Rolo on Tour

Goodbye Bolivia and Welcome to Europe

At least that´s how it feels like right now. After nearly 6 months in all those other Countries crossing the border from Bolivia to Chile shows you a huge contrast. Many things change:

There is no more trash in the streets. There are hardly any street sellers. The busses only make stops at certain predefined points. (It took me some time standing on the street and seeing all those buses passing by in Santiago before I realized that ;-)) There are no people wearing traditional clothes. The roads are mostly paved. You cannot buy lunch for a dollar.
Everything feels so familiarly european. Having improved my spanish a lot the language does not even play a big role although the chilean accent can really mess you up, cachay. The only „big difference“ I could recognize so far is that Kermit the frog is called la rana Rene.

What else is there to tell? Things I did so far in Chile:

Cycling and Crawling under some rocks in San Pedro de Atacama:

As the name tells, San Pedro de Atacama lies in the Atacama desert, which is supposed  to be the driest desert on earth. And it is probably one of the best places worldwide to watch the stars, as there are absolutely no clouds! Unluckily there was a full moon while we were there, so we could not visit one of the observatories.

Next I went south to La Serena from where I visited the Valle del Elqui. There I was shown how Pisco, the chilean national liquor, is made. The way they organize their tour is quite clever: First they bore you with a walk around the area. Then you try all those different flavors. And finally you can buy stuff you don´t need in their shop.

Continuing southwards I explored the beautiful town of Valparaiso. Is is an interesting place – lying next to the sea and having lots of stairs and elevators. There I was meeting some of the greatest chilean poets:

Mr. Huidobro

Mr. Neruda

and Mrs. Mistral

Valparaiso also seems to be a paradise for street dogs. There are so many of them. But they are quite friendly. One of them decided to be my friend without me doing anything. He even waited in front of the supermarket while I was buying groceries and barked at other dogs or persons approaching me. I could have used that one in Guatemala!

Right next to Valparaiso lies Viña del Mar, where I ran into one of the stone heads from Easter Island. Some of them had been brought to the chilean main land and as I won´t visit the island it was nice to see one „live“.

Hi, I´m a Moai and you?

In Santiago I was staying now for a while in the apartment of Rodrigo, whom I had met in Uyuni. It was really nice of him to offer to stay at his place just after knowing me one day. And he shared everything: His knowledge of Chile, his apartment, his bike, the weekend house of his parents. But baby, he did not let me drive his car.

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