Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Friday 15 june 2007 Its been a busy week and generally very enjoyable. Last Saturday I took a morning bus to La Serena, (160,000 population) a coastal resort about 480 kms north of Santiago, and the second oldest city of Chile. On the way the landscape was very barren scree covered steep hills and mountains with just bushes and, distinctively from other parts of the trip to date, cacti. Those tall ones with the arms pointing upwards.

I arrived early evening and quickly found my hotel/hostal which was a short walk from the bus terminal. After an evening exploration of the town centre, which is quite small, the next day I took a tour of the nearby Valle del Elqui. This is a combination of steep valley with cacti and a valley floor covered in vineyards to grow grapes for production of the Chilean favorite spirit, Pisco. We visited two distilleries, the oldest and the largest; the latter is run a co-operative basis. Also we visited the former home of the late Gabrielle Mistral, a woman who won the nobel prize for literature for her poetry, which our guide said hardly anyone understands. Lunch was unusual in that it was cooked by solar power in small ovens aimed to capture the rays of the sun.









Next day I took the local bus to Coquimbo, a small port and fishing town about 15 kms away. The main purpose to visit is to go up the Cruz del Tercio Milenio (cross for the third millenuium) which is a 96 metre high concrete constructon situated on a hill overlooking the town. From the top one had a great view of the town and the bay all the way back to La Serena and the surrounding hills. The cross is sponsored by the Catholic church and part paid for by public subscription.



Like La Serena, Coquina also has some fine examples neo-colonial architecture. After a long walk to the cross and a vist to the fish quay i retruned to La Serena to have look at the beach. This was a dissapointing reward for the long walk from the town centre. The only feature worthy of a photo is the disused light house which is striking at the end of the long avenue leading from the town centre. On closer inspection the lighthouse in some danger of eventually falling into the sea if repairs to the base aren´t carried out soon.


More rewarding was the daylight walk around the town centre and a visit to the local museum which had an exhibition dedicated to a former President of Chile, a collection of modern art, including some Picassos and Miros, and some local archive photographs and maps which show how the town developed in the last century.

On Tuesday evening I took an ovenight bus another 400+ kms north east to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is an oasis town located to the north of a large salt plain surrounded by mountian ranges, in the Atacama desert, one of the driest places on earth. I arrived about 11am and after checking in to a hostal for three nights I booked myself onto some sightseeing tour. San Pedro is very rustic but is also very set up for tourist with dozens of hostals, restaurants and tour offices.

That afternoon I went to a place known as Valle de Luna because of is alleged similarity to the surface of the moon (I haven´t been there yet!). ´Whether its like the moon or not it is an extraordinary landscape of shaped rocks and sand dunes. After a short walk, including running down some sand dunes, where others were sand surfing, we were taken to a ridge from where to observe the setting sun. There was some cloud on the horizon and this resulted in an a beautiful red and yellow sunset and also a red glow onto the mountian range behind us. On this trip I met Michael, a Hong Kong/Canadian, with whom I´ve spent a lot of time sharing meals and tours in the last few days.



On Wednesday we went a full day trip to the salt lake which is very rough texture due to the fact that the salt is aborbed from water below the ground, not from rainfall. On the salt pools there are colonies of flamingos who eat mircoscopic shrimps that can survive the salty conditions. After this we drove 50-60 kms to 2 beautiful blue lakes, Lagunas Miscanti yMiniques, at 4,300 metres above sea level surronded by volcanoes. The picture of me in front of a lake looks like it there are waves on the shore. This is in fact salt formations.



Our guide on this trip was a man called Juan, who as a small child lived in Weymouth (you wouldn´t make that up) and therefore could speak good English and was quite a character, calling upon "Inca power". This he demonstrated by stopping the tour bus on what appeared to be an upward slope. When the engine was stopped they released the handbrake and the bus appeared, when looking out of the front and back of the bus, to be rolling up hill. I assume it was some optical illusion due to the shape of the landscape but it was impossible to discern. Only when we travelled on a few kms and look backwards could I see that the road was a continuous downward slope with some changes in the angle of the slope. It was still an amazing experience.

Juan then took us to see his favorite lama which just happened to be located at a village craft shop. I have now bought the almost obligatory woolly hat, but no photos available yet. In the evening I had the best meal and best value meal so far in South America, in a restarant run by a French man living in San Pedro.

Incidentally there are an awful lot of French and German tourists here and relatively few British. Most other Brits I´ve met are young back packers while the French and Germans are often older couples so I don´t feel like the only over 30 on this part of the trip.

Next day, Thursday, was a 4am start to see the El Tatio Geysers located about 90kms north and close to the Bolivian border. After a rough 2 hour bus ride, but still managing about another hour´s sleep, we arrived at the volcanic crater, and dawn was beginning to break. It was freezing cold at this 4,320 metres high location. Despite being well wrapped up it was hard to keep from shivering. The justification for the early morning start and freezing cold is that the steam spouts are much bigger in the sub zero morning temperatures. As the sun rose after 7am one could see the steam spouts rapidly reducing in height.

I couldn´t help comparing these with the geysers I saw in Rotorua, NZ, about 3 weeks ago. I think NZ win on height of hot water geysers but Chile wins on the number of steam spouts and the more natural environment in which they are situated.

After eating some breakfast just next to the largest geyser, we drove a short distance to a hot water spring where on could bathe or paddle. I´d lost this detail in translation so wasn´t equipped for bathing but enjoyed a paddle.

On the way back from here we saw some long tailed ´rabbits´which belong to the chinchilla famile and different species of lamas or vicunas. I was surprised how many there were roaming in small herds living in such a barren landscape. Other wild life seen included a fox, geese and ducks.

After a further hour´s drive we stopped in a village for cheese empanadas (little pasties) and a walk down a beautiful gorge which involved quite a bit of rock clambering and river jumping. The small waterfalls and cacti against the background of the magnificent mountian ranges visible through the gorge entrance in bright sunlight made a wonderful scene. The river runs off the Andes mountains snows and sustains enough pampas grass to give my mother nightmares.



Today is a day of rest and recuperation before I catch an overnight bus to Arica in the very north of Chile and, hopefully, tomorrow crossing the border into Peru.