North of Chile

Our next part of the journey was up to northern Chile to San Pedro de Atacama, the world’s driest desert in some parts.  Before we even set foot on the plane, there was some turbulence.  It turns out that when you are buying tickets online, the best practice is to reserve the tickets under the name that matches your official documentation.  Being that I am not used to secretarial work, but rather handy work such as fixing water heaters and building engines, I was not accustomed to this process. 

            When news got to Katie that I had reserved her ticket under ‘Katie Balsley’ and not ‘Kathryn Balsley’, the room got hotter than Texas.  I was kind of taken aback by this as I was the only reason that Katie was donning the last name of my Danish ancestors.  I didn’t tell her this, so I’m hoping she reads this and realizes how grateful she should be.  In reality, this ancestor talk is only a veil for the guilt I really did feel about botching up the reservation.  Nevertheless, we got to the check-in counter at the airport, I winked at the female check-in clerk (Katie was prepared to do the same if it was a male), and everything went swimmingly. 

            We got to San Pedro about mid-day and walked around a little bit.  The town itself has a rather medieval feel to it with dirt roads lined with pueblo houses.  After walking through the streets for a while, we found a tour office and we stopped in and booked three tours.  San Pedro is known for its’ sunrises and sunsets and so we booked our tours accordingly. 

            Our first tour was to the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), where watching the sunset on the lunar landscape is suppose to be one of the more impressive sights.  First, we stopped at Valle de Muerte (Death Valley), which gets its’ name because the many who had died falling off a dangerous road that circles the rim of the valley.  We made a few other stops along the way and then we got to Moon Valley about a half hour before sunset.  My aspirations of going to the moon were at once quelled as the jagged terrain was much like you would imagine the moon to be.  We stayed there for about an hour enjoying the varying hues in the sunset.

Valle de Muerte

Valle de la Luna

Rock sculpture that looks like a dinosaur

Katie licking the salt off the wall of a salt cave

Our tour guide getting creative with his picture taking skills

Valle de la Luna at sunset

            The next morning we had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a 4:00 bus for the Geysers Tatio.  Going up The Geysers was going to require us to double our altitude from about 7,000 feet to 14,000 feet.  The 2 hour ride up to the Geysers was over an unpaved and extremely bumpy road.  We were supposed to get there before sunrise and it was also supposed to be unbearably cold.  Both came true, the second one too true. 

 

 

We stepped out of the van when we got to the Geysers and were both taken aback by the -14 degrees below zero temperature that we confronted.  We both had layered up, Michelin Man style, but had neglected some parts.  Our feet and hands felt like they were to the point where if you hit them with a hammer they would have just shattered.  We started walking around the geysers to warm up and after about 10 minutes Katie was passed her cold threshold and had to go back to the van. 

            There were about 3 or 4 different geyser stop-offs that we traveled to via bus.  During this time, Katie started to become increasingly nauseated.  Unfortunately, Katie was sitting in the best seat for someone who may involuntarily have to part with breakfast.  The very back row (out of 6) and all the way to the left (away from the door). 

            With every jarring bump, my anxiety increased as I knew Katie would meet her fate hopefully later than sooner.  While Katie was resting her sick head on my shoulder, I felt another head come to a rest on my other shoulder.  The Italian girl next to me had also discovered my shoulder as a resting spot and so I was just sitting there doing calf raises with two broads on my shoulders.  I could now unquestionably say that I had broad shoulders.

            All good things must come to an end and so they did.  About an hour into the ride, Katie suddenly sat up giving me a look and I knew she meant business.  The first vomit was surprisingly stealthy and had not disrupted anyone.  The second one was the whistleblower and we stopped the bus to let Katie get some air.  Katie didn’t have anymore left in her and so the driver and I buried the goody bag under a big rock on the side of the road.  You could say Katie left some of herself behind to remain forever in San Pedro de Atacama.

            Once we got back in the van, a bilingual French guy confirmed what we had suspected about Katie, altitude sickness.  He said that he had been advised to stay 2 full days in the actual town to get acclimated to the altitude before going up to the geysers.  We had not been told this and so it wasn’t even a full day before we ascended to the geysers.  Don’t know why I had been spared but I’m thinking it was because of my strong Danish ancestry.

            The next place we went to was the Laguna Cejar which was the least touted tour out of the three we went on.  After seeing the snow-capped volcanoes reflecting in the crystal blue water of the Lagoon, all while the sun was setting, this quickly became our favorite tour of the three.  The views were amazing and I have pictures to back it up if you don’t believe me.

            Our next part of the journey was to La Serena, a coastal city north of Santiago by about 5 hours.  This city is known for two things, observatories and the Pisco (popular brandy liquor) distilleries in the nearby Elqui Valley.  We booked tours to the observatory and a distillery for the following day. 

