Since we last wrote we have been on the move and have gained some serious miles!
We have done some serious bus rides, which were: Vina del mar to La Serena (7 hour bus). La Serena to Copiapo (5 hour bus) and the BIGGIE was Copiapo to Calama which was supposed to be 11 hours, but thanks to our bus breaking down before we had even got on it, our 11 hour overnight bus turned into 14 hours!!! Longer than the flight here in the first place!
So we are now in San Pedro de Atacama which is the desert right at the top of Chile... right near the Bolivian border.
So before we get onto what we are going to do, apart from long bus rides which have taken up our time, we have been mostly checking out local towns along the way. La Serena was a gorgeous beachside town (another resort beach type destination) which stretched for miles. Gorgeous! Copiapo was inland, and was our first taste of the desert. On the trip there we saw lots of wild cactus in the desert on the side of the road which had Daile pretty excited! Calama is the main centre to the biggest copper mine in the world, which we tried to get a tour on, but unfortunately it was Sunday, so it was a no go.
Calama saw our first taste of altitude! It is 2700m above sea level, and didn´t bother us. From Calama we caught a 2 hour bus to San Pedro de Atacama where we are now.
We have found it odd that for one whole week, we didn´t see any other foreigners!! That means, that poor Rodney had to listen to Daile as she used up her daily word count all on him!! LOL! We only spoke english to each other for a whole week! Then we arrive in San Pedro de Atacama and the place is FULL of tourists. There are hardly any locals and the streets are lined with travel and tour agencies who are selling tours for all over the region.
This place is pretty amazing with everything being brown, dusty and made of rock or clay of some sort. Check out http://www.sanpedroatacama.com/ingles/home.htm to read more about the region. We really like it here, apart from the steep tourist prices!
Today we are going on a tour called Valley of the Moon - should be a pretty stunning sight as we go at sunset.
Tomorrow we are hiring bikes and cruising around (with large bottles of water!).
Thursday is the exciting day, where we leave on 4WD and do a 3 day tour from here all the way across the Bolivia border to a place called Uyuni. We will see Lagoons with pink flamingos (Daile is VERY excited about this!) drive right across the worlds biggest salt flats/lakes, see giant cactus, and top out at 4900m above sea level!! This will probably see us gasping for breath in our sleep, and fingers crossed with our supply of coca leaves and coca leaf tea we won´t suffer from altitude sickness!
Bolivia is going to be very basic, but much cheaper. We are going from one of South America´s richest to the poorest country.
We won´t be on the internet possibly till after the weekend at the earliest and are on track - we hoped to reach Bolivia by the end of the month and we will!
A special CONGRATULATIONS to Kate and Jase who are getting married this weekend, we so wish we could be in two places at once.
Much love,
Dahlia xo
24 February 2009
16 February 2009
Chilean Coastline: where surfing began
We just had an incredible 2 nights at the beach in Chile where surfing first started. The place is called Ritoque beach and is about a 30 minute drive north of Vina del mar where we were before that.
The beach was totally like a NZ west coast beach - we came to the conclusion that is was Piha crossed with Raglan. Rod never went for a surf though. Surf was 4-6ft and didn´t look too bad but apparently it gets a lot better. Water was damn cold and without a wetsuit there was no way Rodney was going surfing (it was colder than the water is in NZ winter!).
But before we stayed in Ritoque, we went to a little town called Quintero where we stayed the night at Ritoque had no room for us. Well well well it turns out this is NOT a tourist town. We were the only gringos (foreigners) we saw in the whole 24 hours we were there! We later found out that in the 11,000 tourists that have visited that town in 2008 only 460 were foriegners! No wonder NO ONE spoke english! But we got by on our hand signals and 15 words (yes we are progressing! ha!).
But with every cloud there is a silver lining and while the town was a bit rough around the edges, we went for a walk around the coast of this sleepy fishing town and it was an amazing walk! Beautiful clear blue seas and gorgeous scenery and small beaches nestled in between rocks with huge fat sea lions (with lots of fur cos the water is so cold) were just hanging out! So was a nice surprise when our expectations weren´t exactly huge of the place on arrival! We had our first ´scare´, some bloody stray dogs decided to have a wee bark at us (there were about 6 of them). It wasn´t really a drama in hindsight but at the time my heart rate definitely got up! Rods cool dog whispering skills had them running off with their tails between their legs in no time and I was very thankful of the many hundreds of dollars that we spent on vaccinations, and decided it was a very good investment as I´m sure they are no the last dogs we´ll see!
