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Published: April 27th 2007
Dry, Dry, Dry...
The Atacama Desert San Pedro de Atacama known as the driest desert in the world sitting 2440m above sea level. The town is situated near the north of the Salar de Atacama, a vast saline lake. It has become very popular recently and has one of the most photographed churches in Chile. Mainly becuase it has a roof constructed out of cactus.
We arrived late Monday evening around 8ish. It seemed to be alot warmer from where we had just come from. Yippeeee!!!! At long last some warmer weather (hopefully). We managed with alot of sign language to get booked into our hotel as our landlady did not speak any english.
We decided to check out the tour places the next day to get ourselves organised. We went to the local archeological museum where we saw “Miss Chile” which is a mummie of a young Atacamena girl, she still has her original skin and hair. It was quite interesting.
We booked a tour to see the geyser fields at El Tatio, the worlds highest geyser field at 4300m above sea level, for the next morning and a 4:00am start. Also we booked a tour for the afternoon at 3:00pm to see
El Tatio geyser field
Wendy all wrapped up... the Salar de Atacama, Toconoa villiage (a real authentic villiage) and Laguna Chaxa (home to 3 species of the pink flamingo). All were very impressive.
At the El Tatio geyser fields our guide made us breakfast in a very different way. He warmed up the milk by placing it in one of the geyser “ponds” (boiling point at 85deg C) and he also placed eggs into a packet and stuck that in for a few minutes. Whalla!!! Boiled eggs!!!! It was a good breakfast especially when you consider it was -8deg C at 6:30am in the morning. Following breakfast we drove a bit further on to the Puritama thermal spring which is 32deg C and said to have healing powers, and yes we had a swim!!! AND Yes imagine it! 2 luminous glo worms in cozi´s at 7:00am in -3degC. We made it in and glad we did, as we needed to thaw out. Getting out was of course a different story. I don´t think I have ever got dressed so quickly in my life before. It was a brilliant morning. See pics.
The afternoon tour to the Salar de Atacama was very good as well although we
were expecting the salt flats and got something completely different, but still impressive. The flamingo´s were beautiful and we watched the sunset over the Laguna Chaxa. See pics.
The next day we chilled in the moring and booked another tour for the afternoon to the Valle de Luna. The landscape here resembles that of the moon (maybe the Yanks landed here instead of the moon!!!) and unbeknown to us still has live landmines which is why there is no camping. Here we also watched the sun set over a very impressive landscape. See pics.
The next morning we were transfered to the Chilean and Bolivian border which was interesting in it´s own right (the smallest and most rural border post we have encountered to date) where our next adventure starts, a 3 day jeep trip thorough the Bolvian desert to Uyuni.
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Andre Gabriel
non-member comment
Hello
I see it is quite hot in Chille Wendy will you be able to explain how the the Cactus roof works? I bet you guys never got up 4am for work.