I use the word endured solely because San Pedro de Atacama is 25 hours worth of bus ride away from Valpo... 25. I admit to actually enjoying the marathon bus rides, though the few hours before you are able to fall asleep, when the lights are out but you are still awake, those are rough. Did I mention it was 25 hours on that bus? Determined to document such a monumentous journey, I took pictures of Jun and Joakim every hour to demonstrate the effects of such a trip on the mind. First, one entertain his or herself easily, as is the way with one who still has high spirits. In our case, we made signs to hold in the window, like 9 year old kids. The first one said ¿Dónde estámos? and this was legitimate, but then we progressed to 'te amo,' 'carreteamos (let's party!),' and it just went downhill from there. At one point I asked the bus man to translate some of the signs for me, but they were so obscene that he refused, and I had to ask several other passengers until I found someone willing to enlighten me. When I say man on the bus, I mean the guy that takes your tickets and hands out food and talks to you when you are bored. They are like flight attendants kind of (bus attendants?) I have no idea what to call him, so I will call him huevon de bus, which I will translate in this case as "dude."
The fun with signs faded, and I entertained myself with Transporter 3. At 11 they stopped showing movies, there was nothing, no lights or sound, just semireclined seats and 10-minute stops every 4 hours. Let me put this in perspective: if you are sitting in a class that is moving extremely slowly, and you have 25 minutes left and are thinking, wow, that is an incredibly long time to wait, multiply that feeling by 5,000. Semi cama is not conducive to REM sleep.
At 12 Rachel and I talked. At 1 I wanted to cry. By 2, I was the only one awake aside from the driver. At 3 I slept. At 5 the toilet in the bathroom overflowed. I soaked my shoes when I went in (what an interesting mix of fluids that surely was). At 8 I woke up again and we were suddenly in another world, one with long plains and no plants, no vegetation at all as far as you could see. The Atacama!!I slept again. I never thought I could endure such a trip, but it was enjoyable for the scenery and as always the people. We made good friends with the bus man huevon, and he showed us cool stuff like the mano del desierto, which is an 11 meter tall sculpture of a hand, about 75km south of Antofogasta, not close to anything.
To be honest, I overall greatly enjoyed the bus experience, and will likely do it again to go to the south. The interesting things outweigh the difficulty sleeping, and one can always curl up with a good book if all else fails.
We arrived in Antofogasta, the second largest city in Chile, under the assumption that our trip was only 21 hours in total, but it turns out that San Pedro de Atacama is 5 hours inland, not half an hour. Oops. My companions nearly slit my throat. 5 more hours might not seem like a lot, but after 25 hours in transit it... We had a stop to change busses and met up with Dustin and Maija in Calama, then powered on to San Pedro as the sun set. I sat next to a San Pedro resident who was not only extremely nice, but helped me significantly with desert vocabulary, and is the only reason we all got into the same hostel. I LOVE CHILEANS!! He called the owner and we all got in for 7 mil pesos, the best price in town during this busy time of travel. San Pedro is overrun with travelers because of fiestas de patrias, the independence day celebrations 18 de septiembre and all week, when Chileans have off of work and school. Most of our classes were cancelled to, which is why this week was ideal for this trip. It is always a popular one for PUCV exchange students; we ran into 3 other groups from our university there.
Our hostel was a stretch; the hot water was sporadic, the door to our room did not have a key and therefore could not be locked from the outside, and two people from our group had to share a bed the first night. It was sufficient however, and the owner, Ceaser, was awesome, and not just for his cool name. Rachel had been worried that it would turn out like the movie Taken when the man was leading us to the hostel, but he said his goodbyes and went on his way, we did not see him again, and all was well.
Monday, Salar, salt pools and Valle de la Luna
Because San Pedro de Atacama is so small, it has little public transportation, so the best way to get to the further points of interest is on a tour. We booked 3 days worth, beginning Monday afternoon. The morning was spent exploring the town. It is small and has unpaved roads, of which I am a big fan. The layout is as follows: restaurant, tourist agency, shop, minimarket, rental place, repeat about 20 times. We encountered various types of music in the street on a regular basis which was always interesting. The first restaurant we at at, Coyote Bike, also rents bikes, which is the best way to get around locally. Most Chilean cities are centered around a plaza de armas, and San Pedro's contains a church which lonely planet describes as being delightful and sugar-white, which is dead-on, a cute colonial church of adobe with a cactus roof.