Even in the winter, this region of Chile has a warm climate without much rain.  So, when we got on the road towards Elqui Valley, we were disappointed, not surprised, when our guide told us that we would not be able to go up to the observatory because of the snow that had fallen the previous night.  Our guide has been doing tours for the past 30 years and said this was the lowest that he has ever seen the snow line on the mountains.  In its’ 13 years of existence, the observatory had never been closed either.  Just our luck…

We still were able to do plenty of other worthwhile things.  We got a nice buzz going at the Pisco distillery, saw some beautiful scenery, and ate at a restaurant in a solar village.  This solar village of about 100 people had been designated by the government as a project to see how well life could sustain itself living on only solar power.  However, due to the cloudy day, they had to make our food with gas.  It made me think that the solar power rules may be pretty lax.

In heeding our tour guides advice on what to get at the restaurant, Katie and I both ordered the goat.  These goats must have only been eating the finest clothes because the taste of the meat was unbelievable.  The meat was much like how my heart has been described, extremely tender, and much like the gossip around Kim Kardashian’s wedding (reference to show that I’m still hip), extremely juicy.  The goat has been the best meat that we’ve had since we’ve arrived, and we just went to Argentina.

The tour lasted until 6 that night and then we went back to our friends’ place in La Serena.  Our friends, also previous DUOC teachers like ourselves, found jobs in La Serena and also…..an apartment right on the beach.  They are paying the equivalent of about $600, all bills included, to have a two-bedroom, furnished apartment on the beach.  Needless to say, we were pretty jealous, but I don’t think we let it show.  We stayed at their apartment for a couple of nights, enjoying the wave soundtrack, and then headed back to Santiago.   

On our friend's balcony looking onto the ocean

Tomorrow we are headed to Peru to see Machu Picchu, so be expecting a post soon about that.

The Balsleys Conquer South America

My apologies to the many gracious followers of our blog for the many mornings and nights you had to suffer between posts. In all fairness, I'd rather be an underblogger than an overblogger. This blog post will be part 1 of 2 of our winter vacation travels. Enjoy!

^{My parents flew in on a Monday morning and we spent the first couple of days touring Santiago. We took them to the basic sites in Santiago which I won’t bore our diligent blog followers with. On Tuesday, the Chilean national team played the Peruvian national team as part of the Copa America. Peru and Chile have had a little bit of a rivalry every since Chile forcefully took the northern region of what is now Northern Chile from Peru. Even though this game was only the opening round of the Copa America, I warned my parents that if Chile won, Santiago would go absolutely wild.}

                  ^{Chile ended up scoring a goal in the 92nd minute to break a 0-0 tie and to win the game. I knew Santiago was about to go crazy and we were only moments from the epicenter of craziness, Plaza Italia. Not thinking my dad would want to venture out to see this celebration first-hand, I asked him with a sarcastic undertone if he wanted to go see the madness. He had been talking about how he used to protest in the 60’s/70’s well before his arrival in Santiago, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he was up for it.
                 Off to Plaza Italia we went to witness the euphoric state that winning an opening round game against a long-time rival can bring a city. We weren’t disappointed. We set up our post in a corner of the Plaza right in front of a line of Carabineros (Police) and watched as more than 5,000 Chileans gathered to celebrate. We looked on at the excited Chileans for probably around 45 minutes or so and then things started to get a little dicey. Katie and I went to our apartment and my parents went to their hotel where they just made it inside the gates before the mayhem started. Up in their hotel room, they looked down at the street where they just were to Chilean soccer fans throwing glass bottles among other things at the Carabineros. Even in times of victories, the celebrations here always seem to take a turn for the worst.}

 Kip wearing a Chilean hat that some kid put on his head

Plaza Italia 

 The water trucks(Guanacas) that are preparing to shoot at people

 The Carabineros arrresting someone

Katie in front of the Ninja Turtles

           ^{We flew to Buenos Aires about mid-day on the Thursday the 14th. We were only spending about a 1 ½ days here so we had to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. We landed safely in Buenos Aires and we were on our way to the hotel. It was about that time when Katie realized she had left her phone on the airplane. The years of making sure I had everything finally took its’ toll on Katie and she was now without a phone, and in turn without emoticons.
           We got settled into our hotel, had a little bit of downtime, and were off to see the city and also to try the world renowned selections of meat. We first stopped by Argentina’s famous National Cemetery to see the immense mausoleums as well as the tomb of Eva Peron. As we walked by the huge, sprawling mausoleums on the way to Eva’s tomb, we developed some Texas-sized expectations. We were somewhat disappointed as her tomb was surprisingly small and ordinary and I think there would only be enough room to find Nemo if you cracked it open. Nevertheless, the cemetery was very impressive and made me want to die in Buenos Aires.}

