comforting to have been there before, though. For sure you’ve seen pictures of that place. If you haven’t, there are millions of pictures better than I could have taken to be found online.
Cuzco has changed since I was here before. It’s more modern, cleaner around the center, and touristy. Not that it wasn’t touristy a mere 8 years ago, but it’s got upscale stuff all over the place and a McDonalds right on the Plaza de Armas. Here’s the plaza.

It’s been wierd around here. Well, actually it’s probably been normal for Peru. There was a transportation strike, supported by many businesses not bothering to open. One of the reasons for the general shutting down and shuttering of windows was the threat of violence. All this was right in the middle of one of Cuzco’s biggest celebrations. During the winter solstice, they have traditional pageantry celebrating their Inca and Quechua heritage. Many hours of parades and music were to be interrupted by this labor action. It was thought this might last two days, which would have disrupted a lot of planning. Plus, violence would have ruined the vibes. As it turned out, nothing untoward happened. The protests died out by midafternoon and festivities resumed. You see in the previous pictures how it looked around the plaza during the happy part of the gathering. I didn’t think taking pictures of the riot police would be such a hot idea, but it was cute to see the bulls leaning on their shields, helmets at their feet, chatting on their cell phones, no doubtedly with their wives and friends about each others kids parading around them in their costumes.

These festivities will be going on for a couple more days. Those pics were of the parade of the kindergartners. All ages, groups and what not are in on it. I’ll put more parade pictures up when I get the wide angle pics copied onto DVD in Korea.
Speaking of Korea, I’ve got to get out of here and have some lunch before taking the bus for Lima this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have a chance to blog again before my flight three days from now. Until then, as always, be well all of you.

Hi, y’all. I’m going to try to get off this and another entry before leaving Cuzco, Peru, in about two hours for Lima. These pictures are of Copacabana, on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, and of a lovely island out in the lake, Isla del Sol. For the most part, Copacabana is a tourist town now. The only thing to actually look at is this moorish style church.

Other than that, about the only thing worth doing there is to eat the lake trout which are among the biggest trout in the world. I had my fill of trucha for awhile.
Here are some pitures of Isla de Sol. The views from along the shore here and on the Peruvian side might have you to think the views from the island are less than dramatic, but it really is nice out there. I went for two days and a night. The thing most tourists do is take the two hour boat ride to the village at the northern end of the island, look at the Inca sites there, and walk for about 4 hours to the southern end. That’s where all the hostals are. You reward yourself at one of the ubiquitous trucha/pizza joints and have a drink.
This is the look as you pull up to the dock at the northern end.

And here is part of the town itself.

Though this island is an important Inca location due to their belief that their main god was born here, the ruins are less than exciting. I didn’t think any of my pictures were blogworthy. So here are some pics along the ridge where you do most of your walking.

When you get to the end, there is a town where most people who stay overnight stay. It’s very mellow. I liked the view out my window. I especially like that the room to myself was only $3.

After that, I just went back to Copa, spent the night, and went the next day to Puno, Peru, about two hours west of there. I’m going to separate Bolivia from Peru by writing about everything over there in the next blog. Hopefully I can get that posted before having to leave this internet place I’m in. See you in a bit.

Hi, y’all. This is all out of sequence again, but internet connections were really slow in b
Bolivia. The above pictures are of La Paz. One is obviously a shot of the city from high ground. The bus pic is the view of the street I stayed on, and the other one is right around the corner tothe right. La Paz isn’t all that photogenic. It has some nice colonial architecture, like so many other cities. I hung around there a bit to take care of some things. The best thing was a huge, 16 hour parade and street party they had for Bolivia’s bicentenial. I have pictures, but for some reason I can’t upload pictures taken in wide screen on my camera. What’s that about? Maybe when I get these all put on DVD I can upload them. Also, once I’m in Korea, I can download the picture program CD that came with the camera.
After La Paz, I went to Bolivia’s savannah wetlands, which they call pampas but aren’t anything like what the Argentines call pampas. It’s low wetland, full of alligators, the biggest rodents in the world called capybaras, birds, snakes and more. I saw literally hundreds of alligators and their relative the caimans, and capybaras.

