Again I'm without words to describe the scene before me.  The Atacama desert is the driest in the world. Arizona's is the wettest. No comparison. You look at this forever expanse and first glance tells you this is unlike ANYTHING you've seen before. Flat, barren, bereft for as far as you can see in every direction.  But look again. It rained torrents earlier this month. Their Bolivian winter brought deluges that crashed down the mountains and wa...

The bus ride to San Pedro de Atacama from La Serena on the coast of Chile was supposed to be 8 or 9 hours. It was 24. Damn TurBus. They're a left over from the Pinochet years of military occupation and the buses are dirty, unkept and unmaintained. We broke down twice in the night. The first time it was just after sunset and we were within walking distance of bathrooms. Mechanics came, stood around, tinkered, stood around, and then we were off. The second t...

Picturesque Ancud sits on a curving bay that can capture your heart as surely as the finest symphony. Getting here was interesting, though. We're up at 4 to catch a taxi to the Santiago airport for our flight to Puerto Montt, then being ever thrifty and still reeling a bit from our splurge in Merlo, we take a backpacker's bus into Puerto Montt to the bus terminal, then another bus that will take us all the way to Ancud, which actually isn't all that ...

If you could gather together all the people you've really enjoyed being with--ones that have made you smile or giggle out loud, or made you feel like a million bucks when all you had was $1.27, you might have a group like we fell into at 13 Lunas.Not really impressed at first 'cause we had a basement room with NO window, I resolved to just not spend much time there and mingle with the 20-somethings instead.How much fun was that? The first night they insis...

No, not 9/11 in New York City when the twin towers came crashing down, but 9/11/1973 when Chile's own military overthrew their democratically elected government.We visited a human rights museum in Santiago and were shocked by the horrible stories. On Chile's 9/11 tanks shelled the presidential palace while aircraft dropped bombs. During the attack, President Allende committed suicide, and thus ended Chile's socialist goverment. During the period betw...