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Published: December 1st 2008
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It was a long, hot, dusty, overnight bus trip to San Pedro de Atacama (it took about 12hours in the end). It was real desert. We travelled for hours on a lonely road with the sun beating down, with nothing to see but orange dust and sand. I had never been anywhere like this before. Then finally an oasis, literally a patch of life, green trees and buildings, right in the middle of nowhere, at 2400m altitude sat the tiny cosmopolitan town of San Pedro. It was very surreal. The town was real enough, with a real local population, but lots and lots of western tourists. It almost felt like I had just walked into the Mexico bit of the EPCOT centre in Disneyworld. The contrast of men with stetsons on bareback horses and western travellers on mountain bikes was strange to the eye. We were tired after our long trip and thought that as we were at such a high altitude it would be cold. Silly us, we were at the driest place on earth. It never rains here, and the sun always shines. The sky was impossibly blue, and the sun was very, very strong (we upped to factor
50 lisa!!!). It was hot, a very dry heat. At night it was the opposite. It was freezing.
Anyway, once we adjusted our eyes and clothes to the brightness and heat, we needed to find somewhere to stay as the host from our hostel we booked was not there to meet us as promised and we had no idea where it was. So back to the old fashioned way and knocking on doors with our 3 or 4 spanish questions from our phrase book at the ready.....well that was the phrase book that Stu left on the bus, so the phrases from the depth of our memories... not far then! After looking at 4 or 5 places and realising that life in the desert would not be cheap we settled on the very basic Residencial Chiloe. It was fine and seemed quiet except for some local builders on contract work who were also styaing there, and as we later learned stayed up drinking til quite late and got up noisily very early for work!! It was here that we realised they do actually call us 'gringos', we happen to notice that instead of taking our names for the hotel
register they wrote 'gringo x2' !!
We decided to explore, and discovered that it was home to some of the best restuarants in Chile. We also discovered that we were very sensitive to the altitude and felt easily breathless. So we planned an easy day, we spent it organising what to do for the next few days. There were lots of tours and things to see around the desert region (really) such as the flamingo lakes, salt flats, the highest geysers in the world or the valley of the moon. There was a lot of choice and a huge difference in the amount of money you could spend on seeing these things. So we decided to have a drink and think about it. In fact that evening we were weak and found the call of a steak house irresistable. We ordered the house special steak each and it was the largest most tastiest steak I think I have ever tried, (we have not been to argentina yet though) and washed it down with an amazing wine from the carmenere grape which is unique to Chile apparently, and it is very cheap here, and very delicious.
Feeling guilty from
splashing out on an indulgent meal the night before, we decided on booking just one trip and opting for the very cheap local guide version, and going to the El Tatio geysers the next morning. That afternoon we hired mountain bikes and firstly visited the ruins of Quitor, just 6km away, then we tried to make it to the Valle de Lune for sun rise. Now it is set over 15km (7km away) and is spectacular at this time of day, but it meant setting out at the hottest time of the day, and still feeling the effects of the altitude we didn,t make it all the way to the famous ampitheatre, but we did get some great views of the site anyway, and after cycling a round trip of about 30km+ we were too saddle sore and altitude sick to continue.
The next morning we had a 4am pick up for the 2 hour journey to the geysers to reach them for sunrise. We didn,t bother taking our warm clothes as it was so hot during the day usually. It was a foolish decision, especially when the ice started forming on the glass of the bus window. We
ascended to 4300m to watch the spectacular geysers spurting in the morning sun, and tried to warm ourselves in the steam, while avoiding getting scalded. Then we had a light breakfast of tea and bread at the geysers before moving onto to the hot springs. We had to get in as we were so cold, it was lovely to warm up in the murky warm waters, but it was a bit nippy getting out again, as there was still ice on the ground!! On the way back from the geysers we saw dusty desert landscapes with cactus plants dotted around, wild vicunas (like small llamas), flamingoes in the lakes, and finally we visited a small village where we tried sticks of BBQ llama meat, it was really rather good. We try our best not to do tours as they feel so touristy, but this one as worth it, and I am glad we took the cheaper option, as we did not seem to get a worse deal, just the guide spoke less english, but he did give us a lovely rendition of 'Hotel California'. We have decided that it may well be the anthem of our trip, as we have
heard it played somewhere (usually accompanied by someone who can't speak any other English singing it loudly!!) in nearly every country we have been to, oh that and anything by UB40.
San Pedro de Atacama is a really interesting place, and it was definitely worth the effort of getting there. The landscape is breathtaking and unique, and I know I will probably never see anything like it again. The town itself is very comfortable and quirky, and a lot of fun. Despite the tourism, it was one of the highlights of Chile, and you can understand why so many people visit.
We spent our last afternoon just enjoying the chilled atmosphere in San Pedro before getting a bus the next day back to Calama (2 hours), where we had a 4 hour wait before getting a connecting bus onwards to Iquique( another 6-7 hours). Calama is not really a place you want to stay any longer. It was dusty, hot and lacking any charm at all, we managed to get oursleves lost while transferring between bus stations, but managed to get a taxi to get us back on the right course.
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