San Pedro de Atacama - my last stop in Chile.

22-27 December 2010

   The Atacama Desert, in Northern Chile, is the driest and most arid desert in the world. It is near the border to Bolivia and Argentina, and is surrounded by some truly spectacular scenery. I chose to come here mostly for acclimatisation. Bolivia has the world highest everything (ok I exaggerate), and from here I go up and up and up. The world health organisation suggests taking a break between 2000-2500 metres, so here I am at about 2400m.
  There is an incredible lot to see here, and most of it requires taking a tour or hiring a car. I got a package of three tours for $40, which I thought was pretty good value. I will dedicate a blog post to each tour.
   San Pedro itself, although it's been here since pre-colombian times, is really a tourist centre now. It's dusty streets are lined with accommodations, restaurants, tour agencies and souvenier shops.

On the afternoon of my second day I decided to walk three kms to some ruins. A motorbike stopped and the rider offered me a lift, He took me to a cave past the ruins first. The cave was completely dark inside where we walked with his phone torch and a headlamp for 50metres.... me all the time hoping this man only had good intentions and wondering if I was crazy or just too adventurous. It all turned out fine. Next he dropped me off at the ruins.... which weren't as impressive as the view (here). Oh, and that's a hotel.

What the? I read this and I get "do not put rubbish in bin". Which possibly explains the street litter problem.

Walking back to town I had to give way to the goats and sheep that were being herded.

Notes:
Accommodation: Hostelling International (member) $12
Buses: Iquique-Calama-San Pedro de Atacama $32

The Geysers, San Pedro de Atacama, Peru

24 December 2009
   The tour company was to pick me up at 4am, so this was to be a long day as I had another tour in the afternoon/ evening.... little did I know just how long of a day this would be! Add to this the fact that I don't believe I slept at all prior to my early start. This was because the majorly sunburnt heavy built German girl in the bunk above mine tossed and turned all night long with her discomfort and the bunk beds shook and rattled each time like a ship being tossed in a storm at sea. For this I blame the hostel for having such unsuitable beds, and between the 2 tours I moved.
   When the guide came to pick me up she told me to go back and get more clothes, it would be -3 up at the Geysers.
   Geyser Tatio, we were told by the guide, is the highest Geyser field in the world, but apparently it isn't at all. It does however have over 80 active geysers, and is the largest Geyser field in the southern hemisphere. (Wikipedia). It's always Spectacular to visit a Geyser field, and while watching the sunrise at 4321m you get really cold. I appreciate that she sent me back in.
   I also took a swim in the thermal waters, and then we visited a typical Andean Indigenious village.

A geyser firing off.

Bubbling up.

El Tatio Geyser field

The Thermal baths

A river through the desert... with Giant 'water-fowl ' type birds with bad attitudes

(apparentlly they have sex annually for 5 seconds)

A Machuca house, strangely like the miniture house I made from clay in high school art (which mum kept for years). My version didn't have a straw roof or solar panel or cross on the roof.

Laguna Cejar, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Afternoon, 24 December 2009  
I had doubts about going to Laguna (Lake) Cejar, I'm about to cross the world largest Salt pans, and there will be more lakes, and I've been to Lake Ayer in Australia when it had water in it (happens about every 10 or so years), but this tour turned out to be a superbly fun tour.
   We had the same guide, from LaYana agency, that we'd had for the Geysers, she was brilliant.
   First we visited Laguna Cejar, a salty lake (more salty than the dead sea?) so you can easily float. I was first in... the latinos took more coaching. Next was 'Ojos de Solar' or Eyes of the salt pan, 2 water holes where the water comes from underground. You had to jump in, 3 metres down, then swim out. The guide said no-one got Pisco Sour unless they jumped in. I was first in. I thought I'd had to drink the bottle on my own, but one of the Brailians was a little put out that a woman went first and so he went next, and others followed. It was so cold it that water.... but at least it got the thick salt off.
   Next was Tebinquiche Lagoon, currrently dry and a big white expanse. It was a fun photo place.

No-one needs to mention how white my legs are compared to the Latinas.

Laguna Cejar.

Not a great photo, but I was first in. Ojos de Salar.

I'm like tinklerbell!

Drinking Pisco at sunset with the tour group.

 After such a long day, they all decided we should go out for a Christmas Dinner, at 11pm. And I was the only native English speaker... tired, hungry, and trying so hard to comprehend.

Valle de la Luna y Valle de la Muerte, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

25 December 2009
   Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) is the sunset tour that everybody does. it's the cheapest. But for me it was the most disappointing, mostly because we didn't have a guide, just a driver (and other groups had both)... the agency I booked with ran this tour themselves. I wish I'd booked with LaYana, I'd have had the same great guide again.
   I can't tell you much about it.... we didn't get told much. Here's the pictures.

