immodest mice

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Another day, another country.

And we had done this trip before, 4 years ago. A short stop in Arica while we waited for a bus connection, and it was back on the bus, through the driest desert in the world – the Atacama. A place where no actual rain has been recorded in places, and it looked that way.

The place was dry – no vegetation, none at all. Not even little saltbush plants, or spinifex type grasses like you might find in other parts of the world. Just wind and dust and rocks and sand. And it was beautiful, just the sort of stuff I like; scenes of desolation flashing past the smeared windows of the bus.

San Pedro de Atacama was another place we had visited before. The place was much as I remembered it. The whitewashed church was in need of a touch up, but still pretty. There were tons of dogs wandering the dusty streets with tongues lolling, and there were at least three times as many tour operators, now all with “adventure” in their name because that's where it's at now – apparently hiring a snowboard to flop down a relatively short sand dune qualified as adventure (not for us – sand in your jocks at the beach sucks enough without it being forced in there at speed). Then, as now, it was a travellers' town with not much more reason to exist than to serve tourists. Now they had added kerbs and paved streets in parts, but in most ways was much the same as before. Dirt roads, adobe construction, an oversupply of bars and restaurants and “authentic” backpackers.

The hostel we found was great. A little quirky, mudbrick place with friendly owners. Mudbrick being a reasonable building material in a place with almost no rain.

The town itself is also known as San Perro due to the amount of stray dogs in the place, but the hostel had at least three resident cats. This, we found later, was due to a healthy population of tiny desert mice. The front door to their nest was in the corner of our room. As such, the cats were very interested in being our friends.

It also meant that we closed the door properly. At first I left it open as we slept to let the cool desert air in, but the inevitable rustling of random crap around the room – so reminiscent of my youth in Humpty Doo – began. I flicked on the light, and a bunch of tiny mice scurried like hell for cover. I had, up until that point, been conscientious about keeping the cats out of the room. That changed after the second hour of sleeplessness, and I went outside into the cold to invite the cats in for dinner.

Two of them accepted and spent the next couple of hours leaping about the small room chasing the tiny mice. In and out of backpacks, up and down the walls, and finally some random sprints across the bed.

I never found Tom and Jerry all that funny as a kid and a repeat performance at 3 in the morning was even less amusing. I kicked the cats out.

In the morning I was awoken by another cat tapping not so gently on my foot, asking to be let out. It seemed all 3 cats had been inside. One was more of a ninja than the others.

We found ourselves a cheap tour of the Valle de la Luna and surrounds for the next day, and it was excellent. The guide was knowledgeable, and we saw all that we wanted to of the desert and the geological formations around the area.

Watching the sun go down over the desert from the top of the skeletal remain of a dead ridgeline was pretty special. The colours changing, the air growing cool. Sure, there were a fair few people about with the various tour companies, but it was great nonetheless.
We chose one of the many restaurants to have dinner, and found that most of them had a great big bonfire in the middle. Very nice.

I'm not sure that we ever need to go back again to San Pedro, but it was good to have gone just one more time.

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Comments

[Sue W]

Just Love This
I love your narratives and your beautiful photos. You have such a talent for it. You brighten my day every time I read one of your blogs. xo