The only way to do this, really, was to go on a tour. The pampas tour is generally three days. I also went on a jungle tour for three days. I booked them in the only town of any size for 300 km, Rurrenabaque (pop 13,000). You can get there by going five days downriver from La Paz, taking a chicken bus overnight for 16 hours on dirt roads, chartering a four-wheel drive for about $50 each which does it in only 12 hours, or you can fly in only 40 minutes for $60. Call me lazy in my old age, but I flew. The drawback to that method is they cancel the flights if it rains and renders the dirt and grass landing strip useless. It’s didn’t rain for me.

Here’s Rurrenabaque.

One of the things that is part of the regular tour is slogging through the marsh looking for anacondas. This kind of walking is a little fatiguing. There’s quicksand, too, but reality is you only go down about a foot, at least here. It’s still a wierd sensation.

The snakes are there. We saw three. This little one was the biggest we saw, about 3 meters long, and way strong. It did NOT want to be pulled out of the weeds.

The sleeping arrangements were pretty good, really. On the pampas tour, I shared a big dorm-like room with only two German women. There were mosquito nets and decent food by the cook. What else could your ask for? We even had this companion on a post outside our door.

That’s a tarrantula, by the way, if you didn’t know. They are about the size of your hand and are harmless.
The other good thing is the river dolphins. At times we had really good looks at them, but I have no pictures. The babies are pink and very cute. Take my word for it. They are not rare here. You go out on the boat, jump in and swim with them. God only knows what was in that water, but it was worth it. I remember a couple of years ago Myung and I went a long way to see river dolphins in a stretch of the Mekhong River between Cambodia and Loas. And in Bolivia you can sit on the porch and watch them while you are having your morning coffee.
You can take a jungle tour for as long as you want, but most opt for three days because otherwise it’s about trekking. Call me old again, but I bagged that option. My knee was still hurting from a bicycle mishap a week before, anyway. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. The jungle is to the west of Rurrenabaque and the pampas is to the east, so you have to return to Rurre. That trip wasn’t as good, but it was jungly. Many boars, a few birds, and a couple of cobras. Everybody liked my oft told story about eating these at that refugee camp in Thailand.

This is the sleeping arrangement and the food at that camp. I paid a little more and was rewwarded with being in a small group of five the first night and only three the second. I got the cabin on the left all to myself.

That all brings me up to about four days ago. I flew back to La Paz and immediately got on a bus for Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at about 13,000 feet, 4000 meters. I hung out around there for a couple of days and went to a lovely, archeologically important Inca area, Lago del Sol, for a couple of more days. That’s for another blog entry, though. Today I went to Puno, Peru, about three hours from there. I’m just spending the night to break up the trip between Copa and Cuzco. Cuzco is interesting. I was there about eight years ago. It’s interesting in it’s own right, but it’s also the jumping off point for Macchu Picchu. I plan to go there again, though this time I’m taking the train which gets you to within an hour and a half walk from there. It’ll take about seven to eight hours to get to Cuzco, so I’ll do that walk the day after tomorrow.
I’m not used to scheduling my time. I leave for Korea on the 22nd. That’s only 10 days away! I can barely wrap my mind around that. It’ll go fast, in a sense, but on the other hand I’m in spring fever mode. I’m looking forward to seeing Myung again. It’s been a couple of months. She’s still scoping out ways to make money. We’ll work on that together when I get there. Maybe we’ll go try something in China. There is absolutely nothing definite yet. We’ll see how it goes. The upshot is that I may be more or less relatively stable for a while. Probably we’ll get a place to call home. Frankly, I could use a break.
It looks like Peruvian internet connections may be fast enough to upload more pictures. So it’s likely I’ll blog again at least once before getting out of Dodge. The only thing is I’m plannig to wind down in a remote area of the Andes north of Lima for the last few days. So, I hope to be in touch, but if I can’t, see you in Korea.
Be well, all of you.

