I love the smell of geyser in the morning...

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Waking up at 4 Am isn’t a nice experience, unfortunately the Taito geysers, one of the nearby attractions are most active at sunrise making an easy start unavoidable. Tom and Laura arrived up from Vino del Mar and decided sign up too.

Our efforts to sleep have been hampered by our fellow hosteller guest whom we shall call for the purposes of this entry “Jimmy”. Jimmy is on a serious mission to meet and hopefully have carnal with a Chilean female and his days throughout the hostel are devoted to this quest. This evening he was pumped, he had wooed no less then nine allegedly drop dead gorgeous members of Chile’s fairer sex on a romantic tour to the Valle De Luna, AKA moon Valley and had arranged to meet them later that evening for drinks and depending on how well the drinks go, hopefully breakfast with one of them. He left after having a few litres of escudo for Dutch courage, at about ten Pm and following that we went to bed.

Jimmy returned at about 2 Am with another person in tow, the baritone voice of the plus one confirmed that the mystery guest was not one of the nine Chilean ladies but a male. Jimmy and mystery man decided to partake in a late night Pisco drinking session in the kitchen with the lights turned on, illuminating both dormitories and rendering any appointments with Mr Sandman void.

Seeing as jimmy and Mystery man were directly outside the door we were treated to hearing every bit of conversation, most of it fairly tame and due to our attempts to sleep, fairly infuriating to listen to. Jimmy’s obviously bare grasp of the Spanish language was further impaired by a lot of Pisco and litre bottles of Escudo beer. However once conversation about Chilean alcohol and music began to grow stale the big reveal came when Mr Mystery threw down the gauntlet

“So Senior, now I kiss you”

Poor Jimmy, He had spent the entire week desperately trying to net himself a willing and eager Chilean girl, arranges to head out with no less then nine of them and then manages to pick up a bloke, in an Oasis town in the middle of the desert, situated in fanatically catholic rural Chile.. Honestly, If Jimmy was of another persuasion what he managed to do would have actually been quite an accomplishment..

Jimmy politely declined Mystery’s mans proposal and then insisted he have another pisco before departing on his way. Jimmy after bidding Mystery man farewell then decides he wants to go against hostel regulations and cook himself a late night drunk snack on the gas cooker, His silhouette through the blinds suggested he was barely able to walk at this point let alone activate the gas oven using a naked flame and potentially cause the hostel to explode in a fiery conflagration.

Thankfully Jimmy didn’t immolate all of us with his cooking and soon enough we wet out to see the geysers, myself and nimah being so tired we mistakenly grabbed our sandals instead of shoes, although we both brought trackies and hoodies. The Geysers are at 4000 metres of altitude so we were warned not to drink or eat before heading off. The bus began to ascend massive hill after massive hill and my ears began to pop every 5 minutes, outside the bus was pitch black so I had no idea how much further we had to go, eventually the bus levelled out and began to bounce and jolt over what could only be very broken mountain road.

When the bus stopped we were told to wrap up well, enjoy our breakfast of geyser boiled eggs and for our own safety keep to the marked path, detouring from this path could result in us falling into boiling hot water, dancing the funky chicken and then feeling really glad we sorted out our VHI seconds before Charlie picked us up to bring us to Laura and Mikes wedding.

The geysers are quite surreal, the fog cuts visibility down to feet and this is compounded by the steam off the geysers, people are simply ghost lie shapes in mist. Impressive as the geysers were, my chose in footwear, sandals, meant I would soon be singing significantly less verses of this little piggy if I couldn’t get my toes warm fast.

When holding each foot over geyser steam began to attract many a confused look from other tourists I decided to lower my tracksuit “Gangsta” style past by swimming trunks and tying the newfound slack on the ends of the tracksuit bottoms together, this solved the problem. A good Samaritan gave Niamh a spare pair of socks.

Next stop after the geysers was the hot springs, a 500 yard pool containing geyser heated water. The outside air meant that we needed no persuasion getting in. Once you’re in however the tough bit is getting out as emergence from the water into the freezing air results in much childlike shirking, uncontrollable shivering and significant genital shrinkage.

The cold dictates you need to get changed fast, a need that’s hampered by the deserts lack of natural cover so it’s a long slow process you do with your towel wrapped around you as you attempt to play horseshoe with your shorts leg and ankle. The European continental tourists have no such problems in this regard, happy to simply change in full view without the encumbrance of anything like a towel.

Our final trip was a small Chilean desert village that that still strives to live in the traditional tribal way; mind you I didn’t see anything in San Pedro’s Museum that suggested that the tribes sustained themselves by charging visitors 3000 pesos for a photo next to a Llama tied to a wooden steak.

Speaking of Llamas, following the hot springs we say herds of them grazing in the Oasis’s and upon arriving in the village we were given the option of eating one The locals had a BBQ and were selling skewers of Llama meat for all the tour buses, the meats kind of chewy like lamb but tastes similar to steak, definitely give it a go if you get a chance.

The geyser tour over we decide to get some much needed shut eye, a decision made considerably difficult by the hostel being full, we needed new lodgings. An Irish couple we met recommended a hostel only around the corner from our previous one and we soon booked ourselves in for 2 nights in a dorm.

Once we got into the dorm the danger signs were everywhere. Once niamhs eyes spotted the various discarded bundles of cloths that pooled around each of the predominantly male inhabited bunks she began to panic, Nimah is nearly as scared as messy rooms as she is of badly cleaned public toilets.

There was also no lockers hence the innards of rucksacks being strewn throughout the floor and this also meant that there was no where to secure our valuables, this didn’t seem to be a problem for the other residents and I counted at least 4 laptops left open and unattended on various bunks.

As well as the discarded laptops there were a number of almost corpselike bodies sprawled on about half the bunks in the room. Our previous experience with “Sleepers” meant we expected them to wake up just after sunset and proceed to vomit and begin running amok all throughout the night, not that running amok is a bad thing its just when your operating on one hour of sleep its not exactly welcome.

The real problem though was the communal bathrooms, for the 80 or so souls in the hostel there were two toilets, both of which were attacked by what can only be described as a “Phantom Sh***r” Phantoms have plagued any establishments with dormitories since the beginning of time, you get them in summer camp, Irish college, French college and when I began to work in property management I discovered you get them in apartment blocks and office buildings as well. Phantoms, as there namesake suggests are never actually seen and their peculiar habits cause no end of havoc and strenuous exercising of your gag reflex..

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The fact that the sleeping hostel goers were beginning to awake and begin drinking again was worrying. The prospect of 80 people kicking of a session with no where to go to relieve themselves when the seal is broken doesn’t bare thinking about. As if reading my mind a fairly well Cerevezaed traveller walked past me and upon seeing the biological weapons that had been deployed in, around and atop both toilets simply shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to urinate into the shower tray.

There is a term called Need to Know Basis whereby you only tell people so much in order to prevent a total panic and loss of control. Such an approach was appropriate when reporting back to Niamh on this occasion.

To be diplomatic, I simply told niamh that both toilets were out of order, nimah still coming to terms with a huge amount of boxer shorts that inhabited the floor would not be told the extent of the situation for fear of causing total panic. I simply told her both toilets were out of order and that she should probably wear her flip flops to the shower that evening.

It was going to be a long night…

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Photos

View bus on our way to village
Pretty proud of this snap so I said I'd chuck it in