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Tatio Gysers
These are the highest thermal gysers in the world at 4,320 m above sea level. They are located 98 kms north of San Pedro de Atacama.Listen,
said Ricky. We were standing in the middle of the Valle de la Luna in the Atacama Desert, which is the most arid place on earth. It has a sublime beauty which looks like another planet. We stood there for several minutes in total silence. It was a total silence I´ve never experienced before. We couldn't hear a thing, not even the squeak of a mouse, because the valley is totally devoid of life. It was a profound experience.
I had just met Ricky a few hours before, when I had arrived in the village of San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a small indigenous village, an oasis that appears like a mirage out of the worlds driest desert. It is also a tourist trap that is firmly on the South American gringo trail.
I met Ricky just after I had arrived in the village. We spoke as I walked out of yet another hotel, where I had just checked the price. I was shocked by the prices that everywhere was charging. So was Ricky. He though was comparing prices with those in Argentina, which is always much cheaper than Chile. I though was comparing
Valle de la Luna
Near San Pedro de Atacama the prices with the rest of Chile, where I´ve been for weeks. It was obvious that San Pedro is a backpacker gringo trap because the prices seemed to be 30-50%!h(MISSING)igher than in the rest of Chile. Many hotels were charging more than I paid in Santiago - for places that were much more basic.
Ricky who is South African was on a motorbike, to be specific a Honda 250. He is travelling from Buenos Aires to the States overland on his motorcycle. Just a short trip by my standards and his - 3 months. His previous trip took a year, he flew around the world by microlight, creating a world record.
Ricky´s blog of the motorcycle trip and the record breaking flight around the world can be found at www.safreedomflight.com
The microlight flight was in honour of 10 years of South African freedom, that is the end of apartheid and the first non racial free elections. Coming soon...his book!
Anyway, we searched for a decent cheap place together, eventually booking into the Hotel Puritana. We then hopped onto his bike and went sightseeing ending up in the Valle de la Luna, which brings me
back to where this blog started.
After listening to the sound of silence we continued our trip through the Valle de la Luna. Ricky didn't drive the bike fast, I didn't feel the least bit unsafe, unlike a bike ride I had in Niger, Africa with a local policeman. That motorbike ride with the policeman in the village of Nguimi near the border of Chad was very scary. See my previous blog:
Stu´s world tour - we´re on the road to nowhere. The road through the valley was a cinder track, with patches of sand covering parts of it. As Ricky and I were going downhill, I felt the bike slip, skid and lean over drastically. We adjusted our weight and recovered. But within a second we hit more sand and again slipped. This time we failed to recover. I bailed off the bike just before it hit the dirt. When I stood up I noticed that my trousers were torn on my right leg. So I lifted my right trouser leg to find that some skin had been torn off my right knee, but it hadn't drawn blood. Ricky´s jeans were much more torn than mine and his knee was bleeding. He wrapped a
cloth around his knee and checked the bike. He seemed much more worried about the bike than his injured knee!
We continued the journey out of the valley and back to our hotel. Ricky drove even more carefully. He was worried that I was shaken up and kept apologizing for the accident. I wasn't worried, his driving was very good.
Anyway, even if you are scared, you should never let fear dominate your life. This is something we discussed in a different context. We we talking about travelling and why some people are scared of following their dreams.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.
Dune, Frank Herbert Turning the clock back now to where I was at the end of the last blog. I flew back to Santiago from Easter Island on the 5th of April. On the 7th of April I took a 7 hour bus ride to La Serena. La Serena is one of the most visited beach resorts in Chile. But, I was there out of season. So, its long beach was deserted. The city was founded in 1544, making it the second oldest city in Chile. It is a city of colonial architecture and churches. La Serena´s climate
is coastal desert, it is in in the vast arid Atacama Desert. I spent a couple of days in the city, then moved on to the city of Antofagasta. It was another very long bus trip, this time 12 hours , but it was a very comfortable ride - the buses in Chile must be some of the best in the world. Certainly much better than anything in the UK.
In Antofagasta I finally decided to visit a dentist. Although I wasn't in pain, I had a big hole in a tooth, where a filling had broken some months previously.
So, on Monday 10th I asked a waiter in a cafe for advise on dentists. He recommended a private clinic which I used. At the dentist consultation he had bad news. He could do a temporary job, but I would need to get it seen to properly when I got home. I explained that I wouldn't be going back home (wherever that is now!) for a very long time. Basically I needed a root filling. I hadn't been in pain because part of the nerve had already been removed from the tooth. Getting the job done
in Antofagasta meant hanging around for over a week. I decided it was a good idea to get the work done in Antofagasta because Chile has western standards of health care, which some other countries in Latin America don´t! I stayed in Antofagasta much longer than I intended as a result. The city is not a tourist destination. It is an industrial city of 200,000 people, through which most of the mineral wealth of Chile is exported from the Atacama Desert.
I stayed in the city over Easter until the 19th of April. On the 19th I caught a bus to the Oasis city of Calama. Calama is near the worlds largest open cast copper mine at Chuquicamata. From Calama I eventually arrived in San Pedro, which is where this blog started.
In San Pedro I visited the Valle de la Luna twice and went to the Tatio Geysers. The Tatio Geysers are the worlds highest thermal geysers at 4,320 m above sea level.
Then I returned to Antofagasta for my final dentist appointment. They just wanted to check their work. After my last night in Antofagasta I returned to Calama to visit the
copper mines.
On Friday 28th of April I caught the bus out of Calama and Chile. It was another very long journey to northern Argentina. The journey across the high Andes was very scenic, the landscapes changing several times. But unlike most of my journeys in South America so far, this one was not without incident; but you will have to wait for the next blog for that story.
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