What time is it in Chile?

When arriving in Arica, an unexceptional beach town in the tip top of Chile, it was time for the daylight savings time change. We weren't sure if it applied to Chile so we asked Google. Google told us to move the clocks forward one hour, so we did. IPad confirmed. Four days later, we get to the bus station to go to the next city on our itinerary and were told we missed our bus by a hour. The country seemed to have changed its clocks either that day or a day prior one additional hour. Wikipedia had no explanation. Who knows.

There isnt much in Arica except an impressive museum with 5000yr old mummies. They go into explanations of how mummification changed over the years, from just wrapping them in cloth to full on gutting them and replacing bones with sticks. It was all kind of macabre and fascinating.

Tonight we will be leaving San Pedro de Atacama on a 23hr bus ride to Santiago (wahoo!). SanPedro is a little city in the northern Chilean desert seemingly created just for tourists to explore the surroundings. The streets here have far more tourists than natives and the adobe and cement structures house endless tour operators, handicrafts, and restaurants. Prices are really high because I'm told that they run everything with generators, pump their own water, must use diesel, etc.

The area has lagoons, interesting rock formations, jagged salty terrain kind of like Death Valley, and a field of geysers(that trip picked us up at 4:30am). The tours around the area remind me a little of Colca Canyon near Arequipa, Peru in that the scenery is gorgeous,but you share it with lots of other tourists.

This is also supposed to be one of the best places on the continent for stargazing because its so remote, high up, and dry. We went on a star tour last night. The Milky Way cloud is easy to see with the naked eye and you can actually see some other galaxy clouds that I had never see before. The tour included a lengthy astronomy lesson and use of ten different telescopes. One of them was pointed at the moon and had an attachment that let me take a photo.

Next stop is a Valparaiso, a bohemian (I know, I get sick of hearing that word too), artsy city known for great murals and other street art.