Last Friday I went to a meeting of the Baselphotoclub. I found this club through the englishforum.ch and thought it would be cool to get out a bit, and use my camera again. I think it was a cool meeting, we ended up walking around Basel a bit, especially around the Wettsteinbrücke and then some of us got thirsty and went for a beer. I added the pics to the gallery again! (but here also an impression)

While enjoying the very nice weather here during the easter weekend I captured some (I’m sure there will be more) details of Basel. These are things that caught my attention while walking through the quiet streets of Basel.

So, it started yesterday evening, people here in the street where I live started to clean out there storage rooms in cellar and attic, finally could clean up their gardens from furniture that was rotting away and saw a reason to get rid of old computers, ski sets, beds, and actually everything you can’t really imagine. Wednesday the city will collect everything for free.

But it’s not only that people are putting stuff out! When I came back from work today, it was rather busy in my street, fully loaded vans with french number plates, complete families with backpacks and sofa’s with 6 legs were walking around, going through the rubbish that their neighbors had put out the night before (or during the day) to give stuff a second (or perhaps 3rd,4th or 5th life).  I think I have never seen something like this, but I have to say it’s funny to see. The entrance to my flat was blocked, and had to lift my bicycle in order to reach the door. I really wonder if this stuff is going to be away tomorrow, anyway, have a look….

After one week in Switzerland, time for a little story about what happened I guess. Sorry that I haven’t been writing a bit earlier, but I have to say, moving, settling, working, etc etc makes you tired. Anyway, so I moved the last weekend of March, me and my father started driving around 12 at night and drove all night ( driving with a trailer goes sloooow ) to the swiss border where we had to get a stamp on some forms and permission to import my house hold goods.

After moving everything and taking it easy for some days I went to the city office in Basle to register. Then Wednesday was my first working day at CLS-Communication. I got a nice introduction and there were some meetings planned for me to get to know the organization a bit better and talk to the people that are involved in the project I will be working on in the next months. So getting to know the system, organization and people is basically what I did this week. I say basically, but moving here, starting at a new company with new people already causes a bit of an overload of new information and impressions which is noticable in the evening hours 😉

To get an impression of how my room looked after moving in and unpacking some stuff..

I woke up at 6.50 and went for a cold shower again. Then me and René B went for a walk through the village. It was nice and quiet so we could get an impression of the village.

The night before we agreed with some other people to go for a brekky at 8. We found a cool place where I ordered a bacon and cheese egg toast. The 2 girls running the shop were not really customer friendly. One tried to get our order while talking to her boyfriend on the phone. Then the other took over and it seemed as if they were working there for the first time. After a while some other people joined and we had a nice brekky. When walking back we found a laundry place where some of us brought our laundry. They wash, dry and iron it for 1200 pesos per kilo.

At 10 we gathered to go to quitors Fortress. The bus couldn’t go further because of a small river it couldn’t cross.

So we had to walk a bit. After arriving we climbed up which was pretty heavy because of the temperature and altitude (2200m). The amazing view immediately faded the discomfort of our sweaty and heavy breathing bodies.

Back in the bus we drove to Tamarugo’s Forest. This forest was planted and the trees carry a fruit that is eaten by llama’s. The trees also carry a very sharp kind of needle which actually went through the bottom of shoes. This happened with 5 people. The guide didn’t tell us which was a bit shitty. I helped some people with my first aid kit. We then walked back to the bus where the guide wanted to play a kind of very childish game. I didn’t feel playing this stupid game so walked around a bit and made some more pictures.

After some minutes of driving we stopped at a small, not really interesting, village called Toconao. I used my super swiss army pocket knife to pull out crazy long needles from the tamarugo forest. I considered myself pretty lucky because none reached my foot. Ies had the idea to bake pancakes for he whole group at the hostel so he and Ilona went to buy out a complete stock of milk, flower and eggs and some other ingredients from a local store. We then drove to chaxas lagoon. This lagoon is known for its flamingo population. It is a big salt plat area. We first got an introduction about these birds and their habitat. Then we went for a walk where I shot a lot of pictures hoping I have some good ones. The distance to the flamingo’s was still pretty far in order to not disturb them so here my 70-300mm was very usefull.

