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Santiago: Learning about Pinochet and choking on tear gas

19 July, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

I actually liked Santiago. It’s a nice city, set against the backdrop of the Andes, with a great underground system, and a yummy sushi restaurant next to my hostel. But I visited during ski season (and didn’t ski) and during a student protest, so possibly the timing wasn’t optimal. To make my trip even more fun, I went straight to the museum on the Pinochet dictatorship.

The Museo de la Memoria y Derechos Humanos was inaugurated in 2010. It tells the history of Chile from the time of the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973 (on 11th September, in fact – another 9/11), up to the referendum of 1988 in which the Chilean people finally voted him out of power, his eventual arrest in 1998, and his death in 2006. On entering the museum, you’re first confronted with a long row of 34 screens, each representing the truth commission of one of the many other countries with a dark past. There are interactive exhibits where you can watch and listen to President Allende’s last radio broadcast before he died in the attack on the presidential palace, as well as eye witness accounts of how the coup happened, and a tableau of men and women who describe the torture methods that were used in the period of almost 20 years that followed. The most moving exhibit is the wall of photographs of victims of the dictatorship, with a platform of candles lit in their memory. The museum has been criticised by some for glossing over the fact that so many Chileans supported Pinochet; but in any case it’s an informative, and disturbing, account of the atrocities that were committed under his rule.

On exiting the museum, imagine my distress to find the streets lined with armed officers and vehicles that came straight out of the photographs of the exhibits. It was not, however, a repeat of the 1973 coup, but simply a cautious police corps preparing for a student protest demanding economic reform. The students were joined by teachers, dock workers and copper miners, and it did turn violent with the usual anarchic minority throwing Molotov cocktails and meeting with water cannons and tear gas from the riot police. I never got close to the protestors, I just had the opportunity to enjoy the mixture of tear gas and smog that filled the air as I climbed the Cerro Santa Lucia, a small hill in town that turned out to be a secret garden of surprises, with a great view across town despite the grey skies.

So that’s it for Santiago. In fact I had only a couple of scribbled notes from those two days, and nothing too exciting. But don’t worry, next up is Mendoza and that’s when it gets *really* exciting…

20130718-214629.jpgThe building that houses the Museum of Memory and Human Rights was designed by a group of Brazilian architects

20130718-220018.jpgLa Moneda, the presidential palace, not under attack today but still carefully guarded

20130718-215103.jpgEstaçión Central, the main railway station in Santiago, housing a merry-go-round!

20130718-215739.jpgThe bottom of the Cerro Santa Lucia

20130718-215546.jpgWearing a down jacket in the middle of the day is NOT a holiday, people

20130718-215843.jpgThe other end of Cerro Santa Lucia. Across the road is a huge artisan market

Filed Under: Chile, Travel Tagged With: Allende, Cerro Santa Lucia, Chile, Museo de la Memoria y Derechos Humanos, Pinochet, Santiago, South America, travel

Starry, starry night

17 July, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

I’ve always been fascinated by the universe and everything in it. I’ve already said how I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little. We recently found a copy of a letter my mum had written to some astronomers’ organisation cancelling my subscription to their magazine, saying that, “although my daughter is very interested in astronomy, your publication is a bit too advanced for an eight year old”. I read A Brief History of Time and watched all the documentaries I could find with Stephen Hawking. I successfully convinced my IB Physics teacher to cover astrophysics as one of the optional subjects (this turned out to be a mistake as I knew more on the subject than she did). I even came close to studying astrophysics at university, but then took a gap year and ended up applying for something totally different. These days, I eagerly consume any programme featuring Brian Cox. And now, travelling in South America, I’ve discovered an amazing field that I never even knew existed: archaeoastronomy. It combines my love of the universe with other interests like history, anthropology, mythology, and physics.

At the planetarium in Cusco, Peru (a city which itself is designed to mirror, and point to, specific points in the night sky), they told us about the Incan cosmology and how the river in the sky, our Milky Way, had its earthly counterpart in the Río Urubamba. The Sun, the Moon, and the planet Venus featured prominently in the Incas’ beliefs, and they identified a number of constellations, including the lamas, the shepherd, the fox and the frog, that can be seen in the dark matter of the Milky Way. They constructed temples and observatories to align with the rays of the sun during the winter solstice or to maintain a calendar, mostly for agricultural purposes. They used the brightness of the Southern Pleiades to predict the weather and so to plan the harvest (since then corroborated by modern science). And on the steps of Choquequirao, a line of white stone lamas lead the way to the lama in the sky.