Paragliding - My first and last time.

Sunday, 20 December, 2009.
Oh, the Paragliding was fantastic! But couldn't somebody have reminded me that I get motion sickness prior to the bus ride up the hill? Nobody even mentioned motion sickness prior to that. It was a tandem ride and I really thought I was going to throw up mid air and my handsome pilot, behind me, would have copped at least the stench, if not more depending on my ability with a bag mid air. At least when I grabbed for the bag he had the sense to calmly and promptly land us on the beach. And he, who just does paragliding as a weekend hobby but is clearly a paragliding addict, then suggested I take classes in Paragliding, because then, as pilot I'd be in control and probably wouldn't be sick. Ha.Ha.
   Iquique, way up on the Northern Coast of Santiago (I think 1,875kms North) is considered to be one of the top 10 Paragliding locations in the world. I'm sure there are technical reasons for this, but scenically it's truly fantastic as well. First you launch off the big hill behind the massive sand-dune that I already mentioned, the sand-dune that has so impressed me! Then you fly up and up and over the sand-dune, then over the city, to land on the beach. This usually takes 25-35 minutes, mine didn't linger as long.
   I am really glad I did it! I have no inflight photo's... looking at a camera would have made things worse.

Ready to Paraglide!

Other people paragliding.

Notes:
Paragliding, Tandem $70

Pica, a desert oasis in Chile

   I guess that I was never really sure that oasis's really existed. I always thought more of them as mirages that would disappear on arrival. But out in the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, there are indead oasises. (Is that the plural?).

   I was headed to Pica, a town with thermal springs for bathing in on Friday when a few people from the hostel volunteered to join me. I had kind of hoped to do Pica and Humberstone in one day (Humberstone (1hr) being on the road to Pica (2hrs)), but travelling with others meant that I wasn't completely in control. Of course, it's nicer to visit thermal springs with others, so it wasn't all bad.

Pica is known for growing fruits, especially the lime used in Pisco Sour.

The Thermal Baths at Pica, the water is warm and nice.

Notes: Bus to Pica $4. each way.

Entry to baths $3.

Humberstone, Chile's nitrate ghost town

Humberstone was pretty awesome. Humberstone was a town formed to service the nitrate boom and it boomed from 1872, and the office was ceremonially locked in the 1960's. Once upon a time, Nitrate was Chile's number one export, but synthetic nitrate ended the boom times. The ghost-town is very much intact and UNESCO listed.

Chilean Nitrate was sent all and the world.

This was the oldest of the buildings and is in remarkably good condition. It housed single workers.

The three level diving board on the big deep swimming pool, made from ship parts. There is a lot of graffiti too.

Iquique and thinking about altitude sickess in the high parts of Chile

6 nights in Iquique.. I didn't mean to stay so long, I just wasn't organised to get moving, and so I extended another couple of nights in this incredibly easy location.
   Plus, I my ears were hurting from bussing up the coast (and over a few big hills) so I needed to give them time to settle, to get over my slightly runny nose which I had picked up in Ovalle. Which got me thinking about how I was going to go steady into Bolivia and not get altitude sickness by having too fast an ascent.
   I actually arrived in Iquique by the flip of a coin. In the bus station at Caldera I had been unable to decide between Iquique and San Pedro de Atacama as destinations after Antofagasta, and so I flipped a coin. As it turns out, I have now decided to go to San Pedro from here, to acclimatise before Bolivia.
   This is really a surf and sun hangout so far as most backpackers are concerned, but I managed to do very little of that and find a few other things to keep me entertained. I've done 2 trips into the hills, one to an oasis in the desert called Pica, and another to an abandoned Nitrate boom town. And I also went Paragliding... Yikes! I would have left today, but my waiting until the last minute to book a bus ticket didn't work out for me. Good thing they still had my bed available at the hostel.
   A few things in Iquique have really made an impression on me. First, if you go inland (like to Pica and Humberstone) you rise up above the city quite quickly and have a birds eye view of the city extending to the coast, but more impressive is the whopping great big sand-dune sitting like a massive wedge right behind the city. Secondly, there are route of evacuation signs, incase of a Tsunami, everywhere. And thirdly, Cormorants (the birds) make really ugly noises. Singularly I guess they sound like a goose with a lifetime of too much booze and partying, collectively I wake in the morning and it sounds like I am near a pigsty by the sea.

