Cuando la mas bonita mujer en todo el mundo vino a Sudamerica

The most beautiful woman I know, my mother, came and visited me in South America for 10 days. Together we spent time in Santiago, Valparaiso, and Mendoza, Argentina. Our first location was Valparaiso; we spent time exploring the cerros and looking through the many art opportunities in Valparaiso. We stayed in a hostel that itself was a cool, if not disorganized, art community.

We started in the Plaza Sotomayor near the port and continued up through Cerro Concepcion y Cerro Alegre. The hills are covered in artwork and the we spent a lot of time walking and chilling among the paintings and cafes.

The Ocean is what makes Valparaiso. Chile's largest port and its first city, Valparaiso became Chile's most important city and its cultural center during Century XIX. Like most port cities in Chile (Punta Arenas, Puerto Montt, or Antofagasta) Valparaiso was hit hard by the opening of the Panama Canal. These cities now-a-days all seem like shells of their former selves, Valparaiso has been able to hold on to what made it unique. Declared a World Heritage Site in 2003, Valpo itself is a work of art.

The second part of our trip involved crossing the Andes into Mendoza. Mendoza: the land of wine and steak. Mom had the opportunity to take part in both. Our first day there we went on a long horseback riding trip that ended in an asado with the all so famous Argentinian beef. During this trip we rode through the foot hills of the Andes outside the confines of the city limits.

On the second day in Mendoza, we did the bodega tours. We saw the wine bodegas, cavas, and viñas. On the trip we got to see the famous and ancient process of making Argentina's famous wines in person, and of course we tried a little too.

Finis Tierra

This last week, I completed a 5 day 93 kilometer (58 mile) hike through Torres del Paine national park in Southern Patagonia. The park is the most visited in South America and the hike I completed is its most famous one. Called the 'W' the hike literally resembles a W and has 3 unique branches.

The first branch of the W went towards a massive glacier on the edge of Lago Grey. Glacier Grey is a massive ice sheet taking up large portions of the park. Staying at the Refugio Grey, the mirador next door one could see the edge of the advancing glacier looking like someone had put Styrofoam under a microscope.

The next section of the W is the Valle del Frances. This part was the roughest trail and the highest point of elevation of all the trails in Torres del Paine. In this section, the trail leads to a mirador within the valley created by the crescent shaped mountains and the parks most notable river Rio del Frances flows out of this valley.

The coolest, but hardest part of Torres del Paine is carrying everything on your back. I carried all the camping equipment for Sydney and I (although she did lug around all the food). We shared my tiny two person tent with the additional bags of Douglas and Archil since their tent looked like something not made to be taken out of the backyard by people under the age of 10. Our little tent become home in the freezing nights though.

Finally, the last stop on the W is the parks most famous attraction. Giving the park its name, the towers of stone loom over the park's mountains. By camping at the base and making a 45 minute hike in the dark up a way too steep mountainside, one can watch the sunrise over the towers as the change from shimmering in the dark to glowing red.

That's when things started heading South

The last stop on my Bolivian adventure was the world largest and highest salt flats in Uyuni. The landscape is other worldly, like a sea of white stretching in every direction. Without sun glasses a person could go blind in a matter of no time. Also a person's skin could fall off at the elevation that the salt flats are at. Once a massive interior sea in the highs of the Andes, now Uyuni is an other worldly site to see.

The salt flats are a world heritage site and the Bolivian government has recognized their extreme importance to the tourism and development of this out of reach area of Southwestern Bolivia. While that may seem amazing, there is always something there to ruin it. The worlds largest untapped lithium reserves lie under the salt flats. With the growing demand for heavy metals to charge the batteries we all seem to need, lithium prices have flown through the roof. It is now only a matter of time until the salt flats are torn up to mine the valuable lithium below.

There is more to the Southwest circuit then just the salt flats. The area contains volcanoes, rock formations, sand dunes, lagoons full of flamingos, wildlife, and geysers. In order to see all of these areas one must go on one of the many tours that do this circuit. A lot of the trip is spent doing normal road trip things in the end.

Of course there is the wildlife as well. Vacuñas, Flamingos, and Foxes.

The landscape of the Southwest is amazing. The high elevation desert creates a type of landscape I would imagine dinosaurs wandering around. Its amazing to see rocks that have been carved out only by the wind and sand through millions of years.

