Greetings all, and although it is a day late for most of you, Happy Christmas! It is still Christmas day here, so it counts as far as I'm concerned. And while we're at it, since we may not have an Internet connection between now and then, we hope you have a Happy New Year too.
Since the post-volcano-conquoring update in Pucon, we've headed north. After a rainy last day in Pucon we caught the bus to Santiago, the national capital of Chile. We spent about 2 hours here, basically just waiting for our connecting bus to the sea-side town of La Serena. Santiago, from our extremely brief passage through it, looked to be a mix of rich and poor, with nice parks and expensive buildings mixed with slums and broken down houses, all set against the backdrop of the Andes mountains. But we wanted the beach, and would not be delayed.
La Serena turned out to be a much larger town than I had expected. It has connected with a couple of other nearby towns and become a sprawling metropolis. All the tall buildings are on the beach, and provide expensive accomodation to the well-healed. Interestingly, La Serena is more popular as a travel destination with Chileans rather than foreigners, and it was refreshing to get away from the typical backpacker-infested locations we have generally been at so far.
We spent about 3 days here in all, with no mountain climbing this time. A couple of visits to the beach, an astronomy tour out to a nearby observatory (Chile is known for having one of the most reliably clear skys in the world), a trip up a towering, three-pronged cement monument called "The Cross of the Third Millenium", opened in the year 2000. It had a great view, but it seemed rather incongruous having a US$5 million construction surrounded by one of the poorer areas of the city.
Next, we hopped on another bus to the town of San Pedro de Atacama, near the Bolivian border. The north of Chile is dominated by the dryest desert in the world. It is a desert of dirt, not sand, and a lot of mining takes place scattered across it. But the landscape is unique, and the town of San Pedro itself is quite nice, in a very laid-back, and very hot way.
Last night, which was Christmas Eve, we were told there would be a Christmas presentation in the square near the local Catholic church at about 8pm, followed by a church service at 10pm. As dutiful Westerners, we arrived at 8pm to find the square empty. Having nothing better to do, we sat on a nearby bench and chatted until about 9:30pm, when the parade actually arrived. It was made up of 10 dancing children and four musicians (a bass drum, a snare, and two accordians). This resiliant group of dancers kept it up until 10pm, when the service itself began. We made our way inside and enjoyed an interesting service, which included Christmas carols lead by a brave woman who lacked both pitch and rhythm (the music was still enjoyable though), liturgy, prayer, a pop-quiz for the kids by the Father, a small baby-doll Jesus, and communion.
Catholicism, in South America at least, has a lot of imagery. The church itself had about 8 colourfully-dressed statues of Mary, Jesus and other saints and lots of pictures on the walls. This is a stark contrast to our own church in Australia, but it was good to see people genuinely celebrating the birth of Jesus in such a different culture.
Tomorrow, we will be exploring around San Pedro a bit further, and on Saturday, we head out on a 3-day trip across the salt flats in southern Bolivia, ending up (hopefully) in Uyani, Bolivia on December 30th.
Until then, we wish you a happy holiday. See you on the other side!
Los Davides
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