Blogs from Atacama, Chile, South America - page 10

In Northern Chile, after crossing beautiful Bolivia (see last post) MissionVanGo rambled across the driest place on earth which is the Atacama Desert. There is so little rainfall (some weather stations there have not recoded a single drop of rain for decades) that much of the desert is completely sterile. Even the cluster of border crossing station buildings looked like a ghost town and I had to wander through the ramshackle complex with broken chairs strewn about calling out in a loud voice before I saw a living being even there. It was crossing this barren place that we had our first flat tire and less than two hours later ran out of gas for the first time. The Atacama Desert was of course beautiful in it's own way. Here are a few pictures from the ... read more

I am proud to say that we have conquered the Atacama desert with little more than the help of knowledgeable tri lingual guides, big vans with competent drivers, a hotel with a pool, good restaurants, and our own steely determination. It's a low key day here. We have checked out of the hotel but are camped in the lobby with our luggage catching up on email, writing postcards and Abbey is working on her math homework (awaywork). The last two days have been pretty interesting. We have visited salt flats, and huge lagoons surrounded by mountain peaks on the "Altiplanico", which is the alpine plateau of volcanic rock that forms the foundation for the Andes. On the floor of the desert is a massive salar caused by salt rich ground water fed from rain and snow ... read more

Our day started at 5am by rocketing up the side of the mountain from San Pedro at 2200 meters above sea level to over 4300 meters. The van was driven (flown) by a guy named Walter, who could have driven it with his eyes closed. Our guide Pablo started with this briefing " We've got a 90 minute ride up the mountain in the dark and will return on the same route in the daylight. So don't worry about missing anything if you sleep on the way up." This turned out to be a sick joke, as I would have had an easier time sleeping on a roller coaster. Not only is the road up and down like crazy, it's 50 percent washboard. Abbey gets queazy from a combination of the ride, change in altitude, and ... read more

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 ... read more

I flew from Santiago to Calama in Northern Chile after a bit of stress with losing the small peice of paper they give you at the airport which is apparently needed when you leave the country but I didn´t know this so possibly threw it away eek! After a visit to the police station (which was hilarious as 3 Chilean officers tried to understand me and vice versa!) calls to the NZ embassy and a bit of running around at the airport I managed to get a duplicate copy, god if only I spoke the language!! I then bused to San Pedro de Atacama a small desert town that exists for lines and lines of tour companys and touts trying to sell you tours and invite you for free pisco sours (a chilean spirit) in order ... read more