The central street of Iquique, which leads from the plaza, is like something out of a movie set. You only need to put the people strolling on it's boarded sidewalks into period costume and you could start shooting a film set in, well, I'm not sure, perhaps the 1930's.

I wasn't as interested in the sunset as the big flock of birds.

Iquique beach at dusk.

Council festivities included a free Folkloric dance show. This piece was Peruvian. The costumes were cute.

It's a hard life being a sea lion. First you eat your fill of fish from the fishermans scraps, then you lie on the beach in the shallow waters, and you might get to use your mates tail as a pillow.

Fresh fish, fresh off the boat. I don't know what type they are, I could have asked, but the Chilean word wouldn't have been meant anything to me.

Notes:

Accommodation: Backpackers Iquique $11 * * * *

Bus Antofogasta to Iquique $20

Pricey night in Antofagasta, Chile

Oh, Antofastgasta. Warning to other backpackers, the hostel has closed and the rest of the accommodation seemed dodgey or quality with nothing in between. And there really isn't a lot of reason to stay.
   However, the journey from Caldera to Antofagasta was once of the most spectacular so far. Chile is extreme in it's beauty. At times the landscapes are like what I'd expect to see on another planet. They really are like nothing I had even gone close to seeing before.

There's a lot of distance to be covered in Chile, especially now, in the North, on the edge of the Atacama Desert.

Still without greenery, it changes.

and still it changes

In Antofagasta, I loved this painted building. Some of the windows are painted, some are real, but it's good enough that you have to looke carfeully to know which are just painted.

Copper, being freighted through town.

Notes:

Accommodation: Humberstone Hotel $46. Private room, private bath. * * * *

VIP bus Caldera to Antofagasta (it was the next available, and I couldn't risk another night in Caldera) $22.

Caldera, a sleepless night on a leaning bed. And a gripe about Chilean time.

   I got into Caldera mid afternoon, and immediately found a hotel that was backpacker priced (a whole room as cheap as a dorm bed normally is). This isn't a strange thing, hotels here are typically cheap compared to hostels, but you go to hostels to meet other travellers and get ideas. I checked the room before I took it, but little did I know that the bed would try to roll me out all night, and they'd leave the outside light shining through my window all night long.
   I didn't sleep.
   But I did get to have a lovely scallop dinner. Caldera is known for scallops and I like scallops. These were tiny, GOOD, they weren't big enough to have been pumped with water, and they had roe on, double Good! Mmmm.
   I gave up trying to sleep at 6am. This is way early for Chilean standards, But I was in a coastal town a few blocks from the beach, so I thought I go see them bring the fish (and scallops) in. Huh, at 6.30 in the morning nothing was happening, at 7.30 Chilean fisherman are getting into their boats and heading out. I had to wait with the sealions.
   The Chilean schedule and me aren't very capable. Everybody who  knows me knows I'm a morning person.  Chileans clearly are not. Work starts a 10am, I expect they drag themselves from bed 15 minutes prior. Lunch goes from 2 until 4pm... a whole 2 hours where businesses close there doors, I like a 30 minute break at work, I can't imagine entertaining myself for 2 hours 5 days a week. Dinner? Well, it's clearly not when I'm wanting to eat and I expect I don't know what time dinner is because I've gone to bed before the Chileans have gone to dinner. oh well.. i don't mind eating on my own.
   Anyway, after watching the sealions in Caldera I went back to the hotel for breakfast (pretty much all hotels and hostels include breakfast here). Then caught a Collectivo Taxi to the next town, Bahia Ingles. I had it's seafront completely looked at and walked twice over and had left before a single shop had opened. And I had to walk halfway back to Caldera before another taxi came past to take me.
   I even had time to check out the cemetary before checking out and catching the next bus to Antofagasta.

The pretty fishing boats in Caldera. Sea Lions swin around here.

The Cathedral in Caldera has charm.

I found a patch of rocks with seaweed and plants to get a view of Bahia Ingles.

Everywhere in Chile there are shrines beside the road. here's one.

Caldera has Chile's first non-Catholic cemetary. It dates to the turn of the century and features graves from immigrants from all over the world.

Still in Caldera Cemetary.

Acoommodation: Terrasol $16 *

3 Huses to get from Huasco to Caldera $22

Scallop dinner with glass of wine, recommended quality restaurant $14

Huasco, the lovely Chilean fishing town.