Going Up!

La Paz is the capital. When you arrive in Sucre, they will remind you that they are (kind of) and used to be the exclusive capital of Bolivia. They very much are not. They maybe the home of the judicial branch but their days of being the center of Bolivia active is over. Santa Cruz has taken over the business center and La Paz is the center of the Bolivian government. Sucre looks like the capital. The buildings are all white-washed giving it a Spanish colonial feel.

My time in Sucre was short. I was massively running out of time and the rich city center of Sucre had little to offer my imagination. I took a little private car winding steeply up to the highest city on earth, Potosi.

Potosi is famous as the place where all of the Spanish empire's silver came from. At one time, the mines of Potosi paid off the Spanish debt and the streets were literally paved in silver. The famous book "Open Veins of Latin America" by Eduardo Galeano tells the story of the uses of Potosi, which quickly became the most important city for the Spanish in South America. This is not a happy story though. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous and African slaves died in the mountain. The hell that Potosi represents is a dark mark in the past and one of the most telling parts of Latin American history. Now-a-days Potosi is still a working town where people wonder into the hells of the mines to see what little amounts of silver they can scrap from the mountain.

Riots, Risky Roads, and Ruffians

La Paz is nuts. The city itself is built in a valley, thus from the main road there is only one direction... up. La Paz may not be the countries most logical, largest, or prettiest city, but it has uprooted Sucre as the countries capitol. Thus, a lot takes place in La Paz. The city which is notorious for cocaine, is also home to a largest amount of indigenous people who stream to the city looking for employment. The city center looks just as rich as Santa Cruz as most of the impoverished live above the valley in La Paz's sister city called El Alto. Most significantly, La Paz is the governmental center. So on the day I arrived in La Paz and the taxi drive told me about the government overnight deciding to stop subsidizing gasoline, I knew it was trouble. The price of gasoline increased 79% overnight; making it impossible for almost any industry in the country to run. Word of protests,violence, and riots spread. The buses effectively stopped running and on December 30th, the city turned into a protest zone.

The riots, burning cars, and stones whizzing by my head in no way stopped me. I still did the stuff that everyone goes to La Paz. The most thrilling, Adrenalin pumping experience is biking down the "World's Most Deadliest Road." It starts at a whooping 4700 meters and ends at a tropical 1100 meters. With 63 kilometers length with only an 8 kilometers section uphill, the road rightfully earns its name. There is no guardrail, and not paying attention during one of the many turns could make a person E.T. there way to the afterlife. With good bikes, a little skill, and as my guide instructed "not being a fucking idiot" its a technically easy ride and an experience of a lifetime.

The riots quieted for the new years holidays as people spent time with their family, so La Paz turned back into a tranquil city and its natural beauty increased as the sun came out. The government square including the congress and the presidential palace was lively with people visiting the city center. The ancient San Francisco Cathedral shined in a colonial part of town. Most interesting is to see the city scaling the valley walls behind the colonial buildings.

The cities markets stretch beyond the Cathedral up the hills and valleys. It starts in the way too tourist witches markets were one can buy a dried llama fetish for good luck and moves up through a walmart type collection of different stands acting like departments. Similar to the Latin American way of doing business all types of one store group together, but Bolivians take this to a new meaning, putting 90 of one type of store selling identical products right next to each other. They generally all charge the same price making the one you pick largely arbitrary. The city also takes a quick turn towards poverty within a few blocks of leaving the Parada or maindrag.

La Paz's most notorious landmark is the San Pedro prison. A lot of people "know" a lot of stuff about this place, but its mysteriously functioning makes it so that even those that have entered seem to know little to nothing. Made famous by the book Marching Powder; claims have been made that it produces 75% of the worlds cocaine, the prisoners can leave when they choose to with enough money, and that it contains the world's most notorious drug kingpins. The scary part is, it could be true. Tours are illegal, but so is a lot of daily activity in Bolivia. This prison is a serious money venture for those inside and those associated. It is something one should take with caution, but intrigue may be a little too much to avoid.

Another tourist activity in La Paz is a local form of professional wrestling called Cholita Wrestling. It is famous because large amounts of actresses dressed in the fully traditional dress. It is awesome to see the locals throw popcorn at the bad guys and chant for the heroes.

La Paz by night

Just a real quick all photo blog of some picture I took of La Paz at night.