It is late Thursday night, November 11, which means that by tradition, Fasching has started in Germany thousands of miles and seven time zones away. I am sitting on a seventh floor balcony of a beachfront hotel in Arica, Chile, sipping a Pacena (Bolivian beer) and enjoying the waves, the ignorant white armies clashing by night here on Arica Beach, the west coast of South America. To the right of us is the pier jutting out into the cold Pacific. If I were to chuck my beer can off the balcony, then it would probably land on the beach promenade which stretches for miles in either direction. The picture here is one of utter bliss, although we had to go through hell to get there.
This morning we leave La Paz at around ten a.m. with the Hollys, friends of ours here, and head toward Chile, our first trip here after more than two months of living at almost 12,000 feet altitude. Our destination is the beach. Supposedly this should take us six hours, depending on traffic and any harrassment they might want to dish out at the border.
We leave La Paz easily enough. We need to climb another 2,000 feet to El Alto (where the airport is), and from there the transition from urban to bucolic surroundings is fairly easy. There are rolling hills dominating the dry landscape, dotted by shrubs here and there and numerous mud huts, very similar to what we knew from Morocco. Of course, there is a slight difference. One, there are plenty of pigs (and other animals) people in the country keep as pets (an Arab will recognize Israel as a blood brother before recognizing a pig as a legitimate living being), and two, there is a difference in altitude of about two miles. It is the perfect wild west setting - that is, until you come across your first lama. The peaks of the Andes in the distance remain somewhat hidden, although, again, at 15,000 feet, that is relative. If you see a snow capped peak, that means that mountain is higher than 4,500 meters, because that’s where the snow begins to fall.
There is a stretch of road between La Paz and the Chilean border that is as notorious as it is dangerous. Before paying a toll for the dubious pleasure of using the road, a sign proclaims that 32 people have been killed here so far this year.
There are many roads in the U.S. that have a Dead Man’s Curve, but after only a dozen kilometers or so, I quickly realize that this stretch of highway high up in the Andes is Dead Man’s Road. The roadside is inundated with crosses and shrines. It starts off slowly. One cross here, one there, but rapidly it is quite clear that hundreds of people have bitten the dust here. There are three crosses in a row, then seven, then a dozen (a bus, perhaps?). I am also not trying to be facetious about this, but I must have stopped counting at around seventy over a thirty mile stretch. There is not much protection here for drivers. If you should happen to slide off the road, there’s a good possibility that you land a few hundred feet below in some gorge or in a meadow where there are hundreds of lamas grazing.
We cross the border, where a mile of trucks have piled up to gain clearance from Chile into Bolivia. There is an incredibly high volcano (which will be mentioned later) displaying thick glacier ice on one side and a crystal clear lake on the other, where flamingoes are grazing . The officials are picky about documents at the border, but we are prepared and make it to the other side in less than an hour. We are lucky they don’t check the cooler, because they would have found the milk for the kids in it, a beverage you are absolutely not allowed to bring across the border.
Now comes the tough part, the descent. To make matters worse, my kids have also inherited my carsick gene, the same gene that would prompt the family car to stop on vacations whenever I was a kid so I could throw up on the side of the road. On the way to the beach, each boy gets sick twice. I am not feeling too hot myself, but I am also running out of gas, and we are descending quickly, meaning we could make it before sunset.
Closer to the coast, the mountains all resemble giant sand hills with oases of grass and fertile land in valleys below. Weird, these contrasts, although that shouldn’t be too surprising, being that Chile has long high mountain ranges to compliment their long coastlines.
Although the road winding down the mountains and toward the coast is not Death Road, there are dozens of crosses to indicate just where drivers got a little unlucky. This windy road is beginning to make Lombard Street in San Francisco look smooth, straight, and level.
I am happy when I see the Pacific in the distance. We locate our hotel - really an apartment hotel, we have a 2BR we rented - and are thrilled to find nothing but beach and the ocean in front of us. It will be nice to hear the waves in bed at night. We have time for a quick dinner and then it’s bedtime.
This morning we leave La Paz at around ten a.m. with the Hollys, friends of ours here, and head toward Chile, our first trip here after more than two months of living at almost 12,000 feet altitude. Our destination is the beach. Supposedly this should take us six hours, depending on traffic and any harrassment they might want to dish out at the border.
We leave La Paz easily enough. We need to climb another 2,000 feet to El Alto (where the airport is), and from there the transition from urban to bucolic surroundings is fairly easy. There are rolling hills dominating the dry landscape, dotted by shrubs here and there and numerous mud huts, very similar to what we knew from Morocco. Of course, there is a slight difference. One, there are plenty of pigs (and other animals) people in the country keep as pets (an Arab will recognize Israel as a blood brother before recognizing a pig as a legitimate living being), and two, there is a difference in altitude of about two miles. It is the perfect wild west setting - that is, until you come across your first lama. The peaks of the Andes in the distance remain somewhat hidden, although, again, at 15,000 feet, that is relative. If you see a snow capped peak, that means that mountain is higher than 4,500 meters, because that’s where the snow begins to fall.
There is a stretch of road between La Paz and the Chilean border that is as notorious as it is dangerous. Before paying a toll for the dubious pleasure of using the road, a sign proclaims that 32 people have been killed here so far this year.
There are many roads in the U.S. that have a Dead Man’s Curve, but after only a dozen kilometers or so, I quickly realize that this stretch of highway high up in the Andes is Dead Man’s Road. The roadside is inundated with crosses and shrines. It starts off slowly. One cross here, one there, but rapidly it is quite clear that hundreds of people have bitten the dust here. There are three crosses in a row, then seven, then a dozen (a bus, perhaps?). I am also not trying to be facetious about this, but I must have stopped counting at around seventy over a thirty mile stretch. There is not much protection here for drivers. If you should happen to slide off the road, there’s a good possibility that you land a few hundred feet below in some gorge or in a meadow where there are hundreds of lamas grazing.
We cross the border, where a mile of trucks have piled up to gain clearance from Chile into Bolivia. There is an incredibly high volcano (which will be mentioned later) displaying thick glacier ice on one side and a crystal clear lake on the other, where flamingoes are grazing . The officials are picky about documents at the border, but we are prepared and make it to the other side in less than an hour. We are lucky they don’t check the cooler, because they would have found the milk for the kids in it, a beverage you are absolutely not allowed to bring across the border.
Now comes the tough part, the descent. To make matters worse, my kids have also inherited my carsick gene, the same gene that would prompt the family car to stop on vacations whenever I was a kid so I could throw up on the side of the road. On the way to the beach, each boy gets sick twice. I am not feeling too hot myself, but I am also running out of gas, and we are descending quickly, meaning we could make it before sunset.
Closer to the coast, the mountains all resemble giant sand hills with oases of grass and fertile land in valleys below. Weird, these contrasts, although that shouldn’t be too surprising, being that Chile has long high mountain ranges to compliment their long coastlines.
Although the road winding down the mountains and toward the coast is not Death Road, there are dozens of crosses to indicate just where drivers got a little unlucky. This windy road is beginning to make Lombard Street in San Francisco look smooth, straight, and level.
I am happy when I see the Pacific in the distance. We locate our hotel - really an apartment hotel, we have a 2BR we rented - and are thrilled to find nothing but beach and the ocean in front of us. It will be nice to hear the waves in bed at night. We have time for a quick dinner and then it’s bedtime.
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