Our tour commenced mid-afternoon with an excursion to Salar de Atacama, which is the expansive salt flat south of San Pedro. Here we swam in lagunas Cejas and Piedra. Swimming in the Great Salt Lake is surely an experience similar to this; you floated incredibly high in the water. It felt more like flying than swimming. I decided that it would be a good experience to put my head under, and even though my eyes were tightly shut, they burned for hours afterward from the salt. For a place so simple, it is absolutely beautiful, with distant peaks over 12,000 feet and endless clear sky and land.
Onward to Valle de la Luna. For quite a long time I have desired to visit this place, but never thought I actually would. I remember first learning about it and thinking about how cool that would be. There we were. We climbed and slid through extensive caves in cordillera del la sal before racing back to the van to make it for la puesta del sol en la duna mayor. The best place to watch sunset is on top of a massive sand dune, where you can see much of the valley, stunning in low lighting. We got there just as the sun set behind another dune. Opportunity missed. We ran up the dune anyway (do you have any idea how difficult that is? try running on a steep incline of sand for 1o minutes and see how far you get) as all the other groups were filing back down to their vans. It was still amazing, the place really does look like the moon, with incredible rock structures and windswept mountains. There were only about 10 people left up top when it happened. The sun set behind the horizon, not just the dune, and the sky lit on fire. All of a sudden the clouds were red, like molten magma red, with purple and blue and any other color that can be perceived as beautiful included. The entire sky, all of it. Opportunity seized! For 5 minutes it was like stagnant northern lights, magnified and at a lower latitude. Or doubts about missing the sunset for tardiness and clouds vanished, and those in a rush to leave missed the best view in the world.
We dined in Milagro, a restaurant with a massive fire pit right in the center, and this particular evening four tables of Canadian Infantry members who had just completed a sort of war game training competition in the desert. They had a strong interest in American politics, and decided that we [the gringas] were atypical Americans with open minds, shown by our time in Chile. We spent about 3 hours in that place, with fire and dessert and good conversation.
Tuesday: Flamingos and alpine lakes
When you think of the Atacama desert, the driest place on earth, do flamingos and alpine lakes come to mind? When I was little, I saw a program on TV showing flamingos in high-altitude salt lakes, with huge mountains and steaming water. Ever since, I wanted to see it ( I should stop watching TV is a common theme here). Here we were, though the steaming water comes later. In a part of the Reserva Nacional Las Flamencos (which also contains Valle de la Luna) where the ground consists of solidified hunks of salt, there is a series of lakes full of brine shrimp and a healthy breeding population of 3 species of flamingos. It is truly stunning, shorebirds and flamingos everywhere, Andean Avocets, Andean Gulls. I can't do justice to a description of several shocking pink flamingos flying with a background of the Atacama. And then there was Philip, a recent graduate from China who is working for a year in Santiago. We hung out and took pictures of flamingos and us with flamingos and us without flamingos. He is nothing short of awesome.
And Hernan, our tour guide, was the man! I love guides and have thus far only had excellent experiences with them.
From there to Socaire, a tiny town with a gorgeous church and an amazing little restaurant where we dined on our return trip from the alpine lakes. The alpine lakes!!! The journey was long, cold at 4,120 meters (13,500 ft) above sea level. The van struggled to move in the thin air. One volcano there, the most "volcano-looking volcano I have ever seen" was like a South-American Mount Shasta. The lakes, Miscanti and Meñiquez, were rediculously blue, surrounded my vicuñas and mountains and snow, and were some of the most breathtaking things I have ever seen. Others were annoyed by how long the trip took, but I could have rode around all day just watching. This place felt very dynamic, with strong winds, rolling clouds, and a bitter harshness in the cold, thin air. Though there is not a huge variety of animals here, it still seems full of life and energy. This altitude gave me a pounding headache.
