Our first stop in Argentina (and it turned out to be our only stop, but more on that later) was in a city called Salta. A quiet city of almost a million people, Salta was everything we dreamed about as we left the desert of Bolivia. It has tree-lined streets, gorgeous mountains surrounding the city and we had finally descended below 4000 meters in altitude. Salta has a distinctly European feel to it with a beautiful central square lined with outdoor cafes and an immense park full of people playing sports, having picnics or just relaxing. We loved it immediately and set out to walk our way around the city.
On one of our many trips to the bus station to try to determine our next move within Argentina, we noticed a truck with enormous speakers parked to the side of the station. We followed the road around and saw a protest of about 200 people, all with signs, matching t-shirts, megaphones, etc. They were protesting the health care system in Argentina. Every few minutes a mortar shot exploded high above the crowd sending shock waves reverberating through the streets. The protesters moved into the center of a major street and blocked traffic, shouting slogans and singing songs of revolution. Many of the protesters were nurses and doctors, with signs that demanded health care reform.
This was not the first time we had seen protesters in Salta. When we first arrived, we saw a group of students marching in the streets. The following morning, we heard the sound of explosives outside our hostel. Outside the streets were filled with people banging drums, shouting slogans and carrying banners ten feet wide about healthcare reform.
What was remarkable about this protest by the bus station was the way that the people and the police interacted. As we walked up, the police, in full riot gear, made a line to the side of the protest and started to push their way into the crowd of people.
The protesters responded by sitting down. One man walked up to the police and talked with them. Whatever he said worked, and the police backed up and left the scene. The protest continued, at a deafening volume, for the rest of the day.
After a few days in Salta we were ready to move on. We checked out our Lonely Planet travel guide and decided to head to the falls of Iguazu on the border of Brazil, supposedly one of the most beautiful places on the continent. Sadly, when we got the the bus station we were in for a BIG surprise.
It turns out that the Lonely Planet guidebook is a liar. The articles for our "updated" edition were written over five years ago and the bus tickets in Argentina are now three times as expensive as was predicted. We had to change plans. We decided to head to Chile where the buses are half the price. We headed across the border into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile then down to La Serena. After a few days, we decided to travel south to the island of Chiloe in northern Patagonia. Our bus ticket had a short layover in Santiago.
In Santiago, we came upon more civil unrest. Chileans students across the country have been protesting for the past six months. The Chilean education system is essentially 'for profit'. Less than half of Chile's high school students go to fully state-funded schools. The rest go to private schools, or subsidized schools where the state and the parents share the economic burden. The students of Chile believe that there should be free education for all.
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| We had to borrow the rest of the images from the Google because we weren't quick enough to get the camera out. |
We only had a few hours to spend in Santiago so we decided to check our bags and walk into the city to kill some time. We found a park, well more like some green grass between two streets on the main thoroughfare into the city. We sat down and took off our shoes to rest in the grass.
After a few minutes we saw 10 police cars fly by, speeding down the street. We thought it was a little strange but we didn't think too much of it. We were trying to decide where to go next, so Mark got up to go look at the street sign at the end of the block. He came back a few minutes later and said "Put on your boots, something is happening."
As he was saying that, we saw people (high school and college kids) running up the street about a hundred yards away. There was a kid standing next to us who walked up and offered me a lemon wedge. "No thanks," I said. Hmm, that was strange. (Here's a great tip kids: The acid from lemon juice can be used to counteract the effects of tear gas!)
I asked him what all the commotion was about. He explained that there were thousands of kids demonstrating against the government because of issues with education. Just then, as Mark was trying to get the camera out of the bag so he could take a picture of the kids running, I looked down the street behind him. There was something flaming in the street that looked like a bomb. The kid with the lemons screams to me "CORRER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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| Google Pic (Like we'd get that close to tear gas... I mean COME ON) |
Mark was still fiddling with the bag and I screamed to him to run. We were blindly running through the middle of the street surrounded by hundreds of students in ski masks and bandanas. We tried to get over to side streets to get away from the masses of kids, but unfortunately, we ran directly into the pack of kids... just as the tanks arrived. They were those water gun tanks, which looks like a real tank with a gun on top, but the gun is a water hose (and the tank was covered in paint balls and dings from rocks being thrown at it).
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| Google Pic (Wouldn't want to ruin our camera in 100 mph water spray) |
Just then, the tank turned right toward us and sprayed the water hose at the crowd of people we were standing with. If it weren't for a bus shelter sign, we would have been pelted with water.
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| Google Pic (But that's a pretty accurate picture of what happened to us) |
The tank continued down the street, looking for the rest of the protesters. After that, we ran. And ran. And ran. We ran away from anyone we saw because we didn't know if or when the tanks were going to come back.
In a weird way, these experiences have made us feel closer to home. We've seen pictures and read reports about the protests all over the US, and secretly wished we could be there. It seems that the people of the world are rising up against all kinds of enemies. Here's hoping that the good guys win.
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