Chile: Tales from a Damp Desert

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A steep descent from the mountainous border outpost brought us down to the relatively balmy altitude of 2400 metres and the small oasis of San Pedro right in the middle of the Chilean Atacama desert. Unfortunately soon after arriving, the sky clouded over and stayed that way for the remainder of our time there, preventing us from doing our planned star-gazing trip which Chris had been looking forward to. Despite this, we still enjoyed a nice walk across the red desert and to the twelfth century ruined fort of Pukara de Quitor, a few kilometres out of town, as well as scaling a rather large hill for great views out across the landscape that seemed more like the surface of Mars than anything we´re used to.

The Atacama is reportedly one of the driest places on earth, although whilst we were there, we did find that quite hard to believe, since the following day, cold weather and torrential rain turned the town's streets into muddy rivers. San Pedro copes with rain in the same way that England copes with snow, that is, not very well. Whilst the streets turned into brown quagmire, roofs leaked and bowed and threatened to fall in, and various areas throughout town had blackouts. Fortunately there were a few museums and plenty of cafes around to keep us occupied, as well as a temporary meteorite exhibition on the outskirts of town, which went some way to make up for a lack of stargazing whilst we were there, although it wasn't quite the same as staring up at the skies with a ginormous telescope.

From San Pedro, we boarded a night bus through the stormy weather, to the town of Arica at the northern tip of Chile. Like the rest of the Atacama further south, it is renowned for its consistently dry weather with an average annual rainfall in the region of 1.5mm per year. However, lo and behold, shortly after our arrival, it became overcast and we experienced the town's annual rainfall that afternoon.

There wasn't a huge amount to do in Arica. It did have some reasonable beaches, but it really wasn't great weather for the seaside and so we had a walk about town, visiting a church designed by Eiffel and a rather good gelateria. Following this, we took a bit of exercise, climbing a big rocky hill, with good views out over the port and desert, lined with cannons used in the War of the Pacific and various other memorials.

The next day, well rested, we set out on another long bus ride, over the snow-covered mountains and back into Bolivia. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong company to travel with, since our bus broke down three times before we even got to the border, but we made it eventually and were soon back on the Altiplano, arriving into La Paz late in the evening.

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