Land mines- minas antipersonales- still exist, ready to blow, in several places close to San Pedro. Land mines! The big volcano at the end of town, Licancabur, (ok it is rather far away but still looms in the distance) is on the border between Bolivia and Chile, and still contains land mines from past conflicts. There are signs in places where the mines have not been deactivated or have not been fully checked. I hope they read Danger! in 10 different languages, "danger, you could blow off your legs and have no one around to help you. Dustin reassured me that they are not designed to kill, only to maim, so as to weaken the enemy by in essence weakening two people, the injured and the caretaker with the responsibility. Great. Smart and horrific strategy. My desire to run up a volcano without a guide has significantly diminished.
Another interjection, on the Spanish of Jun. Jun has the following as his Spanish vocabulary: Que rico! Demaciado. [insert name]+ -ito or -cito, ¿cachai? and sí po. He uses these expressions in ways that are not actually used in spanish, and in a context that makes no sense at all. At the restarant in Socaire, he called the waiter "caballerito," which is not a real expression, but could be said as a form of endearment, I guess. I saw food projected invuluntarilly across the room and many people nearly falling out of their chairs in reaction to this. Oh, Hernan was always called "choferito." As such, I became known as "Ellenita," which Jun and Joakim still use.
On our trip vuelta, we made two stops, one in the town of Toconao, and one at a place where there were trees that was just like an orchard, except the trees did not produce fruit and it was a desert. In Toconao we found yet another pretty church and LLAMAS! I have always loved llamas, and it has been a long-time desire to see them. The owner of the llamas lets them run around, so I got to play with Macarena, the huge brown one, and the smaller "gringa" llama, white with blue eyes. Soon after in the orchard place Jun and Joakim, keeping true to their tradition of mayhem, sought out locals to hang out with. We briefly met a man who had the day before eaten his goat (the skin was on the fence). If you go someplace without interacting with the people there, you are missing out.
We found out that we could not get a bus back to Valpo until Friday, Chile independence day, and the worst possible place to be during the celebrations. Ah well, our search lead us to extensive artesian shops and the Terra Oasis, a cheap but top notch restaurant owned by a team of friendly Chilean women whom the boys harassed for the entire evening, including after the rest of us left. In Chile, a salad often means a serving of several varieties of vegetables rather than just lettuce, such as fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. In Chile, lentils = delicious, as does fruit and cream, and any kind of tea. We returned to this restaurant twice more, once to eat and once to visit.
I will once again suggest hanging out with your fellow hostel residents. Everyone was Chilean, because for the week of 18 de septiembre many businesses close and so Chileans vacation. Curiously, they were all from Santiago, all suggested not to go to Calama, and all offered to give us "real" Santiago tours, not touristy tours. And then there is Ceasar, who is always interesting.
Wed: Geysers/valle de la Muerte/sanboarding/machu picchu mini
After almost exactly a two hour nap, I found myself boarding the van bound for a place of extreme heat and cold. Iceland! Just kidding, that is too far. Two hours and a rough ride later, there was sufficient light to see the Tatio Geysers, the world's highest geyser field. Every photograpg I have every seen of the geyser field shows early morning light with bright sun and very visible steaming geysers. There was no sun, and therefore the geyser steam was not as vivid as I expected. It didn't matter though, because it was still spectacular, and as at valle de la luna, we ended up lucking out anyway. While we were at the field, it snowed, even more in the mountains around us. By the time we were ready to leave, the clouds have cleared and the land was brilliantly white with fresh snow and cut by harsh wind. It was absolutely stunning, as good as any sunrise you will ever see.
I was somewhat unnerved by the fact that we were essentially standing on top of burning water. Some of the geysers have rings of rocks around them to prevent visitors from falling through where the crust is weak. You walk in the field at your own risk, and are give a brochure that details what do to if you are burned (and that the nearest hospital is in Calama, at least 3 hours away). I enjoyed when Jun stood in the steam from a dry geyser and enjoyed the warmth ("Que rico!" but was shocked by the cold when he stepped out ("demaciado frío!") After significant geyser exploring, we had a hot breakfast closer to the 6 meter tall geyser "the assassin." Hernan served us coffee "just like starbucks!" and Philip and I toasted to our hot milk in styrofoam cups. Finally, we made it to the hot springs, where we stripped down in the subfreezing (it was still snowing) and hunted fervently for the warmest spots, some of which were definitely capable of burnage. Getting out of that water was super fun, let me tell you. So was changing, in a flat open field dripping wet in constant wind.