Since 1922, we have 88 official, globally recognised, constellations. (Is it just me, or does this number seem very small considering the vastness of the sky? And, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the Big Dipper, the one constellation we can all identify, is not actually a constellation. What?! In fact it’s an asterism, a pattern of stars within a bigger constellation, in this case, Ursa Major.) Of course, they are only constellations from where we are seeing them, in 2D – they don’t actually exist in 3D reality. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to gaze up at the night sky here in South America, in places far from the light pollution that otherwise prevents us from seeing what’s out there – on the boat in the Galapagos, up at Machu Picchu, out on the Bolivian salt flats. Some constellations can be seen, at certain times of the year, in both the northern and the southern hemisphere, while others are unique to one or the other. The most famous constellation in the south, and the smallest of all of them, is the Southern Cross. From this easily recognisable point, I’ve started to learn to identify the patterns that are nearby: the Centaur and the Southern Triangle, as well as some of the Zodiac signs on the ellipsis, the fabulous Scorpio and the not-so-fabulous Libra (it’s my sign, but it’s just four stars in a kind of square shape. Boring!) – still a long way to go to learning all 88! The planets move along this ellipsis, and I’ve been able to see both Venus and Saturn these past months.

At the Cusco Planetarium and at the Observatorio Mamalluca in Vicuña, Chile, I got to look through the different telescopes to see things invisible to the naked eye: clusters of stars, including the Jewel Box cluster of coloured gems, located in the Southern Cross constellation and officially named NGC 4755; the binary stars of Alpha Centauri (that look like one star without the aid of a telescope); and the rings of Saturn. Chile is a particularly favourable location for astronomers due to the climate and the clear skies (in some parts of the desert, rainfall has NEVER been recorded. Ah, just you wait for Anna to come and visit), and as such is home to many international telescopes. The European Extremely Large Telescope is currently being built outside of Antofogasta, dwarfing the existing Very Large Telescope. Chilean astronomers (and foreigners who have worked for a year in Chile) are fortunate enough to be allowed free access to these telescopes for a month each year, avoiding the otherwise huge cost of using one of these massiv telescopes to stare at a tiny piece of the sky and most likely find nothing of interest.

But perhaps astronomy and astrophysics would not have suited me after all. Really what I want to do is lie in a field and gaze up at the stars, not sit at a desk making measurements and calculations. Looking up at the blackness above – at the billions of stars, each as important as our own sun, whose light has travelled billions of light years to reach us; at the countless worlds that must, with mathematical certainty, exist out there; at the white mass of the Milky Way, which is just one of countless galaxies in the Universe – all of our petty little human concerns pale into insignificance. (Doctor Who, I’m sure, would disagree.) And yet, the next morning, when the sun rises and a blue sky encapsulates our little world – rather like the television studio bubble of The Truman Show – we forget all about that whole Universe that is out there and get on with our daily lives. I guess we have little choice – I’m not sure society would look kindly on me if I suddenly stopped living a normal life and instead wandered the streets pondering the meaning of life. This ain’t Ancient Greece, ya know. But a bit of perspective, a bit of humility, maybe wouldn’t go amiss.

20130716-233731.jpg
The main telescope at the Mamalluca Observatory in Vicuña, Chile

 

Filed Under: Life, Travel Tagged With: archaeoastronomy, astronomy, Chile, Cusco, Incas, Mamelluca Observatory, Peru, South America, travel, Vicuña

La Serena and Vicuña: Moai, bikes, and pisco tasting in northern Chile

15 July, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg 1 Comment

I don’t think I experienced the full potential of La Serena. I didn’t go to the beach, and I didn’t do any tours. (I did have lunch at the beach, with a nice glass of red wine.) Instead, I ate Chinese, I ate sushi, and I went to the cinema (to see Now You See Me: super slick, really entertaining, go and see it!). The weather wasn’t great, and I was happy to have a bit of a break from manic tourism. I did, of course, go to my standard one museum per city, another Museo Arqueológico, with the usual mummies, ceramics, etc; and, most rewarding since I wasn’t planning a stopover on Easter Island on my trip, they had one of the Moai on display.