Back in the hostel we baked pancakes for 30 people which was a success and then to bed!!

The plan was to drive all night and arrive in San Pedro at 9 in the morning. When we woke up at 7 we found out that were never gonna be there at9. Also the chauffeurs didn’t know anything about being there in the morning.

We drove to Calama where we had to pick up our new guide. When we arrived there he was not there yet so we had the opportunity to look around in a huge american look a like mall. We first invaded the toilet with 28 sun burned people, everybody trying to squeeze out some feces. This didn’t work too good but everybody went for brekky/dindin in the food court. Here I ordered in my best spanish some weird hamburger. On the picture it looked ok but in reality my stomach already turned upside down. But accepted the challenge and emptied my plate as soon as possible. After that we walked around a bit more and found a nice coffee bar. After this very good tasting coffee, I went for a more succesful visit to the toilet.

When the new guide arrived we drove to San Pedro de Atacama and found our new accomodation. This place was a bit more primitive than the cabins in La Serena but very cool. At 17.00 we had to gather again to go to the moon valley to see the sunset. We drove there by bus and the guide took us totally unprepared into a very dark, narrow and pointy cave. I hurted my knee pretty bad on a big rock in the middle of the path. But we went on to end up somewhere in the middle of some rock formations to see the sun go down. It was cool to see. We then went to a sand sculpture. The sun was already down so we had to make pictures with a long shutter time.

Then we went back to the hostel where I took a very cold shower and went to bed. I hoped I could have a nice sleep but unfortunately I woke up a lot of times.

Some days ago, Rosa came with the idea to go dolphin and penguin watching today. Originally the interested people got picked up by an agancy and dropped off at the cabanas again. Then we found out that almost everybody wanted to go, so we could also arrange the bus to take there and leave north at the end of the day as planned, but then from the penguin watching place.

I got up at 7 to take a shower, pack everything and have breakfast. At 9 we sat in the bus to start driving north to the place where we would get on the boat. It was a nice drive of about 2 hours over very bad roads but finally we got there. We got in 2 small boats to drive to some islands where we would see penguins. We first saw some deals sitting on some rocks and then we saw some penguins. Also pelicans were flying around there a lot. I didn’t bring my camera because I was afraid it would get wet ( good decision ). I could have made some cool shots. But had to safe them till we got back, where I did make some.

We had some good lunch after the boat trip and continued our way further North. Around 22.00 we arrived in Copiapo to have dindin. I had a big pizza which tasted pretty good. At 0.00 we continued our way. I tried to get some sleep.

I slept pretty tight and got up at 8.30. With the other commission members we wanted to get some breakfast but there was not really a restaurant. We went to the reception and they explained us that we were going to get brekky in our Cabana’s. So we waited a bit and yes, there came a maid with a plate with fruit juice, bread, cheese and ham. We also boiled some water for the always good tasting Nescafe.

At 11.00 we got in the bus for a drive through the Elqui valley. This valley runs from the Andes to La Serena and is a place which is very fertile. A lot of vineyards for both wine and the very nice and strong alcoholic drink Pisco are grown there. The guide told us you can see the difference in the way they grow. For wine, the plants are visible in nice rows and for the pisco they are more like a roof of plants.

We stopped at a very big damn. It was nice to see the huge lake with the mountains on the background and on the other side the big difference in height  We continued our way through the valley and stopped after a while because some people were hungry. I used the opportunity to walk around a bit and shot some pictures. The next stop was the little town called Vicuña. Some got a pretty big appetite. We went to a restaurant and I ordered Lomo with papas fritas. It ended up in a big plate covered in fries with a rather big steak beneath. Completely full we got in the bus again to go to the Capel Pisco Brewery.