<sup>Next up, we walked towards the president’s house and along the way saw many important, nondescript buildings. In a plaza in front of the president’s house, we decided to take a seat on a bench. Sitting there taking in all of the government buildings around us, there was a group of school children about to pass us. Trying to blend into the bench didn’t work as one of the school children noticed the pasty, Anglo-Americans, then two, three, four, and then we were engulfed in a crowd of about 30 school children. I had to pinch myself, we weren’t in Asia, but the undeserved adoration just because we had blond hair and light skin gave me a flashback...........

The year was 1994 and I was on a family vacation at the Grand Canyon. I was standing about 4’10, blond hair in the form of a chili bowl, no facial hair yet, but you could tell I was a man. Sporting a Michael Jordan jersey with my Fabio hair, I made myself prey, vulnerable to the many predators in the form of Asian photographers that were lurking. I let my guard down and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a group of Asian tourists who wanted a picture with “Michael Jordan”. This was somewhat surreal as it was the first time I had been referred to as “Michael Jordan” outside of the basketball court. I posed with the excited tourists for several shots and then I carried on not appreciating the Grand Canyon because I was too young at the time.

Flash forward to the mob of kids that were enthralled with us because of our U.S. citizenship. After the kids asked a couple of innocent questions about soccer and life in the U.S., their true motives surfaced. They wanted a U.S. dollar to which my dad supplied them, but only after quizzing them as to if they knew who George Washington was. None of them did, but my soft-hearted father, lugubriously parted with his hard-earned dollar. The school children then excitedly cheered and were on their way. Cheap entertainment…</sup>

<sup>The rest of the day was spent touring a port, Puerto Madera, and an eclectic part of the city, Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood. Dodging the dog poop on the street was tricky. It lined the street like land mines and just when you started to feel like you were developing a rhythm for the GPS location of the scatological placement of these grotesque land mines, you realized the pattern was completely random. Unfortunately, being hard-headed, I thought I could find a pattern but eventually fell victim to one of these mines. Damage was minimal, but damage had been done.

We ate at some really good restaurants at our time in Buenos Aires, meat capital of the world. I probably had the best sausage that I’ve ever had there. I have to say that the steak that I had wasn’t any better than a steak you would get at a good steak restaurant in The States. The difference was price. An appetizer, a big, succulent steak with healthy helpings of sides included, and a couple of glasses of wine were probably around $20/person. We had a good time in the “Paris of South America”, as Buenos Aires is billed, but I believe we were all even more excited about our next destination, Iguazu Falls.</sup>

^{Upon setting eyes on Iguazu Falls (The Falls) for the first time, Eleanor Roosevelt once reportedly exclaimed “Poor Niagara!”Now, I’ve never been to Niagara, but it would take something utterly amazing to top what we witnessed during our 3-day stay in The Falls. We arrived in the late afternoon the first day which left us enough time to take a short jaunt out to The Falls. In the hour and a half that we had left before the park closed, we got to see several of the individual waterfalls as well as the bigger ones. It basically felt like we were living inside a National Geographic.}

^{The next day we woke up to rain, which wasn’t really surprising as we had been woken up by thunder all night. Maybe that was Katie snoring, I’ll have to ask her though as I’m sure she would never freely fess up to it if she didn’t have to. Looking at the weather report for that day, one thing was for certain, and that was rain…all day. We ponchoed up and ventured out to see The Falls in somewhat inclement weather. I will let the pictures do most of the writing, but there are a couple of events that I feel the need to go into detail about.}

<sup>One of these events involved my wife, Katie, who I get along great with and she always listens to my advice with the utmost sincerity. For paths at Iguazu, they have these metal-grated catwalks that become somewhat slippery when rain is applied. I have a big heart. Saying that, I was overly concerned that Katie may slip on these grates and so I was overly persistent in reminding her to ‘Be Careful’. Katie was visibly and audibly becoming annoyed, as you could tell with her cries of frustration, “Gawwwwwd”, and her mockingly saying to me, “Okay Dad” and "I thought I came to Argentina with Stephen, not Steve (Katie's Dad)". We were approaching some metal-grated steps, and so being the leader of the pack, I made sure and gave Katie plenty of fair warning of what lied ahead. I think I remember her shaking her head in complete annoyance.

