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Published: August 8th 2007
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Sometimes with travelling it's just getting from A to B, and if there are about 2,000kms between A and B, it's best to plan some (interesting) stops in between to break up the journey! Great tip from yours truely.
San Pedro de Atacama was one of those stops, interesting, but maybe also something we've already done before. Little desert town: tick. Salt flats: tick. Valley of the moon: tick. Getting up at an insanely early hour to see geysers at high altitude in the freezing cold: big tick! All of that at Chilean prices: tick.
But we did it anyway (except for getting up at 3 am to see more geysers), just for the experience and breaking up the journey back to Santiago. Also, we could skip across the border to Salta in Argentina, and make our way south from there.
San Pedro de Atacama (SPdA) is indeed a small desert town, lots of dust, and lots of adobe (mudbrick) walls. Arrived mid morning from the overnight bus from Arica, which wasn't as uncomfortable as we'd expected (that's good), and had some brekky first in what seemed to be a small disco.....
Prices are Chilean again, also
for accomodation, and considering you're in the middle of the dessert eating dust, they're bit hard to swallow after Peru and Bolivia. In the end, we stayed with, and organised the 2 tours via
Corvatsch, which wasn't a bad option.
Valle de la Luna tour was nice, but very windy indeed, and with so much sand flying around, quite uncomfortable from time to time. No too pleasant having sand cutting in your face. It was an afternoon tour, so needless to say it meant we were going to have a sunset to watch as well, no extra charge for that!
The tour started at a viewing point from the freeway (where we'd already passed with the bus the previous morning), and continued to the Valle de la Muerte (valley of the dead). Apparently the Belgian priest who "discovered" and named it was misinterpreted by the locals, meaning that the name Valle de la Martes (Mars) was being received as Valle de la Muerte.... small type, big difference.
On to Valley of the Moon. Again, lots of desert colours mixing in the afternoon sun, quite pretty, but as we'd left quite late, it seemed as if we were
only being shown a third of the park, in particular the sunset viewing points, which happened to be on the way back into town.
After heading back, we did pass a lot of budget tourists on their bicycles heading back into town as well. In the cold and dark, in shorts with no light.... sometimes cutting corners isn't all that great of an idea.
Next day, heading out for the full day tour of the salt flats and lagoons! Unlike Uyuni (Bolivia), this salt flat isn't quite that "flat". Also, it's not only salt, but also contains many minerals like Lithium and Borium (being close to Volcanos, it all washes up in the salt flats), meaning it's far from white, and some of the open water has red and yellow mineral sediments. Pretty for pictures, nurturing for algea and shrimp, which in their case again are a lovely dish for the birds, in particular flamingos! Pictures say enough, and as a whole the salt flats were quite impressive.
For some reason we had a short stop in one of the villages, where we all ended up taking pictures of the wrong church. It wasn't till we drove
out of town till we saw the other, much older church. No warning from the driver, he was busy arranging a lunch for all of us. The towns here are so small that it's obviously not worth while calling ahead a day early. Didn't matter, we drove onwards and upwards to the lagoons, and would not be back for lunch for another 2 hours or so (it was already 12.30).....
Anyways, from there we would head up, again, to an altitude of over 4000m. Some of the views along the road were spectacular, with the Andes and the volcanos in the background. Needless to say it also got a wee bit colder, and with the strong winds on top, well, let's say we came without enough thermals....
There was a serious cloud deck overhead as well, dark grey, not promissing too much good. But those clouds, with the grey-blue lake, white snow, and yellow grass, made for scenic photo-ops, especially when those clouds broke open a bit, and let some blue sky peep through!
We were "advised" that we could best walk down to laguna Miscanti, and then across to laguna Miñiques, were we would get into
the bus again. But with the gale force winds, and sometimes ankle deep in snow, it was quite an effort to do that. Freezing brass monkeys comes to mind. But as said, it was quite a spectacular view.
Another pleasant surprise of the cold was the flat battery of the bus.... if we would mind push starting it, backwards, on gravel road.... surprisingly it did start, thank goodness!
On the way back, we had our lunch in the village of Socaire, and had another stop at Toconao, for anyone who still wanted to shop for more alpaca clothing.
All up it was a good stop in SPdA, just for 2 nights, didn't think we needed more time to freeze in! Unfortunately, those grey clouds had dropped a wee bit too much snow on the border pass to Salta, Argentina.... which meant we had a transport problem!
There are not many border crossings here, and all have to cross passes over the Andes. This one was snowed in. So, apart from the fact that the next bus out to Salta was already booked up, there was not much of a chance of it leaving soonish at all......
Decisions to be made....
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