Overall my experience at Tatio was top-notch; it is an incredible place to visit. We teetered down the mountainside with the other tourist vans to a creek which for some reason was not frozen over. Here we found an array of waterfowl, the names of which I made Hernan write on a list for me so I could remember and identify them later.
Machuga is an alpine town with a permanent population: 8. On our visit during our decent, there were two residents. Most have houses elsewhere during the lull in tourist season. I loved it; it had the true feel of an Andes town. Another cool church too. It also had an extremely odd combination of assets, as follows: 1. solar panels on thatched roofs, 2. flamingos, (again, high rocky mountains and flamingos?!) and 3, within the same field of view as the first two, llamas. LLAMAS!! and flamingos, practically hanging out together. I love llamas. I want to own one. There was an entire herd of them. I have just fulfilled so much more of my life by visiting this place.
On the two hours ride back, we stopped along a cliff to look for the fuzzy things that are like rabbits with long tails. I have no objection to this, as you well know, but we were right on the edge. I could look right down into the chasm of doom, and I was not even on the chasm side of the vehicle. Hernan has guts, let me tell you. The cute fuzzies were nowhere to be found. Philip learned Jun's 10-word Spanish vocabulary, and likely received langage and emotional scarring. His English is better than his Spanish, but he learns fast and is fun to talk to in either language. He joined us for lunch at Adobe, which is recommended as one of the top eateries in all of Chile. I see their point. I was served pumpkin soup, some unbearably delicious ají chicken, and absurdly good chocolate dessert square things. I may have found something more tasty than artichokes.
After several days of whining to travel on bike, I finally made it happen. I convinced the boys to rent bikes and sandboards, and off we went. When I was getting directions from the sandboard shop guy, I asked him if there were any land mine areas close by that we needed to avoid, and he told me that sandboarding was an extreme sport where you have to dodge the land mines ("They are not intended to kill" he said). True to form, I misinterpreted his directions to find Valle de la Muerte, and instead took us to to the Pukará de Quitor, a precolumbian fortress/settlement seated on a hill overlooking the oasis at San Pedro., the last stronghold against the Spanish forces in the north. Jun realized what it was at first, but I thought it was an overlook at first and continued to look for it until Philip pointed out that I had passed it, by this point twice. June describes Quitor as "Machu Piccu chico," and it really is a lot like that. The foundations wind up the cerro and are, in my opinion, extensive, and rather impressive. The view at the top is phenomenal. It is absolutely surreal to climb around in such a site, with truly ancient features.
In a race against the sunset, we bolted towards Valle de la Muerte, which means death valley. No one has died here; it was so named when the description of "valle de marte," like mars, was misinterpreted. Here we wound through a bone-dry towering canyon towards an equally high sand dune. High is not descriptive enough; it was like sahara desert massive big dune. It took me 10 minutes to climb to the top. I consider myself an extreme athlete now that I have successfully slid down a massive sand dune on a pink snowboard without falling, at least by the 4th time anyway. We just kind of went and did it, no instructor, so I am sure our form was horrific. We stayed until past sundown, when the low light lit up the canyons and valleys and sand and lenticular clouds. Somehow we navigated back in nearly pitch black (I am getting to be a pro at this), which was tricky as we frequently hit un-bikable patches of deep sand. Upon our return, we went back to Terra Oasis for an equally delicious meal as before and then slept like the dead. I literally could hardly hold my head up, I was that tired. The altitude, about 2,400 m (7,900ft) surely affected this; after biking for 5 minutes I was rather tired, I have no idea how I made it back actually.