As I gracefully walked down the stairs, perhapstoo gracefully as it made the descent look too easy, I looked back to make sure that the pack was following. I turned back to see both of my parents at eye level, but I had to resort to my ground level vision to see where Katie had ended up. Katie, fully confident in her ability to walk over the slippery terrain, had taken a spill on the very first stair she had stepped foot on. This kind of slap-stick humor, especially at the expense of a condescending spouse in this instance, gave me my comedy fix for a while. Again, cheap entertainment…</sup>

 Katie reenacting her fall the next day in the same spot where it occured

<sup>That night, we fell asleep to the unrelenting rain but woke up to sunshine and good weather. My parents woke up to a similar scenario with the exception of a banana peel on their balcony. Right away, my mother had this disgraceful act pinned on a neighbor. My soft-hearted Dad wasn’t so quick to pin it on his Fellow Man. Rather, he was putting his money on an unlikely but more interesting source, a monkey. I say unlikely because at that time we hadn’t seen any monkeys. Without a forensic kit though, it was going to be very difficult to build up a strong case against either potentially guilty party. The potential suspects were just going to have to get caught in the act for this vigilante case to be solved. Until then, you know how people who have been married for a long time are about being right…

We made our way out to the rain forest after a big breakfast in preparation for a big day. We were on our way to La Garganta del Diablo, or in our native tongue, The Devil’s Throat. You had to cross a catwalk that spanned about a mile over the water to reach The Devil’s Throat. On our way across this catwalk, an elderly man was being wheeled the other way of apparent heat exhaustion. I hope this elderly gentleman was alright, but I can confidently say that after viewing The Devil’s Throat, it would have been one helluva way to go. Again though, I will let the pictures do the writing.</sup>

Later that day, Katie, my mom, and I went on a boat ride that took you right up to the falls and underneath them.  We got completely soaked, but it really was one of the best parts of the trip.



This is a video on the boat ride. 

Right after the boat ride

On our jungle hike

^{Later that day, we stopped in at a café that was in the middle of the rain forest. About half way through, we were alerted that there were some monkeys in the trees above the café. I’m not sure, but I would almost bet that one of the first thoughts that went through my dad’s head was that this incident would only strengthen his case with the mysterious banana peel on the balcony. We finished our meal and then made our way back to the hotel and caught the last part of Argentina losing in the Copa America much to the dismay of all of the Argentineans watching.}

<sup>After a short hike the following morning, where we saw more monkeys (I think I saw my dad out of the corner of my eye give a couple silent fist pumps to himself) , we were sitting in the lobby of the hotel, bags packed, waiting for the shuttle for the airport. While fraternizing with Katie, we were summoned outside by an excited bellhop. He was pointing upwards towards the balconies on the second floor to where my parents had been staying. Following his direction, we looked upwards and saw several mischievous monkeys scurrying across the balconies. To us, this was proof that the culprits had indeed been the monkeys the whole time. Upon telling my dad, he accepted the news with dignity. However, I know inside he was thinking, “This makes up for the time several years back when my wife warned me to shake the ice off the branches immediately after an ice storm, to which I ignored her, to which half of the tree collapsed soon after, under the heavy weight of the ice”.

We got back to Santiago later that night after a great trip to Argentina. The next couple of days were composed of doing more touring around the city, hiking up the big hill in the center of the city, and making a 30-minute trip outside of Santiago to the world’s 2nd largest winery, Concha y Toro. In between all of this, my mom had developed an affinity for scarves. So, Katie and her found the perfect window to do some scarf shopping, I had a private class for two business students and Kip was off doing push-ups or napping, one of the two.

After my private lesson, during which I probably advised my students to buy stock in a company I was already invested in, I came back to our apartment expecting to see Katie and my mom wrapped up in scarves of every hue celebrating with wine after their big purchases. They had scarves and they were drinking wine, but not in celebration, but rather to cope. When Katie and my mom were coming out of the artisan fair after buying a copious amount of scarves, my mom was robbed. The flaite, which is what scum is referred to as here, had came up behind my mom and ripped the necklace right off her neck. Katie heard her scream and turned around to see the flaite starting to run. Katie grabbed the flaite’s hood, but quickly realized that that was a bad idea. She watched as the flaite disappeared across 8 lanes of traffic, his partner closely following him. Both were shaken by what happened, but my mom got the last laugh...sort of. While disrobing later in the night, my mom discovered half of the chain had fallen into her under garments. So, the flaite made off with half a broken chain and I would seriously doubt he made off with the pendant as well considering it's small size.</sup>

^{My parents left the next day and I think it’s safe to say that they had an eventful experience. Soccer riot, theft, amazing waterfalls, and a little poo on the shoe to top it off.}
Also, we want to mention the new addition to The Balsley Family.  Below is our first niece Katilyn Rose.  She was born yesterday.  Congratulations Dan and Nicki!!!