It’s been so long since I have been in a place where the connection is fast enough to upload pictures! I’ve been in Bolivia since May 10 and am still in La Paz. This post is going to skip northern Argentina. I may try to get to those pictures, but I don’t know, where else in Bolivia is there going to be another connection even this fast? The first thing I did after crossing the border was take my first train ride in a long time. Bolivia has a couple of lines. One is from Villazon on the Argentine border to Oruro, passing through Tupiza and Uyuni. It’s clunky but still better than the bus, I took it to Tupiza.

On the way to Uyuni it goes through wilderness like this. If you read my San Pedro de Atacama entry, you may say to yourself this looks a lot like that. San Pedro, Chile, is quite close to here. At times we were only a few hundred meters from the border. I could have come here from there, but was misinformed about getting a visa into Bolivia at that border crossing. That’s a lot of the reason I went back to that northern tip of Argentina. That said, I did enjoy seeing that part of Argentina. I’m not that busy.

THE thing to do down here is to either go on a one or two day tour from Uyuni town to the Uyuni salt flats, known as the Solar de Uyuni, or to take a four day tour through the extreme southwest of bolivia and see the vivid terrain and lagunas there, then the salt flats, then wind up in Uyuni. I took the second optiion.
At first the landscape looks a lot like this.

Later on there are interesting rock formations.

And the road is pretty good, though a four wheel drive is necessary in any places. Most of it is at 4300-4900 meters (about 14,000-16,000 feet) above sea level.

Four of us in a mid-nineties Land Cruiser (back when Land Cruisers were built to endure this kind of use) caravaned with another from the same tour company. Still, we got one flat. Also, we got a short circuit to the water pump. Here the two drivers are fixing the flat, getting to the fuel pump under the middle seat, and hot wiring it directly to the battery. After that, you got a shock every time you touched metal in the Cruiser. That vintage Cruiser is almost all metal inside.

By the way, that woman in red was the cook for both vehicles. We definitely came to appreciate her as well as the two guys. In my vehicle were a couple who are videographers. They would like to quit their day jobs in New Jersey and live off income from their website. Jason and Aracely’s site is pretty good. You might want to go there for video of this eight month trip they are on in Latin Aerica. Unfortunately, they are way behind and, last I heard a few days ago, they still had only Centra America ready for views. They are at www.twobackpackers.com . The other companion is a Bulgarian woman, Draga. Aracely and Jason and I stayed more or less together till Sucre. Draga went to LA Paz with her boyfriend, but maybe she and I will hook up here in La Paz now that I am here. I haven’t heard from her yet, though.

In the far southwest there are several villages. This is one of the larger ones. Note the solar panels. In the US most people in bright sunny places still don’t use them. And silly Americans want Obama to save them from the Gulf oil spill. We’re supposed to be all about personal responsibility but can’t save ourselves.

Here’s a cute village. They have a dam to make the water level even this high.

Along the way, there are some geysers. They don’t shoot up like Old Faithful in California or in Yellowstone National Park, but they are dramatic steaming cauldrens of bubbling mud and sand.

There are several beautiful lagunas. Most are filled with mineral deposits. The flamingoes like to feed off the tiny crustaceans that live there. In the first picture, that is steam rising off the water in the early morning. Like any other arid place, it warms up considerably as soon as the sun rises. Oh, those nights were cold up at that elevation!

There is a hot spring at one place, all tricked out for tourists. I didn’t go in. The thought of getting out into the cold air and dealing with my dirty, wet feet cooled me on that plan.

Okay, then we got to the Solar de Uyuni. It’s one of those World Heritage sites that deserves the billing.

It’s the larget salt flat in the world, a couple hundred kilometers by about a hundred and something. The Bonneville salt flat in Utah is the econd largest in the world. You just head out over it like you’re trying for the land speed record at Bonneville. It is F-L-A-T, but there are “islands” of rock and vegetation. From there you can climb up to get some persective on the expanse around you. One island is the top spot the tours from the town of Uyuni and the Tupiza to Uyuni converge. We park in the shade to get out of the glare, the cooks make lunch, and the guys work on the vehicles while we romp around working up an appetitie.

There are outposts around the edge of the Solar where they harvest salt. Many, if not most, of the buildings are made of salt blocks.