Onto Ritoque the next day where we stayed at a place called Dunas hostel, think the website is http://www.dunashostel.com/ ... it was amazing! We had the honeymoon suite - we could see the sea from our bed. Awesome. Basically just chilled out for several days, went for huge walks along the beach and explored the rugged coastline. There are HUGE sand dunes at Ritoque, ones to rival Hokianga in NZ and there were lots of dirt bikers around. Every afternoon we watched the locals try to drive off the beach in the soft sand and watch without fail, every 4wd get stuck in the sand!!! It was rather amusing, and provided entertainment between reading books and lying in the sun relaxing! Fortunately they all eventually got out!
Spent quite a bit of a time at the most authentic beach bar we´ve ever seen... right on the beach with a thatched roof, old surf boards in the rafters and sun loungers out front on the beach.
Now we are back in Vina Del Mar, and have booked a bus to La Serena tomorrow which is another resort seaside town about 6 hours north, so we´ll be catching our very first long haul bus (not that this is very long haul!)
Will spend a couple of days checking it out before we make our next move. Anyway time to enjoy the beach, hope you are all well and enjoying the NZ summer or winter if you are elsewhere in the world!
Love Dahlia x
The beach was totally like a NZ west coast beach - we came to the conclusion that is was Piha crossed with Raglan. Rod never went for a surf though. Surf was 4-6ft and didn´t look too bad but apparently it gets a lot better. Water was damn cold and without a wetsuit there was no way Rodney was going surfing (it was colder than the water is in NZ winter!).
But before we stayed in Ritoque, we went to a little town called Quintero where we stayed the night at Ritoque had no room for us. Well well well it turns out this is NOT a tourist town. We were the only gringos (foreigners) we saw in the whole 24 hours we were there! We later found out that in the 11,000 tourists that have visited that town in 2008 only 460 were foriegners! No wonder NO ONE spoke english! But we got by on our hand signals and 15 words (yes we are progressing! ha!).
But with every cloud there is a silver lining and while the town was a bit rough around the edges, we went for a walk around the coast of this sleepy fishing town and it was an amazing walk! Beautiful clear blue seas and gorgeous scenery and small beaches nestled in between rocks with huge fat sea lions (with lots of fur cos the water is so cold) were just hanging out! So was a nice surprise when our expectations weren´t exactly huge of the place on arrival! We had our first ´scare´, some bloody stray dogs decided to have a wee bark at us (there were about 6 of them). It wasn´t really a drama in hindsight but at the time my heart rate definitely got up! Rods cool dog whispering skills had them running off with their tails between their legs in no time and I was very thankful of the many hundreds of dollars that we spent on vaccinations, and decided it was a very good investment as I´m sure they are no the last dogs we´ll see!
Onto Ritoque the next day where we stayed at a place called Dunas hostel, think the website is http://www.dunashostel.com/ ... it was amazing! We had the honeymoon suite - we could see the sea from our bed. Awesome. Basically just chilled out for several days, went for huge walks along the beach and explored the rugged coastline. There are HUGE sand dunes at Ritoque, ones to rival Hokianga in NZ and there were lots of dirt bikers around. Every afternoon we watched the locals try to drive off the beach in the soft sand and watch without fail, every 4wd get stuck in the sand!!! It was rather amusing, and provided entertainment between reading books and lying in the sun relaxing! Fortunately they all eventually got out!
Spent quite a bit of a time at the most authentic beach bar we´ve ever seen... right on the beach with a thatched roof, old surf boards in the rafters and sun loungers out front on the beach.
Now we are back in Vina Del Mar, and have booked a bus to La Serena tomorrow which is another resort seaside town about 6 hours north, so we´ll be catching our very first long haul bus (not that this is very long haul!)
Will spend a couple of days checking it out before we make our next move. Anyway time to enjoy the beach, hope you are all well and enjoying the NZ summer or winter if you are elsewhere in the world!
