Ch-ch-ch-Chile!

Ahoy there, mateys! We are once again sailing along (or rolling along as the case may be) on our way from Valparaiso, Chile to Callao, Peru. We’ve had a phenomenal time in Chile in the completely out-of-this-world San Pedro de Atacama.

Our first day in Chile, we took off from Valparaiso to the Santiago airport where we grabbed a flight to the city of Calama. Calama is a copper mining city (Chile’s #1 export to the world), full of Codelco guys and mining and almost nothing else. Once there we had a classic Latin rental car experience where the car we’d reserved through Orbitz was not the car they had for us. But they could give us a smaller car for the same price. Um, no thanks! We’ll take a better car for the same price, thank you! So it took some wrangling, but once we went ahead and made it clear that we were not taking the smaller car for the same price, we were in business. Then it was an hour and a half drive through the desert to San Pedro de Atacama, where we stayed.

Our hotel was spectacular. Usually this sort of thing is nice and all, but this was incredible: adobe with thatched roofs, colored glass, and a view of the Andes. There’s nothing like getting up in the morning, heading out to an excellent, fresh breakfast and looking at snow capped mountains. Wow!

On our first day in San Pedro, we made our way into town and headed to the Gustavo Le Paige museum where the Atacama mummies were supposed to be. Bummer for us, they went back to the Atacameños about 6 weeks ago. But the museum was still very interesting, all about the ways in which people survived in the Atacama for thousands of years.

The Atacama is the driest place on earth. There are places there where it has never rained at all. Ever. But while it’s a true desert with areas of sand dunes and desolation, it’s also got a strange combination of other geologic features. There is sedimentary rock, huge salt formations, salt flats, lagoons, and also geysers, all of which we were able to partake of.

After the museum, we grabbed some lunch and then headed out to the salt flats. They sneak up on you as you head down packed salt roads in a landscape of red, eroding, hills. Without noticing, we found ourselves in the midst of plains of salt blooms and formations headed towards a lake populated by three different kinds of, believe it or not, flamingoes. So here in the midst of an endless field of white, grey, and sparkling coral-like salt blooms, existed a clear blue lake and bright pink flamingoes against a backdrop of snow-capped Andes. Surreal, but stunning!

The next day we woke at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am to head out to the El Tatio geysers. These are the highest geysers in the world at an altitude of 4321 meters (about 13,000 feet). The bus arrived for us at 4 am and drove us up to the geyser field where we could watch the sun rise in the midst of clouds of steam and gushing, boiling water. Because it was so high, and it was winter as well, it was cold (-12 C, 15 F). So we were in layers and layers of clothing to stay warm. Certain types of algae, which live in boiling water, grow all around the geyser spouts, turning the ground green, amber, and orange in and amongst the ice and salt. There the tour company cooked our eggs in the boiling water of a geyser and heated our hot chocolate there as well.

After our yummy and hot breakfast we headed to the thermal springs there where all three of us managed to get into bathing suits (of a sort, underwear for the Kid and one of Ricardo’s t-shirts and boxers for me) and got into one of the thermal pools. It was fine for the first 10 minutes or so, but it wasn’t really warm enough given how cold it was outside.

So after freezing our butts off in order to say we did it, we brought our deep frozen selves back onto the bus where we headed back down the mountains on a trail through the micro climate of the sub-Cordillera. There we watched vicuñas (wild alpacas) and native birds, and even caught site of these bizarre rabbit things called vizcochas which are – I kid you not! – greenish colored rabbits with a squirrel like tail who hop kind of like a kangaroo.

From there we continued on to an indigenous village where we had the most fabulously delicious llama shish kebabs, cheese empanadas, and sopapillas while we admired the vistas and paid 200 pesos to use the water in the bathrooms even though there was no water. It was pretty much worth it for the food alone, which was some of the best we ate in all of Chile.

Once we got back to the hotel, we showered, crashed and headed out for divine steaks with sweet onions (I have got to figure out hot to make these, they have honey and cinnamon in them and they are like candy and I love them!). We realized it was going to be sunset soon so we drove over to an area called the Valle de la Luna (the Valley of the Moon).

The Valle de la Luna is a place unlike any I have ever been before. The rumor is that when the moon landing was faked this was the place they filmed it, but that doesn’t do it justice. I have never been to Bryce, Arches, or Grand Canyon, but this seems to be a combination of the Sahara (also never been there, but come on, doesn’t everyone have an image of that?), and all of the Southwest of the US. We parked and climbed up an enormous sand dune (which was a total bitch at 8,700 feet altitude) only to find that we had other ridges to climb to see the sunset properly. The Kid developed a little vertigo and I developed a dust induced asthmatic cough, so we called it quits and decided to come back the next morning during the day to explore.

This turned out to be the best choice we could have ever made. We spent about 3 hours the next day wandering over the plains, taking pictures of everything including Guanacos (another relative of the llama and alpaca), and hiking and climbing into salt caves. These looked like bizarre lego creations, or a Goudy church even, coated in sand with areas where the salt glistened through and invited tasting (because how many people have actually climbed through an area made entirely of table salt?!). The caves were partially open at the top (good for those of us with claustrophobia) and required scrambling, crawling and staring in awe.

By then were tired, dusty and hungry and we made our way back into town, ate, shopped for some trinkets and decided to head out to the archaeological site of Tulor. Tulor is a former settlement that dates from around 800 BCE to abut 300 CE. It consists of these incredible adobe, bubble shaped houses, all attached to one another and buried in the sand. It was so different from any ruins we’d seen before. It literally looked like mud colored bubble wrap that had been popped. There was a nice little museum that explained the culture and the way the people survived in this desolate place.

Sadly our time had more or less come to an end. Yesterday we got up at 4 am (ouch!!), drove back to Calama and headed back to Valparaiso. It took us just shy of 12 hours to get back, and when we did, we finally scrubbed ourselves clean of dust, ate a magnificent dinner overlooking the harbor of Valparaiso, hit the grocery store for cereal, wine (OMG can the Chileans make red wine!), water and instant espresso, and managed to get on the boat ½ hour before on-ship-time (the time which you are required to be signed in and have your passports in. The ship can leave any time after that and for every five minutes you’re late you get one hour of “dock time” where you are required to cool your heals on the ship while in port).

This trip was one of the most impressive experiences I have had. It was stark, stunning, overwhelming, awe inspiring, and exhausting. I am hoping that the next three days can be restful for me because Lima is our next stop and that means I need the energy for Machu Picchu.