Spring forward, fall back

Chile also has daylight savings time, though reverse of the U.S. As such, last night we sprung forward an hour. Normally, an hour here or there doesn´t affect me that much, but this one was brutal. I had to wake up at 5:30 am for a bus ride to Putre, a tiny town inland from Arica. Only for all intents and purposes other than "official time" (pah!), it was 4:30. Brutal. Fortunately, I´d met up with a born-in-Chile Australian who was also heading this way. She and I get along great and she speaks Spanish fluenty -- and, more importantly, doesn´t mind that I don´t! So we chatted on the bus ride and today made the rounds to tiny little Putre´s very few tour agencies. (Seriously, the town has less than one thousand residents if you don´t count the soldiers at the military base.)

Obviously, this place doesn´t have a ton of tourists, but they don´t make it terribly easy. In fact, I´m really rather annoyed. There are only day trips out to national parks and it´s not possible to do them without going through a tour agency, unless you have a car -- which we don´t. That would fine, except that the tours all finish at 4 or after AND the only bus back to Arica leaves at 2. This is absurd. It´s a puny little town. The tour companies obviously know what time the only bus leaves and the bus company surely knows what time the tours finish. Why can´t they coordinate?!

For whatever reason, they can´t. So, I´m stuck deciding whether to take a truncated tour and leave tomorrow on the 2 pm bus ... or spend the evening in the hot springs, piss away the next day in a town I saw all of today, and only have one day in Arica before going to back to work in smoggy, crowded Santiago. Which will be more relaxing??

On the upside, we´re staying at a cute hostel run by an even cuter family with kids aged 6, 3, and 1 years old. It has free internet, free breakfast, and nearly free rooms -- $3 per night. It´s nestled up in the foothills of the Andes and there are small terraces heading up the hills where locals grow alfalpha to feed their sheep, goats, and llamas. We saw some farmers working in the terraces and wanted to talk to them, but they left before we could reach them. As we were sitting at the foot of the terraces, a shy teenage boy came down to check out the tourists. We -- of course -- struck up conversation with him. Maybe I´ll write about it after a nap ...