Movin' Right Along

It's Thursday the 26th, a lazy afternoon in San Pedro. Pat's been here for four days now, I believe, and things are great. We met a great new friend named Andreas who is also camping on the outskirts of town. We all fell in swimmingly together and hit it off, so we all camp together now. It's just outside of town down the riverbed, nice and isolated. The stars at night are incomprehensibly beautiful. I never realized how many stars fall in a given night until I had perfect clarity during night time. It's SO dark out there where we sleep that I can see satellites cruise overhead in space! He put our minds at ease greatly by explaining that many people here practice an ancient Quechua pagan form of animal sacrifice called Candomblé (which is also practiced in Brazil where I became familiar with it [only there they call it Makumba]). That bizarre story I told earlier about the weird bloody guy sounded totally ordinary to Andreas, who has lived here for about a month and is all plugged into the local people and the pulse of the city. Apparently while our experience was weird, it wasn't a close call for our lives. Whew. Andreas speaks fanTAStic English and is, of course, fluent in Spanish. He somehow knows all the video games and TV shows that we know, so we always have plenty to rap about. He's 22 and ran away from his home in Santiago to find something that interested him more than the substandard college in which he was enrolled. We four have a solid routine going where we wake up around 9:00 and do some work in the camp like improving the campsite and building tables and such with a ton of adobe we found nearby. Then we go into town and eat lunch and jump on the net, then hunker down in the shade to read in the plaza during the hottest times of the day. The town completely closes during ciesta. At around sundown, we always have the epic task of finding enough firewood for the campfire. At night, we usually buy dinner ingredients and booze, then retire back to camp to cook our meals and carry on until bedtime.
I've met many excellent people here so far: an enchanting and almost aristocratic woman named Miriam from Holland who already left for another city, some local guys named Emanuel and Abraham, two really great artesans named Jano and Lorena from Santiago, the owner of the horse tours, named Farolo, to whom we were recommended by Loreto in Antofagasta, and these beautiful performing twins from Quebec named Momo and Francesca. They juggle and dance in plazas and are only 19. Very cool people, all in all.
Because of the wild thunderstorms that I mentioned from last week, there was apparently an excess of water in the mountains. One night while we were goofing off at camp, I heard the sound of running water. In the Atacama. Nobody else heard it, but I switched on my headlamp and turned toward the riverbed. A bona fide river was being forged RIGHT in front of us! Unbelievable. Only in National Geographic have I ever seen a river being born before that night. The next day, we had ample water in which to splash around, wash ourselves, wash pots and dishes, and store for later use. Of course, it's dried up now, but those two days were excellent. One night a few days later, two wild llamas, one HUGE male and one smaller female, found us to be very interesting and got a little too close for comfort. Not that they would eat us or anything, but a 600-pound llama could easily charge and trample us. We had to stay leery and alert while we built a fire. At one point, he came within 15 or 20 feet from us and we all made sure to have either something to swing or something to make a lot of noise if he decided to come after us. Anyway, it all turned out fine, but the adrenaline levels spiked a little bit that hour. There are roughly forty stray dogs running around San Pedro and we've named a whole bunch of them. There's Baron, Sebastian, Ojo, Delilah, Stokey, Cujo, Mangy, Archie, and our favorite, Sparkles. She's a small black lab puppy, one of the only females in town, and she's incredibly well behaved. She even showed up asleep at our camp this morning. She doubles well as a pillow and loves our company, so I decided to buy her a big lunch of turkey today. "Hey, Brad, what'd you do in Chile? Oh, I got a dog."
There's plenty more to tell of course, but I grow tired of yammering for the moment.
Today, tomorrow, or the next day, we will take an overnight bus trip to Arica, Chile, which is the northernmost city. Once I know the timing, I'll be sure to put it on here. There are too many tourists in this city, so we're looking forward to hitting the next one.
Adieu, avid fans. More to come, of course.