San Pedro de Atacama

I’ve had quite the week traveling in the north of Chile and in Perú. I feel like, after doing this, I can pretty much travel anywhere and survive. The total time traveling by bus was at least 84 hours, plus taxi time to cross the border twice, 8 hours total in a train, and a flight back with a total time of about 4.5 hours (we had two stops, so it was a 35 min flight, a 45 min flight, and a 1 hour 45 min flight—very strange). Out of 7 nights, Emily and I spent 4 in buses. The only time we weren’t traveling in a desert was when we finally got to Machu Picchu. And yet…it was completely worth it!

We arrived at San Pedro de Atacama on Friday night and found our hostel, Hostal Florida, which turned out to be not up to our standards but we toughed it out for two days and two nights. In San Pedro there were 7 of us gringos, plus various other gringos from Valpo and other places—it’s a very touristy place, even though it’s so isolated. The Atacama Desert is supposedly the driest place in the world: it never rains ever. There are no living things at all for miles around, only in the small oasises—San Pedro is one. I started to really like being in the desert because it seems like a different culture. The weather was absolutely beautiful, warm sun and cool breeze.

My favorite thing in San Pedro was going horseback riding; I did it in Olmué for the first time, but here I got a bigger horse, we went faster, we went down big sand dunes (scary!) and the surroundings were incredible. I really felt like I was in a Western. Especially because I got to wear a hat. Our guide took us past the Cordillera de la Sal, hills made up mostly of salt, and we stopped at the oasis of Quitor, where there were pre-Hispanic ruins from the time of the Atacameña indigenous people. As it’s a desert, the buildings were preserved amazingly well.

Our two organized tours were to Valle de la Luna and the Tatio Geysers. Valle de la Luna is called Valley of the Moon because it has an unearthly surface that looks as if it’s covered with craters, and strange rock formations, at least one of which was over a million years old. The thing to do here is climb up a ridge and wait for the sunset, when the desert turns different colors because of the minerals in the dirt. Plus there was an almost-full moon, so it was just extremely strange and beautiful. There was also the hugest, smoothest sand dune I had ever seen.

The next morning we woke up at 3:30am to go on a tour of the geysers. I had heard it was going to be cold, but I was so not prepared for how freezing it was up on top of the mountain. I think it was at least -20°F, and I only had two sweatshirts on. That combined with the thin air, and I was walking pretty slowly. The picture is of Emily and me warming our frozen hands in the steam from the geysers. After having been to Yellowstone, I was surprised that we were allowed to walk around freely in the geyser area—not the safest thing in the world—but in Chile things are different I guess. As the sun was coming up, they gave us hot chocolate, and it started warming up quickly after that. So much so that just 15 minutes later we were all in our bathing suits swimming in a hot spring—it was still cold, don’t get me wrong, but it had to be done. Being a tourist in another country can be very weird, because you’ll be doing something ridiculous like swimming in a hot spring at 7am on top of a mountain in the middle of the desert, and there will be people speaking several different languages all around you doing the same thing.

Anyway, after that we got back in the bus and on the way down saw some wildlife including desert rabbits, flamingos (apparently this is their habitat??), 1000-year-old cacti, and llamas!! Bizarrely, after getting out to take pictures of the llamas, our next stop was an extremely tiny village with a population of about 50, where we had the opportunity to buy llama kebabs as we sat and watched them grazing on the hills. I couldn’t do it, but some of my friends did: “I’m never going to be able to look at a llama again without salivating.”

The second half of my voyage—Machu Picchu—I’ll save until next time.