20130714-212839.jpgThe only one of the Moai to have done a tour of Europe, apparently

20130714-213029.jpgNot a lifeguard to be seen

20130714-213219.jpgLa Serena Lighthouse

Next, I headed to Vicuña, a town in the Elqui Valley outside of La Serena. My main reason for going was to visit one of the astronomical observatories, which isn’t possible during the full moon. Now it wasn’t a full moon when I arrived in Vicuña. It was a SUPERMOON. This unusually large moon (14% larger, and 30% brighter) appears when the full moon coincides with the moon’s closest approach to the Earth, which happens every 14 full moons, i.e. less than once per year. So a well-timed visit.

20130714-214028.jpgThe Torre Bauer and church in the town of Vicuña

Vicuña is also known, at least locally, as the birthplace of Gabriela Mistral, a Chilean poet and feminist, and the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945. According to Wikipedia, she is probably most quoted in English for Su Nombre es Hoy, ‘His name is today’:
“We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow’, his name is today.”
There was a museum in her honour right by my hostel, which closes on Mondays. I was there on a Monday.

Now what I did do in Vicuña was hire a bike and cycle around the countryside. I was given a very inaccurate map, a puncture repair kit (as if I’d remember how to use it), and a pink bottle of water, and off I pedalled. Soon I was coasting down the main road singing songs from Sound of Music. But I wasn’t supposed to be on a main road, so I cycled back and tried again to understand the map. I had to ask, and backtrack, a few more times, and I’m pretty sure I went up some unnecessary inclines, but eventually I found the correct route and could enjoy the views of the surrounding landscape. In fact, every time I got over-confident on a flat or downhill stretch, I would turn the corner to find a steep uphill stretch. But pride wouldn’t let me get off and walk, so each time I huffed and I puffed my way to the top. The cycle tour ended with a visit to the Capel pisco factory, which in turn ended with a tasting of three piscos of our choice. Pisco is a grape brandy developed in Chile, or in Peru, depending on whom you talk to, by the Spanish in the 16th century. Of course, I had to try the one called La Bruja, the witch, but the one I preferred was the stronger bicentennial limited edition, matured in wooden barrels for four to five years, now no longer being produced; and probably my favourite was the Cremisse, which was essentially Baileys. Luckily, the pisco factory was really right at the end of the bike tour, and I managed to stay upright for the last few hundred metres to return the bike and equipment in one piece.

20130714-213632.jpgElqui Valley

20130714-213839.jpgThe Elqui River

20130714-213659.jpgTaking a break

20130714-214132.jpgArriving at the pisco factory

20130714-214221.jpgTaking a sneaky look inside

20130714-214358.jpg

Filed Under: Chile, Travel Tagged With: bike true, Capel, Chile, Gabriela Mistral, La Serena, Museo Arqueológico, pisco tour, South America, supermoon, travel, Vicuña

Entering the driest place in the world: The Atacama desert of northern Chile

13 July, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

My mum used to say that she should travel to the Sahara, where she would be welcomed as a great witch doctor, as she brought rain wherever she went. I seem to have inherited this great gift, as I brought rain to the driest place in the world. That’s some powerful witchcraft.

The Salar de Uyuni tour had ended at the Chilean border, where for the first time they actually checked our luggage in customs, and the Bulgarian couple on our bus had to leave behind two apples. I also had a pretty special experience of going to the toilet in no man’s land, peeing behind a shed between the two countries. (Too much info?) We were picked up by a bus and drove on into Chile, where the landscape continued in much the same vein: they have salt flats, too, though they don’t seem to advertise it as much as Bolivia. Here, they mine borax, which is used, we were told, to make things like windows, water bottles… and chloroform. Hmm. Then suddenly we stopped: a flat tire. Another bus stopped behind us and the driver very kindly helped to replace the tire, after which he went on his merry way. A few seconds later, our driver discovered that the second tire was flat. At this point, I had another interesting toilet experience: peeing outside the car in a pretty much completely flat and open landscape (“Don’t turn around, please”), with a very strong, gusty wind. (Sorry, I did it again.) But we were saved once more, as another tour agency bus came by and said they could take us direct to our destination, San Pedro de Atacama. Ten minutes later, the new driver stopped and went off to a restaurant with his group. We had already stuffed ourselves with biscuits and nuts on the bus as we’d been told there would be no lunch stop, so we waited in the park. “Media hora.” They came back an hour later. Then we drove to the airport to drop some people off. But eventually we did, in fact, arrive in San Pedro, having driven through a lunar landscape of nothingness to arrive at the foot of the volcano Licancabur. I was still with Jen the “just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich” Australian and Hugo the “my behind-work hurts” Dutchman from the salt flat tour, and we collapsed into a nearby hostel and shortly thereafter went out for dinner. The stress of the journey had obviously taken its toll, as we went out in search of chocolate brownies, which we found, along with a few chocolate martinis (me) and whiskeys (Jen). Poor Hugo must have suffered in our company even more at this stage, as he only had a couple of beers.