We didn’t sleep in that bulding, but one much lke it. Here was our room one night. It had electricity from a generator for about three hours and everything. What else along with four bottles of wine for four people do you need? A pad of blankets between the salt bed and your body made it at least two stars. This is not a tourist thing. The locals do this. They also have salt tables and chairs as well as salt play yard stuff for the kids.

That just about does it for now. From there we went to Uyuni. I’ll blog about Potosi and Sucre maybe tomoorow. I’ve got the pictures all uploaded. Be well, all of you.

Finally, I can upload pictures now that I am in La Paz. I went kind of nuts shooting photos of people at last Sunday’s market in Tarabuco, about 65 km southeast of Sucre. Most of these I just took in a ten minute period while sitting on a couple of benches in the plaza. There are a couple of food market pics, too.
I’ll upload more and write a narrative in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, for a change, there are no scenery pics.

This last one was actually taken in Uyuni. A colorful hippy chick tourist is discussing the stuff being sold by this street vendor. Don’t tourists have interesting hair?

Be well, all of you.

Hi again. I’ve covered a lot of kilometers since the last entry. At that time I was pretty far south of Santiago and the center of Chile. From Valdivia I went all the way up to Valparaiso, a port city west northwest of Santiago. As is common for me, I bagged the big capital city. Everyone says that was pretty much a good idea. Valparaiso was nice. It reminded me a lot of Lisbon. The buildings are about the same vintage, and very European, and it’s hilly. The flats aren’t very wide. Then it goes up. If the views were good, I´d post some pictures, but they aren’t. You see a big port, for the most part. The picture below is of the street where I stayed (my place was about halfway down the block on the left), and it’s pretty typical of the views.

Some of the ascents are pretty steep. Most people who aren’t driveing go up on ascensors like the one below. Some date from the late 19th century. They were steam powered then, but are electric now, though some of the carriages are original

Other than that, I don’t feel like my pictures are that interesting. But take my word for it, Valparaiso was an enjoyable place to spend a three days.
About an hour south of Valpariso is an old whaling village, Quintay. The Japanese were whaling around there until 1967 when Chile joined the international community in outlawing whaling activity in their waters and the processing on Chilean soil. There is an interesting museum, with grisly pictures of dozens of dead blue whales strewn everywhere in various phases of their processing. Here’s the village now, definitely less active than in the old days.

The coastline along there is nice. There is a lot of this along the coast of South Africa.

From there is was to Pucon. Pucon is about looking at and climbing an active volcano. Unfortunately for me, the weather was inclement so nobody could climb the snow capped volcano. Here it is from town, though, puffing smoke. I have many pictures of some of the 60 active volcaoes in Chile, but really, if you’ve seen one you’ve about seen them all.

From there it was a two day, 20 hour bus ride up to the Atacama desert area of northern Chile. San Pedro de Atacama is the local backpacker ghetto there. It’s not too bad, considering. The streets aren’t paved or anything. The thing to do there is take in the desert scenery. It reminds me of Namibia, though generally not as dramatic. One area called the Valley of the Moon is like around Swakomund in Namibia.

There are rivers and creeks flowing through this otherwise desolate area. Along them are villages. Here’s one pretty one.

There are widely spaced settlements in the Atacama. They are mostly pretty dull, but it’s beginning to look like Bolivia once you get up there. I have many cute church pictures. Here are the best of the bunch.

The Atacama has the kind of desert beauty that, even if you’ve seen a lot of deserts, is distinctive and beautiful in it’s own way that you don’t feel like, ho hum, I’ve seen this before. It’s a little of Namibia, a little of the American southwest, a little of Egypt, a little like Ladakh in Kashmir and, yes, a little of the rest of arid southern Argentina. Like southern Argentina, there are ravines and washes, lakes, and seasonal ponds. The water comes down from the Andes and forms habitat for many animals. Before this trip I didn’t even know there were fresh water flamingos. Down here, they are quite common.

