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Anna S. E. Lundberg

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From Quito to Buenos Aires in 3 months: My trip in numbers

19 August, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg 6 Comments

So that’s it! My sabbatical in South America is all done and accounted for. I hope you’ve enjoyed following along and getting a peek at some of what I’ve been experiencing since leaving for Ecuador on 1st May. But don’t worry, although this particular adventure may be over the journey, and the writing, continues. And in the meantime, as we live in a data-driven world, let’s take a look at some statistics from the trip:

Months spent travelling: 3
Countries visited: 8
Towns and cities visited: 34
Buses taken: 31 (including 4 night buses)
Trains taken: 1 (Oruro-Uyuni)
Flights flown: 7 (Geneva-Amsterdam-Quito, Quito-Galapagos, Galapagos-Guayaquil, Santiago-Mendoza, Buenos Aires-Paris-Geneva)
Boat trips taken: 4 (Galapagos yacht plus Copacabana-Isla del Sol-Copacabana and Colonia-Montevideo)
Horses ridden: 1
Bicycles ridden: 2
Wine tours taken: 1
Beds slept in: 38 (including 1 boat and 1 tent)
Wonders of the world visited: 3 (1 ‘new’: Machu Picchu; 1 ‘natural’: Iguazú Falls; 1 ‘modern’: Itaipú Dam)
Ruins visited: 13
Observatories observed: 2
New constellations learned: 5
Foursquare mayorships won: 17
Churches photographed: too many to count
Photos taken: definitely too many to count
Panama hats bought: 0 (Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s called a sombrero de paja toquilla)
Bracelets bought: 3
Bracelets lost: 1
iPhones stolen: 1
Bank cards consumed by ATMs: 1 (The machine in Cusco “went to sleep”)
Guns in my face: 1 (Say it with me: PARAGUAY)
Friends’ weddings missed: 3
Baby nieces born: 1
Films watched: 34 (Mostly on buses but also 3 at the cinema. My favourites: The Bucket List, My Name is Khan, The Help, Now You See Me)
Books read: 9 (Mostly in the first few weeks, then nothing!)
Blog posts written: 50
Views on my blog: 5,702
Massages enjoyed: 3
Pedicures done: 2
Bikini waxes booked: 0
Hair dryers used: 1
Make-up worn: 3 times
Pisco sours drunk: 6
Alpaca burgers eaten: 2
Sushi eaten: 4 times
White bread force-fed to me: 534 kg
Coca tea drunk: 7 litres
Dulce de leche devoured: 23 kg
Tangos tangoed: 0
Salsas salsaed: 0
Compliments received: enough to make a girl blush
Facebook friends added: 11
Spanish words learned: muchas
Memorable experiences experienced: MUCHÍSIMAS

Filed Under: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Travel, Uruguay Tagged With: backpacking, memorable experiences, sabbatical, South America, travel

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

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

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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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