The next day was a day of rest. After a lie-in, I wandered the streets, browsing the shops and artisan stalls. And then it started to rain. In the driest place in the world, in case you’d forgotten. I happened to be walking past the archeological museum so I popped in to a look. The museum was founded by a Belgian, Gustave Le Paige, a Jesuit who arrived in 1955 to take over the parish. The mummies that had previously constituted the highlight of the museum have unfortunately been moved to a more protected place for preservation, so what was left was an okay exhibition of plants, textiles, and ceramics from the region. Most interesting I found the ornate tablets for inhaling hallucinogens.

In town, I bumped into the Bulgarian couple from our tour. They had been most upset to have been forced to pay for a visa on entering Bolivia, despite Bulgaria being part of the EU since 2007. “We were treated the same as someone from Burkina Faso!” they announced in indignation. At one point in the car, they had screamed for the car to stop, as if their life was in danger. They had spotted an ostrich. (Well, it’s called a nandú.) So we had to drive back to see it. In San Pedro, they immediately signed on to a morning tour to see the geysers (“smaller than we had thought”), an afternoon tour to see the Moon Valley (basically the landscape that we had seen on entering the town), and another full-day tour to the Chilean salt flats (after our three-day tour of the Bolivian salt flats). I was exhausted just thinking about it all.

My main reason for coming to San Pedro de Atacama was to see the stars. But it was raining. In the driest place in the world. (The guy in one of the agencies said that he could still show me “a pretty cool time”, but I decided instead on an early night and a bus ticket to leave the next day.)

My next stop was Copiapó (on a day bus which nonetheless had me surrounded by eleven snoring men the entire journey), internationally known as the site of the mining rescue of 2010. The Lonely Planet guided me to the “unmissable” Museo Mineralógico which, I can assure you, is very much missable. It’s not so much a museum as a big room full of rocks. That said, I became more and more fascinated as I went around examining the displays, and impressed by the wonder of nature to produce such a range of colours, structures, and brilliance. At the end, they even had a meteorite and a cupboard with glow-in-the-dark stones. So I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here if I were you, but if you happen to be in Copiapó, it’s worth a short visit. After just one night, I booked onto a bus to continue on my journey south, arriving at the bus terminal with minutes to spare (having had to run back to pick up my amazing-yet-squashed Panama hat that I had dropped along the way), and then waited an hour for the bus to actually turn up. In the evening, I arrived in La Serena.

20130712-202508.jpgCrossing the border

20130712-201307.jpgWarning! Apparently animals can come from nowhere

20130712-201402.jpgFlat tire number one (and two)

20130712-201508.jpgNever miss a photo opp

20130712-201538.jpgJen and Hugo, waiting patiently

20130712-201658.jpgThe archeological museum in San Pedro de Atacama, also known as ‘umbrella’

20130712-201820.jpgThe view from the bus from San Pedro de Atacama to Copiapó

20130712-201927.jpgPretty houses in Copiapó

Filed Under: Chile, Travel Tagged With: Atacama desert, Bolivia, Chile, Copiapó, Museo Mineralógico, Salar de Uyuni, San Pedro de Atacama, South America, travel

Incessant noise: The sounds of South America

11 July, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg 2 Comments

South America is not the place to come for peace and tranquility. It’s busy, it’s loud, it’s relentless.

As a backpacker, the first place you’ll notice this is on the bus. Most long-distance buses have films playing more or less continuously throughout the journey, and many have music at the same time. The volume of the TV is just loud enough to be disturbing, but mostly not loud enough to actually hear what they’re saying. Then at the start of the journey, you invariably have someone come on and hand out sweets, or biscuits, or whatever, and give a long spiel about how wonderful this product is and how little it will cost you. Throughout the journey you’ll have more vendors coming on board to sell their wares, waking you from your slumber with their loud voices and boxes that knock into you. On local buses, you instead have the guy at the front shouting “Moche! Moche! Moche!” every time you stop because of traffic or traffic lights, to round up more people from the street who want our destination.