That obviously isn’t so much a flamingo picture as one of the typical settings you see them in. Many people prefer the green and wetness of southern Chile. Obviously, the people who prefer the desert have a point.
Right now I’m in Salta, Argentina, a day’s bus ride from San Pedro. I came here because I was told Americans need a visa from a consulate to enter Bolivia. Salta has the nearest consulate. It turns out Americans can get a visa at the border, though they still have to pay 130 USD for it. So, I could have gone to Bolivia by way of the Uyuni salt flats from San Pedro. The border is only a couple of hours from there. But I’m glad I came. Salta is not photogenic, but it is historically interesting and the ride was very nice, through snowy passes with dramatic, bare landscape above the treeline for much of the way. After a couple of nights here, I am going to Jujuy today to look at the sights around there. My guess is that I’ll get to Bolivia in about three or four days.
I bought a ticket to Korea for June 22. I had hoped to maybe stopover in northern California for a bit, but the flights I got amounted to about 700 USD less than if I went another way. It goes through Ft. Lauderdale to LA. Then another airline takes me nonstop to Korea. It involves two red-eyes and an overnight in the LA airport, yuk, but it is cheap. There wasn’t even a way to stopover in LA and resume a couple of weeks later without that several hundred dollar difference. I think it has to do with after June 22 the peak summer season fares kick in.
So this phase of my travels is winding down. I’d like to go up to Equador, but I don’t think there is time. Maybe if Bolivia doesn’t work for me, I’ll go. I look forward to seeing Myung. She isn’t situated there yet, so I don’t know what is in store. We may work for a while, or work indefinitely. Or at least she plans to work. I’ll see what looks like a good thing to do. The course of our future has yet to unfold.
That’s about it for now. Be well, all of you.

Hi everyone,
I am in Puerto Varas, a town just north of Puerto Montt, after spending a week moving up the island of Chiloe in southern Chile. Puerto Montt is the big city in this area, but like most big cities it´s not much to talk about. This is the first stop for volcano watchers as they go toward northern Chile. There will be more volcano pictures, I´m sure. I depends on the weather. It rains every day and the visibility is nil sometimes. It poured in Puerto Montt a couple of days ago and was raining here until midday. They said you can see a volcano. (I always forget to bring my Lonely Planet to these internet cafes, so I don´t remember the name.) When the clouds broke, there it was across the lake. In the summer, you can go up there with a guide and the right equipment.

Most of my activity for the past week has been at sea level, looking at cute town after cute town. Chiloe has an interesting history and is distinctve in many ways. For one, the buildings are often this distinctive shingle.

This church dates from 1730.

The style is typical all over Chiloe.

Quemchi (not to be confused with the Korean side dishes) was particularly cute.

The largest city, Castro, has about 30,000, but even it is nice. Plus, it has some ammenities. The boats here are so colorful.

My idea of an ammenity is mussels for under 2 USD per kilo. I´m thinking these guys loading mussels must be working hard for little money for it to be so cheap in the shops.

I got over to Chiloe on the ferry from Chaiten in northern Patagonia, where I had taken the Carretera
Austral, the southern highway, from just south of Rio Tranquil. Here are a couple of typical scenes from along that route.

This next one is of Chaiten itself, taken from the ferry as we left.

The nearby volcano blew in 2008 and 2009. You´d never know from that distant picture how devastated the city was. It´s only about 10% reinhabited. Most of the city has been demolished. Most of the rest is abandonned, and ash has been piled up like sand dunes by bulldozers 10 meters high all over what was once city. Chile experiences so many calamities, it´s no wonder they feel quite able to manage that earthquake a couple of months ago. That gets me to the present. I´m heading north rather slowly. I figure to make a few forays into the mountains among more volcanoes. Maybe I´ll swing back through a pretty part of Argentina called Seven Lakes. There´s supposed to be a cooool university city, Valdivia, and you know how cool I am. There are things to see all the way up Chile. I´m torn between returning to Argentina and checking out the northwest before going to Bolivia, or going to Bolivia from here. For sure, I´ll do something. wherever you go, there you are.
Speaking of the present, yesterday was Sunday here in Puerto Varas. There was a tent set up where artisans and foodies sold their stuff. I´ll leve you with food for thought. Imagine, if you will, a Chilean garage band playing ¨Sweet Home Alabama¨. The accent was not exactly spot on.

Be well, all of you.