I arrived in Huasco on Sunday afternoon. When I got to the hotel reception the key to the office was in the door but nobody was there. I walked into the dining room where 2 Asian guys sat at opposite sides of the room working on laptops. They were clearly working, manuals were piled up beside each of them. I asked, in Spanish, if they spoke Spanish or Ingles, they looked at me blankly. So I asked in English, they looked at me blankly again. I decided to sit and wait. The guys eventually spoke Japanese to each other.
   After about 20 minutes I wondered about a door at the side of the dining room, I opened it and in doing so woke up the owner / manager from his afternoon siesta in a lounge in front of a TV. So I got a room. It was a very nice hotel, with private rooms overlooking the ocean. The coast was pretty, but marred to the left by an industrial plant which the owner told me was turning 'crap' oil, brought in as waste from other countries, into electricity. He obviously wanted it, and its pollution, gone.
   The town was quiet. I went down to the pier, and grabbed a couple of seafood empanadas, the walked right around the seafront of the town to the "Playa Grande" (Big Beach) at the far end of town. At this point it became obvious that I had reached Atacama, home of the driest desert in the world, even if I was at the beach.
   In the morning I took a walk, frustrated myself on the wi-fi internet, and then left town to Copiapo. I had thought I would stay a couple of nights in Copiapo, and do a tour up to Nacional Parque Tres Cruzes. I walked into town to find a tour agency, but there seemed to be none where the guide booke suggested, so I asked in the LAN Chile (airline) office and they directed me to the government tourist office. It was closed for the day. I took the hint... It wasn't tourist season, I was unlikely to get a tour, and I returned to the bus station, and headed off again, to Caldera.

The Sea in front of my hotel, Huasco.

Huasco and its fishing boats.

The skate park in Huasco.

The desert meets the sea at Huasco's 'Playa Grande'.

Oh, I loved the playground equipment in a seaside park in Huasco, there was also a see-saw and a fort. Let me know if you'd like to see more photo's!

Notes:
Accomodation: Huasco; Hostel San Fernando $30. private room, private bath, beach views, eggs at breakfast! * * * * *
Buses, 2 of: La Serena to Huasco $12
2 seafood empanadas: $3.

La Serena and Elqui Valley in Chile

   La Serena, Serena means 'Morning Dew', so 'La Serena' is 'The morning dew'. Such a nice name for the seaside city.
   I arrived on Thursday December 10th in the middle of the afternoon. My new roommate was still in bed, unmotivated, but talkative.... so we realised that we both wanted to do a tour of Elqui Valley, and so then she had her motivation and we set off to find and book a tour and have lunch.
   We did the tour on Friday. Elqui Valley is a lush floor of green, mostly by the growing of grapes, with steep baren mountainous hills rising on each side. The grapes are grown to make Pisco and as table grapes for export. So we naturally visited a Pisco distillery. We also visited a dam, saw cochineal farming, and had a lunch of goat cooked by solar power (This really interested me).
At the end of the day, I decided to tack a Observatory (Star Gazing) tour onto the valley tour. Chile is considered (maybe just by the Chileans, I don't know) to have the best star gazing in the world. At any rate, there are a lot of observatories here, and the biggest telescopes in the world are here and are owned by the more wealthy nations. It was explained that Europe and USA have the money, but Chile has the clear skies. A lot of the time when you look to the top of a hill (these hills are like 2000+m), you will see a dome on top, and realise that there is yet another observatory. The star gazing was very nice, I learnt a bit.
    Then on Saturday I went to La Serena's artisan markets and beach, which wasn't great and was made worse because the sun only appeared for 5 minutes of the afternoon. Actually, interesting name La Serena... more like morning cloud, each day the morning has cloud which usually clears between 1 and 3pm.
    On Sunday, it was election day, the streets were busy, and kind of excited. And it was time for me to move on... to Huasco.

The cochineal insect lives on the leaves of the prickly pear, the female bodies are dried to make red dye. So, if you were vegan, I guess you'd have to be choosey about buying red things?

The Pisco distillery, at the final stage. Now that I have tasted it straight, I realised it definately needs mixing... which I tend to think why bother persisting with something that has to be mixed?

Elqui Valley. The contrast between the green grape fields and the baron hills is striking.

Lunch was solar cooked. I just might build one of these one day.

 This carving in the plaza of Vicuna took my eye. Vicuna isn't a great place to have to wait 3 hours.

Notes:

Accommodation: La Serena Aji Verde HI hostel, dorm bed, member. $13 per night. * * * * *

Collectivo Taxi, Ovalle to La Serena $5. A collectivo taxi is shared with other people. I could have taken the bus and save 40c, but it would have taken 30 minutes longer and left me at the bus terminal on the far side of town.

Tour, Elqui Valley $32. Worth doing.

Tour, Observatory: $28. I wasn't disappointed, although I probably wouldn't recommend it to me.