The other day, on a local bus in Asunción, Paraguay, it was a complete circus: Imagine, first, a rusty old bus, rattling along down a busy street. Then of course everyone is talking on their mobile phone. There is at least one screaming baby. Add to this a whole line of vendors getting on at the front, moving down the aisle and off the bus at the back in an endless carousel of noise: Chipas, Chipas! Galletas, Galletas! Gaseosas, Gaseosas! (As if planned, the vendors selling cheese buns, biscuits, and soft drinks were followed by others selling toothbrushes and toothpaste. How very responsible.) As a final flourish, put two musicians on board, singing a traditional, and very shouty, style of music as they bash the strings of their guitars. Viewed from the outside, it was quite comical.

Out on the street, the main noise that I’m not used to at home is the honking. I don’t think I’ve ever used a car horn but here it’s part of normal driving protocol. I think the worst was in Piura in northern Peru, where the honking was just outside the hotel window and continued throughout the night. Cars will honk at each other for no apparent reason, while taxis will honk at pedestrians, especially at you since you’re a tourist, and they assume you must want a taxi since you’re walking down the street, or standing at the traffic lights. (On the plus side, this means that you can always get a taxi when you need one.) The other noise you have on the street, if you’re a girl, is the “Hola, qué tal?” but, worse, the kissing, or sometimes hissing, noises that the men let out as you pass. You just have to smile and walk on.

Of course the main experience as a backpacker is the hostel. Although I started very luxuriously with private rooms in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, as I entered the more expensive Chile, Argentina, and, surprisingly, Paraguay, I’ve been staying in dorms for the same price. Whether you go to bed early or stay out late, whether you set an alarm or plan to have a lie in, you’re bound to be on a different schedule to at least someone in your dorm. Especially when there are 14 of you, as the other night in Asunción, Paraguay. (I’m reminded of the ultimate nightmare of a room, The Bunker in Verbier, where there were 30 of us in triple bunk beds, drunk people returning from clubs, couples getting busy under the sheets, and one girl letting out a blood-curdling scream in the middle of the night.) But the most hilariously hellish night was in Mendoza, Argentina. I was already sleeping badly, frustrated at having just had my iPhone stolen, in a hostel where the bar played loud music until 6am. When I went to bed at 11pm, there were two girls already in bed – surprising, I thought, for a Saturday night, but perhaps they had an early bus the next day like me. I struggled to doze off, each time jolted out of near-sleep by one of the girls’ phones receiving messages. Soon thereafter, my instincts were proven to be correct as an alarm rang (I had to shine my torch in one girl’s face so that she would wake up and turn it off) and the two girls proceeded to get out of bed, turn all the lights on, and get dressed and made up to go out, all the while chatting loudly. Seemingly minutes after, they returned, again turning all the lights on to get ready for bed. And less than an hour later, my alarm clock rang and it was time to get up for my bus. (By the way, I sleep with ear plugs and a blindfold when I’m in hostels. Someone should invent dorm-strength sleeping aids.)

There are, of course, exceptions: sailing between the Galapagos Islands, hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and standing in the middle of the Uyuni salt flats, we were in a magical place, far removed from the bustle of everyday life. And the trick, I think, is to find moments away from the noise around you, moments of inner silence. I know I sound like an old woman (in one comment on Trip Adviser, some young stud asked, “Why are people complaining about the noise in their reviews? Who comes to hostels to sleep?), but I get grumpy without my beauty sleep, and I enjoy some quiet time to relax or reflect on my experiences.

In any case, the sounds of a city in a foreign land are all part of the excitement of people watching, seeing life go by, experiencing the energy of a place, in a different part of the world. Take those sounds away and you lose the essence of the place. But, still, what I wouldn’t give for a good night’s sleep…

20130710-213725.jpgIn a dorm of 14 beds, you’re unlikely to get a lot of quality sleep…

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: Argentina, Bolivia, bus journeys, Chile, dorms, Ecuador, hostels, noise, Paraguay, Peru, sleeping, South America, travel

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Anna Lundberg is a success coach and business strategist who helps experienced corporate professionals reimagine success outside of the 9 to 5.

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