Argentina (and some more South America): last hurrah

Only seven more days until I am back in Saint Paul - which means only 6 more days in Buenos Aires. I had my 10 day vacation in Chile and it was quite odd. So a little under two weeks ago I went out with a group of friends to a boliche and had enough time to sleep 1.5hs and get to the airport before my flight to Santiago. However, I got to the airport at 830am and they decided to cancel my flight due to "the plane having broke". Not quite sure what I am supposed to make out of "se rompió el avión" but it definitely does not inspire confidence. I nodded off in the airport and waltzed around the duty free from 830am until almost 5pm when the flight actually left, and got to Chile a little later than expected. My friend Andrés from AIESEC Santiago picked me up from the airport and let me stay at his house - which was really beautiful, right at the foot of the snow capped Andes. I went out in Santiago with Elin Harm, a friend from high school who did her study abroad there and then drove with Andrés and two other AIESECers to Viña del Mar. I spent the day exploring Viña and Valparaíso, two cities that are on the coast in Chile and similar to St. Paul and Mpls in the fact that there really isn't any division between the two cities. On the map you can see that the two cities are just West of Santiago, its a little over an hour in car.

Saturday day I got to Meet Peter Fliegel - my Dad's cousin that he has never met. He was born in Germany and has lived in Chile for a long time, so that was fun. I went to his house with him and his wife Anita and it is beautiful - we had a great time and I left him with a bunch of old Xmas Letter pictures from over the years. On Saturday night I met up with Greta Kreider Carlson, a friend from grade school and high school and took a 24 hour bus ride up to the northern desert, San Pedro de Atacama. However, half way throught he desert our bus broke down and we had a few hours of just sitting around and finally, as the last bus of the day was passing, we all piled on and around 1am got into San Pedro, only a few hours behidn schedule. Greta and I and two of her friends spent 4 nights in the desert, seeing cool sights but we weren't able to see the sights San Pedro is most known for, as there was unseasonal snow in the mountains and lots of rain and hail in town (which happens every 10 years or so).

We saw La Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley)

La Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) - originally supposed to be "Mars Valley" but they couldn't understand the Dutch guys accent when he spoke in Spanish and understood Death instead of Mars. They actually go to this valley to test the Mars Rovers (NASA does) because it is the place on Earth most similar to Mars. Currently there are investigations underway.

We also saw the salt flats, which are quite different from the ones I saw in Argentina and I swam in a lake with the same salinity as the Dead Sea. It was so cold out that I went to the lake with my winter jackets on, stripped down to my bikini, ran cussing into the water, dipped myself in up to the neck, floated for a second, and got out. As soon as I got out the contrast between the freezing water and the cold air was so drastic that I felt warm in the air,although I was wet. You could float due to the salt content though, which was pretty nifty.