Thurs: museo/valle de la luna 2/observatorio
After a good 9 hours of sleep I was good to go again, but everyone else slept in until 12. I utilized my time to check out the Museo Gustavo Le Paige, a very organized octagonal museum, which had an impressive array of local artifacts. The artifacts preserve well in such a dry environment. I reunited with the others (Jun and Joakim left to Calama to fly back to Valpo) to head to a 18 de septiembre parade in town with Stefania and Sebastian, two Chileans from Santiago who shared our hostel. We enjoyed the 18 de septiembre parade next to the plaza de armas, which included everything from bands to the Chilean army, which was rather impressive. We moved to more festivities for cueca in traditional costume and free empanadas. Comida para probar included Mote con Huesillo, dehydrated peaches and juice with barley on the bottom, served cold in a glass, and kabobs with llama meat, hot dog and onion. We ran into Philip again, hung out for a bit, then opted for more biking in the afternoon. This time though the girls wanted to visit the ruins of Quitor, which I had already seen, so I decided that a more in-depth tour of Valle de la Luna was in order. Well, I had decided this since I saw it the first time 3 days prior, but I never thought I would have time for it.
You may think that biking alone through the world's driest desert at a decently high altitude with preexisting muscle fatigue is a ridiculously unsafe way to pass your time. I disagree. It was the most spectacular thing I did in San Pedro. Plus, tourist vans passed every 3 minutes, so help was close if needed. The solitude and simplicity and beauty of the desert are amazing. That being said, I did not even know if I would make it to the valley on bike, though only 10 kilometers away, I still struggled for the thin air. But make it I did. I promptly went the wrong way as soon as I entered the reserve, into Coyo, an indigenous village, which was really cool but not in the direction I was heading. Just as I got back on course I received a call from my host mom. In the middle of the Atacama. "Hi, I'm great, I'm coming home in two days, just biking in Valle de La Luna." It was a weird conversation, to call from this place. Next, crossing the cordillera de la sal range was rough, I walked my bike up the entire thing. Down the other side I passed duna mayor again and made my way to the Tres Marias. This is probably the most famous image of the valley, three twisted rock spires rising from the desert floor. There was a tour van there with only the guide sitting in it. He said he was waiting for his group, which was at duna mayor watching the sunset. I thought it was cool that he was just chilling out alone with the three marias. He directed me toward a nearby salt mine, which I explored just before sunset, which I watched at the tres marias, away from the dune crowds. I loved that place. It may sound like a stark reality, but it is fabulous in my opinion. It's open and eerie, intriguing with different landforms, almost magical, and really does look like the moon. The return journey was almost entirely downhill, which meant the return was an hour in contrast to the nearly 3 hour trip there. For the third time in Chile, I biked back at night, enjoying the expansive unspoiled sky.
The only thing we could do to appreciate the sky more was to go to the observatory. Trena and I hauled our tired selves to the observatory micro that led to the site just out of town, for a two and a half hour tour. I believe the couple that runs it is originally from France, but they each speak seriously 5 different languages. 5. The tour itself was rather impressive, and included time at all of the telescopes and thorough explanations about way more than I thought existed outside our atmosphere. It was intensely interesting. The group was most intrigued however by the, what do you call it, a light pen, but super, a super light pen. It emitted a green light beam so the guide could point out stuff to us. But I mean the light was so strong that it looked like it actually touched the sky, which appeared as a black blanket stretching between all sides of the horizon. I am convinced that if that light beam hit your eye, it would melt out of the socket. Impressive also were the frequent shooting stars, of which I caught 6, one through a telescope. I am a huge fan of all tours being in Spanish, and was surprised that I was able to understand the names and technical vocabulary, but somehow that worked out, in part for an explanation of new terms, as many people in this group spoke Spanish as a second or third language.
The best way I found to start a conversation with a stranger while in transit is to ask where they are going and where they are from. From there you can get into asking what those places are like, and they will inevitably ask where you are from. Bam, conversation started. I used this process on the return bus trip to meet a number of interesting Chileans. The first of which gave me a fabric keyring thing for the 18 de septiembre celebrations. I regret traveling on the most important of days in Chile, but it was our only choice. It was also incredibly inconvenient; we could not get seats together (actually better because then you get to talk to Chileans) and all of the food places are closed. And the speakers placed no sound unless you had earbuds, which I did not. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Marley and Me, made possible with Spanish subtitles, and reading the Old Patagonian Express, before several hours of terrible sleep. Folks, here ends the tale of San Pedro. You are all probably like yay!! Such verbose summaries are not necessary!! My adventure for the north of Chile is not yet satisfied, but my vision of seeing valle de la luna and alpine flamingos, which I have had for quite a while, is more than satisfactory.
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