The Atacama

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Buenos Dias,

The bus from Laguna Blanca took us to the lonely, windswept borderpost where the guard didn't even look at our pictures as he stamped us out of Bolivia. The bus, with others travellers on it proceeded down the hill towards San Pedro de Atacama, which is an oasis town in the middle of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The descent was very interesting. We gradually descended 2000 metres in a little over 40 kilometres. The terrain was still barren, but very intriguing. The hill was constant, all the way down and it showed exactly how the Andes were forced up by the crashing of tectonic plates. It was strange to be on a paved road again! There were two Brazilians who, despite it being 930am, still felt compelled to share their bottle of pisco with us. Of course, we didn't want to be rude and refuse...

We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama and walked to Hostel Campo Base where the awesome owner Pancho proved to be a wealth of information. We started wandering around town, all 8 blocks of it, and we ran into the Brazilians. Surprise, surprise, they were drinking again. We joined them for lunch and it was very entertaining to say the least. They were cool guys, but unfortunatly they were from Sao Paolo and not Rio so we won't be able to visit them.

After lunch, we headed back to our hostel where we were picked up for our tour to the Valle de la Luna. We got out of the oasis and we were immediately in the unadulterated Atacama Desert. For those who don't know, the Atacama is the driest place on earth and it rains once a year, in May, at least according to our guide. We were able to visit a great viewpoint of the desert before heading to the Valle de los Muertes where it was a trifle windy. How windy you ask? Well, windy enough that sand became a painful prohectile and it took us two showers to get all of the particles out of our hair! We then headed to the Valle de Sel, everything is a Valle here, where we were able to walk along the narrow canyon which was full of caves and composed entirely of salt. Next up was Las Tres Marias, which looked more like 2 and a half Marias because one had been knocked over by a stupid tourist. We also saw a stone formation that looked like a dinosaur skull, or Quebec, depending on how one looked at it. Our final stop was the a narrow ridge that provided a view over the entire Valle de la Luna. As the sun set, the surrounding jagged hills, valleys, mountains and volcanoes turned a dazzling shade of red. It was very beautiful! When we returned to San Pedro, we went to dinner at Sol y Inti, a recommendation of Pancho's, and we had two of the biggest and best sandwiches we have had since Bogota.

We got to sleep in the next day and wander around town. San Pedro is very dry, so most of the town is constructed out of adobe. We walked down a few quaint streets, visited some hotels where the people were obviously paying a lot more money than we were and the looked at Pukara de Quitor, which is a pre-Inca fortress. We then studied some water channels, and Valerie was able to talk to the administrators of the water systems of San Pedro. We then went for lunch and got thoroughly lost in town, but it worked out because we managed to find a Swiss bakery on a back street that has excellent pastries. We went to Sol y Inti, our usual here in town for dinner, before getting ice cream and then realzing back at the hostel. One of the ice cream flavours was pisco sour!!!

We also have been priveledged enough to be in Chile as they released the 33 miners from the San Jose mine. The ciy is located south of San Pedro de Atacama. There are Chilean flags everywhere and national pride is running high. We have been very impressed to see how the situation has been handled. The rescue has been very signigicant to the nation as a whole as is seen as an instance of national pride. It has been very touching to see the events here.

We woke up early because we had an activity for the day. We had decided that we wanted to do a bit of trekking so we arranged to go up Vulcan Sairecabur, which was 6040 metres high. We were picked up by our driver, Gabriel, and it turned out to be a private tour as no one else had signed up for it. We drove to the mountain, had breakfast, and started hiking. It was a tough hike. It was mostly loose gravel and large boulders. Also, due to the altitude, we suffered from some dizziness and headaches. That being said, it was a great hike! We managed to summit the mountain in almost an hour less than anticipated. The views from the top were spectacular! We could see mountains, volcanoes, Laguna Blanca, Ojos de Salar (the tallest mountain in Chile), Vulcan Licancabur as well as Bolivia and Argentina. It was the highest that either of us had ever been to and we were quite happy to be at that altitude.

After heading down the hill, we drove back to town. In town, we had dinner and some more ice cream before heading out on a three hour astronomy tour run by Alejandra and her French husband Alain. We were driven out to a house in the desert that had ten telescopes in front of it. Alejandra went over some basics with orientation and rotation and then began to show us things in the telescopes. We saw many interesting stellar objects including Jupiter and four of the moons orbiting it, the pleiades, the tarantula nebula, a close-up on the moon showing its many craters, orion's belt, albeit upside down in the souther hemisphere, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Magellenic Clouds. Alain, who has the quintisential French sense of humour and therefore was consistantly entertaining came out and gave the other half of the tour. He explained the origins behind different theories about the stars and the proceeded to show us some of the zodiacal stars and their rotations. His favourite comment was "the Greeks must have been smoking something hard". This becomes apparent when Alain pointed out the constelation "Aries" and how it looks like a ram. The four stars that compose it only can be considered a ram if the ram has been thoroughly run-over by a car. He then explained why Pluto is no longer a planet. It is simply a large asteroid. He continued to explain more about stars, their distances from the earth, planets, and asteroids, all the while peppering his discussion with his brilliantly entertaining French humour.

Adios para ahora,

Valerie and Peter

Things we learned in San Pedro de Atacama:
-French people are consistantly entertaining
-Descending from a 6040 metre high mountain provides a similar sensation to being drunk
-In the aftermath of a sandstorm, it is possible to find sand EVERYWHERE!!!

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