A nice lady lady told us everything about pisco. From the kind of grape to the part where the drinks get bottled. The tour was a bit touristic and short but funny to see how that drink that we discovered already back home is made. In the end we got to taste one of the already mixed pisco drinks and we had the possibility to buy some bottles and souvenirs. I went for the most expensive bottle ( 4690 pesos ) which should be more like a brandy instead of the harsh taste we were used to.

Back in the bus we drove to Vicuña again. We had to wait a bit before we could go to the observatory. We sat on a square where a lot of locals were sitting. Some of us got attacked by some stray dogs that wanted to play a bit. Nobody got hurt but it was a bit scary when they started to growl. Then at 17.00 we started driving to the observatory. We got there a bit too early but we could walk around a bit and make some pictures.

Then a guide took us inside and explained us something about star signs, milky ways and the universe. It was a funny guide that told the story on an interesting way. Then we went upstairs to have a look at the telescope. We watched at the sword from orions belt and at Saturn. It was really cool to see it for real through a telescope. We then walked outside and he showed us the southern cross which is only view able from the southern hemisphere. We then could make pictures of the moon through the telescope.

We then drove back to the cabanas. It already got pretty late. Some still wanted something to eat, others including me went to bed to have a nice sleep.

The bus picked us up to drive through the night to La Serena. I was really tired so took my sleeping bag in the bus and got completely in it which was nice and warm. Unfortunately I couldn’t really find a nice position to sleep but after a while I fell a sleep ( to wake up a lot during the night).

At 8 in the morning we arrived at our cabana’s in La Serena. We only had 2 cabana’s for our luggage. We stored our luggage in them and then got on the bus again to go for brekky in the city. With a nescafe and a ham-cheese sandwich our stomach was full again. We then walked to plaza de armas and from there to the Japanese garden. Here I saw my camera was still on 2 stops of underexposure so my photo’s are a bit dark here. But luckily saw it after a while so i could get this one:

After walking around in this nice and tranquilizing Japanese garden we walked to a big mall to do some shopping. It was an american look a like mall with a supermarket with 30 cash registers. Also from every article there was a huge stack displayed in all the racks. We bought some bread and meat for lunch. Then we started walking back to the cabanas. Half way the bus stopped to let us in and we drove back where would eat lunch and go for a swim in the pool, or to the beach. Since our cabana wasn’t cleaned yet we had to wait a bit more for the key.

When we got the key we went to the beach. It was really windy but the sun was shining. I remembered from the time I was in California that it was a tricky situation. The wind makes you feel cold and you don’t put sunscreen because you don’t feel the sun burning. But the sun is really shining so you burn baaaad. I warned some people but they didn’t seem to bother and I could only say ‘Told ya.. ‘ after they looked at their burned body parts.

We gathered for dindin at 8 at a restaurant on the beach. I ordered a nice burger and after that I went to bed for a very nice long sleep.

After a short night we had brekky at 9.30. Again the air was very grey. We went for our shot of cafeine at the cafe con piernas. Next thing we wanted to do is to go to the pre columbian museum. We walked around in this museum for quite a while. It was amazing to see with what detail people in the early days made statues from wood, clay and copper. The museum was set up very well and everything was also translated in English.

We went to eat some empanadas in the Rapido. Then we wanted to go to a suburb where we could watch some cool houses ( according to the lonely planet) but it started to rain pretty bad so we went for a drink instead. It was an exclusive bar. When the bar got busy we went outside again and found out it still rained. It was also pretty cold so we already went for dindin. We dound a nice restaurant that we invaded with 10 people. I ordered a cow tail stew to do something crazy. Ilona and Suzanne ordered salmon which needed a preparation of 1 hour. This didn’t really matter because we were early anyway. So after a while i received my cow tail stew which was ok but just a bit fatty.

We then went back to the hotel to relax a bit and around 23.00 we got picked up by the bus to go to La Serena.