Chilly In Chile, Star gazing & the Atacama Desert

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Freezing cold actually, not Chile!

We arrived approx 5.30am in the pitch black, always a very intimidating experience. We knew our hostel was only a 5 min walk, so we braved the walk, as taxi’s are notorious for being just as dangerous. We got a bit concerned when we turned into a quiet road which our hostel was on and a man who had been walking behind us from the bus station now turned into the same road. We picked up the pace, found our hostel and rang the bell. No one was answering, it was deserted and this figure kept getting closer and closer. Tony was contemplating what he could use as a weapon to defend ourselves and we kept ringing the doorbell but still nothing. The man was a lot closer and he had now crossed the street onto our side of the road, heading right at us. About 20 foot away he went to get something out of his pocket and we panicked. Turned out it was just a front door key, he was the hostel owner who had come to meet us of the bus as I’d said what bus we’d be coming in on and he didn’t want us walking alone in the dark!

We could laugh about it now but it’s definitely made us feel a bit more vulnerable.

He was a lovely man, and at 5.30 let us have our room, even though check-in wasn’t until 12. We were so grateful, as you never get enough sleep on night buses. At 11am we got up and explored La Serena. Even now it was still very cold and cloudy. There is supposed to be nice beaches there but we didn’t get to see them as it seemed pointless getting the bus to somewhere that wouldn’t look great if cloudy. As for La Serena as a place, it reminded us of an old English town, with its old little high street. They even had English traffic lights. The population of La Serena is 190,000 yet there are 75 churches. The vicars must outnumber the pigeons.

Our main purpose of stopping here was to visit the observatory. We were a bit concerned as we thought the bad weather might affect it, but was informed that it was a 2 hour drive very high up into the mountains and that weather rarely caused a problem with the visibility. We were also told that we were lucky as there was a new moon, which meant you could see very little of the moon so the sky would be better as the light from the moon wouldn’t spoil it.

We took a very bumpy 2 hour drive to the Mamalluca Observatory. This was a very large observatory and had some very impressive telescopes. When we got out we looked straight up to the sky. It was like being in a planetarium. The sky was filled with stars and they all looked so close. The tour was brilliant. With the most impressive laser pen you’ve seen, our guide pointed out the consolations to us. Also a very interesting lesson on what can be seen in the northern hemisphere and to the southern. There were lots of similarities but of course many differences, like the Southern Cross and obviously we couldn’t see the Northern Star. Through the telescopes we saw galaxies and clusters of millions of stars. All the things that were not visible to the naked eye. The highlight though was when we got to go to the GPS satellite telescope, which picked out anything in the sky; you just had to types the name in and it found it for you, pretty impressive. We were looking for Saturn. We could see it very clearly through the telescope and even the rings around it. We tried to take pictures through the telescope but it’s just come out like a tipex drawing on a black piece of paper, but we assure you it was much more impressive than that. Definitely a must-see if ever over this side of the world.

Sad to leave La Serena and the Maria Casa Hostel, the next day we took yet another overnight bus. We went from La Serena to Antofagasta, stopping in the mining town of Copiapo, made famous by the miners trapped there last year. We were the only westerners on the bus and spent the whole night being stared at. We assume it was a very popular bus for the miners all heading up north. We arrived at Antofagasta at 4.30 and had to wait until 7am for our bus to San Pedro de Atacama.

We didn’t know what to expect from San Pedro. We had heard it was extremely expensive, which it was but what do you expect in a town in the middle of a desert, miles from anything. The Atacama Desert is one of the few deserts on earth that does not receive any rain. It covers a 600 mile strip of land on the Pacific Coast just west of the Andes. According to National Geographic, it is the driest desert in the world, It occupies 40,600 square miles in Northern Chile.

We really liked it there, the town was fairly small but had so much character and the people were lovely. We decided to spend a few days here and went on a desert walk, which felt like it took forever and also a tour to Moon Valley & Death Valley. Being in a desert of this size, it certainly wasn’t chilly anymore.

We left at 4.30 in the afternoon and made our way out to moon valley. Named so, because the surface looks similar to the moon’s craters. It was incredibly hot and we took little hikes up to some spectacular views. The guide was very good and gave an excellent insight into why and how everything had been geographically formed.

The tour finished at the top of a mountain overlooking moon valley for sunset. The sun-setting itself wasn’t what was most spectacular, it was the way the colours of all the surrounding rocks and mountains changed from brown, to orange, red, pink, purple and then blue. Very pretty.
We got back about 9pm and grabbed an early night. We were up early to meet our tour for the Salt Flats. 3 days and 2 nights in a jeep heading from Chile up into Bolivia, with some of the most spectacular views we will ever see.

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