Chile!

The last two days have been relatively uneventful. I have been in transit. This morning I flew from Lima to Tacna in the very south of Peru. I took a colectivo (kind of a shared Taxi) about one hour south of there to the town of Arica in Chile. The other passengers were a woman and her chubby 8 year old son, a man with no legs and this wacky Chilean woman in her 30s. The diligent Peruvian immigration guy at the border asked why the boy wasn´t in school. Fortunately, the legless man was not required to get out of the car at the border stops. The Chilean woman kept telling me that Peru and Chile are very different...that Chile is NOT like Peru. She seemed to be implying that Chile was much better than Peru although she didn´t actually say that. She pulled out her cell phone and showed me tons of pictures of all of the pretty places that I should visit while in Chile. She was pretty funny. She hugged me when we parted. The scenery on the drive was somewhat odd. I don´t have a lot of experience in deserts. It is just a big, flat, sandy desert with sand/dirt hills/mountains in the distance. It is very dry and there were these little huts all over. I really hoped that they weren´t houses but the Chilean woman assured me that they were part of some agricultural project. I wish them well as I can´t imagine that anything could possibly grow there. Although, my mother recently produced a fascinating report that I had written in sixth grade about desert plants so clearly I am an expert. It was odd as well, in the desert, as I guess I saw what were mirages. It looked like there were lakes in the middle of the sand but then you got closer and they just disappeared. My eyes, I guess, were playing tricks on me as they continued to do when I arrived in Arica. As I left the bus station, glancing at my map, I noticed a small dog out of the corner of my eye and I thought, "What an interesting pattern on this dog´s coat. These must be some unusual Chilean dog." I then gave the dog my full attention and then realized that the interesting pattern was in fact camouflage as the dog was wearing a camouflaged print fleece dog jacket.
Like I said, there´s really not a lot to report at this point. I had planned to go up to a national Park tomorrow morning but the transportation there seems kind of iffy so I might just travel further south and give it a miss. I´d like to go but I am sort of hurrying through the north--also, I´m a bit worried about the altitude there--it is something like 5000 meters and I´m not sure if that would agree with me.
Okay, maybe next time I´ll have something to report.

South America

I thought I had better take advantage of my year off to start some travels so tomorrow I head for Chile. I plan to spend a couple of months exploring Chile and Argentina. I'll start at the top of Chile (along the border with Peru) and work my way down to the tip. Then I'll work my way up through Argentina and maybe dip into Uruguay. That's the plan anyone. Not sure that I'll keep up with the blog but I'll give it a go.