There's an air of mixed emotions and conflicted feelings around our rather cosy hostel cabin today. We're both getting travel weary, the money's running out fast and there's the distinct feeling that the end is approaching. On the other hand, we still have some of the best places ahead of us and don't really want to miss them.
There are a number of things we can't ignore though. Firstly, from hereon, the travelling gets tougher, both from a logistical and security stand point. Secondly, we've looked at the cost of flying home and it's going to be at least a grand each, putting further pressure on the finances. Thirdly, as i've said, we're both starting to think we've had enough.
Before breakfast I'd been taken aback by all the dire warnings in the guide books and from one particularly negative Canadian about travelling in Bolivia and Peru. However, over our eggs we talked to an Irish couple who had just made their way down the route we are to follow and they said they saw no hints of any trouble and they enjoyed it immensely. Still, we will try to avoid being car-jacked, mugged, having our backpack slashed or being raped. Would be a tad inconvenient, but thanks for the warning Lonely Planet.
It's also Dan's 40th birthday (and he won't thank me for telling everyone). I think he's feeling a bit old, but tonight we dine in style (budget: £10 including drinks).
Anyway, back to Port Valparaiso, a town on two levels with about two dozen very old ascendeos (cable cars on tracks) linking the two parts of town if you can't cope with the steep climb (and there were occasions we couldn't). It's a nice if disheveled place with no hint of municipal planning given the way the buildings have been flung up. Houses are often on stilts, in any nook or cranny available on the network of hills and narrow valleys behind the centre of town. There's not actually much to do there, but it had a faded grandeur worth spending a few days looking at. The locals almost encourage graffiti, which they consider art. The end product is like a cross between St Ives and Lewisham, or a weird Camberwell-on-sea.
We found a great bar called La Playa which played 80s music all night, so we got drunk with only a plate of chips to eat. Dan finished off with an unspecified cocktail, plied upon him by some old bird, old enough to be his mother, who wanted us to 'go downstairs' after the place shut. We didn't, but went back to our hostel to suffer the consequences to the excesses for the next 24 hours.
There's another town just round the coast called Viña del Mar which we walked to on Saturday. You definitely got the feeling it considered Valparaiso it's evil twin. Viña is all tree-lined boulevards, green squares and sandy beaches - the very opposite to it's neighbour.
We moved on last Sunday. Another 24 hours on the bus got us here to San Pedro de Atacama. It's in the Atacama desert surprisingly enough and consists only of hostels, tour agencies and over-priced restaurants. We paid too much for our first meal here, but Dan wanted a curry (so predictable). It was served in a coconut shell mounted on a bed of salt, so it was worth it (not).
We booked the accommodation in advance as it's Easter and I was getting worried the place would be overrun by Chileans. It isn't at the moment and there's more danger of all the locals shutting up shop and going to Santiago for the holiday weekend than there being too many local tourists.
There are lots of desert-centred things to do here. We started with a cheap tour of Death Valley (it's a desert, so you have you have a Death Valley) and The Valley Of The Moon. Originality, if not tourists, is in short supply here. Still, the landscape was fab and the sunset passable.
On Wednesday we got up at 4 in the morning to see some geysers and then have a swim in a thermal pool. Was knackered the rest of the day.
As for today, me and the birthday boy don't have too much planned, but that's ok. Tomorrow we head off in a 4x4 with 4 strangers to Bolivia.
Rich.
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