Love Dahlia x
11 February 2009
Culture shock: Arriving in Chile
Well we finally made it to Chile!!
Flight was supposed to be 11 and a half hours, but we were stoked that there was a mean tail wind and it took 1.5 hours off the flight! Arriving at the airport was a bit crazy with no one really speaking english, so we just had to wing it and made it out the other end safely!
Managed to find a chick who spoke english who sorted out a taxi and place to stay, although we are still feeling ripped off from it as we are sure she took a large cut!
Will be much easier once we have worked out how much 1000 pesos is, although we are starting to get the hang of the $$ now. The spanish is another story though! LOL! We have a vocab of about 5 words which seems to be getting us by! Hola for hello, gracias for thank you, donde for where, cerveca for beer, vino for wine! Other than that it is a whole lot of smiling and hand signals!! Keeps us entertained and as a result we are reading the phrase book during downtime and have a new ¨word of the day¨ each day after today I accidently bought a return ticket for a bus ride to Vina del mar when we only wanted a one way ticket! Fortunately Rodney realised when she handed us 4 bus tickets, so we somehow managed to work this out and speak pigeon english with her and get a refund!!! The language difference is keeping us entertained! Hence todays ¨word of the day being¨ dee ida, meaning ONE WAY!!! lol!!!!!
Staying at Vina del mar beach at the moment, which is 2 hours from Santiago by bus, deciding our next move, but bascially heading up the coast beach hopping for the rest of the month, and plan to hit bolivia by late Feb.
Hope everyone is well, would love to hear your news too, so email us to say hi or make a lovely comment! (except you schumacher!)
Dahlia and Rodrigo xxx
Flight was supposed to be 11 and a half hours, but we were stoked that there was a mean tail wind and it took 1.5 hours off the flight! Arriving at the airport was a bit crazy with no one really speaking english, so we just had to wing it and made it out the other end safely!
Managed to find a chick who spoke english who sorted out a taxi and place to stay, although we are still feeling ripped off from it as we are sure she took a large cut!
Will be much easier once we have worked out how much 1000 pesos is, although we are starting to get the hang of the $$ now. The spanish is another story though! LOL! We have a vocab of about 5 words which seems to be getting us by! Hola for hello, gracias for thank you, donde for where, cerveca for beer, vino for wine! Other than that it is a whole lot of smiling and hand signals!! Keeps us entertained and as a result we are reading the phrase book during downtime and have a new ¨word of the day¨ each day after today I accidently bought a return ticket for a bus ride to Vina del mar when we only wanted a one way ticket! Fortunately Rodney realised when she handed us 4 bus tickets, so we somehow managed to work this out and speak pigeon english with her and get a refund!!! The language difference is keeping us entertained! Hence todays ¨word of the day being¨ dee ida, meaning ONE WAY!!! lol!!!!!
Staying at Vina del mar beach at the moment, which is 2 hours from Santiago by bus, deciding our next move, but bascially heading up the coast beach hopping for the rest of the month, and plan to hit bolivia by late Feb.
Hope everyone is well, would love to hear your news too, so email us to say hi or make a lovely comment! (except you schumacher!)
Dahlia and Rodrigo xxx
09 February 2009
ONE sleep until the trip of a lifetime
Wow only one sleep to go until we leave NZ until who knows when! Exciting!
Has started to FINALLY sink in with all the sad goodbyes, had a lovely family dinner tonight in Auckland with both our parents and my aunty Margie. We fly out at 5.30pm tomorrow and land at 1pm the same day! Hows that? As in the 10th Feb so we actually go back in time!! I've worked out the time difference to NZ. The formula is: Add 7 hours to NZ time and then go back a day.
Anyway it's time for bed, see you on the other side!
Love, Dahlia X
Has started to FINALLY sink in with all the sad goodbyes, had a lovely family dinner tonight in Auckland with both our parents and my aunty Margie. We fly out at 5.30pm tomorrow and land at 1pm the same day! Hows that? As in the 10th Feb so we actually go back in time!! I've worked out the time difference to NZ. The formula is: Add 7 hours to NZ time and then go back a day.
Anyway it's time for bed, see you on the other side!
Love, Dahlia X
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