I spent last Friday-Tuesday in the north of Chile in San Pedro de Atacama and its surrounding areas, the driest desert in the world. It was absolutely incredible and unlike anything I have ever seen or experienced before in my life and am so glad I had the opportunity to go! Although a lot of this recap, as I just realized, is full of funny oddities and quirks and strange occurances, it was an absolutely incredible vacation and location. To the extent that I didn´t even realize most of these quirks until just now when I went to recap it, which tells you just how amazing it was!
Friday:
For once in our traveling around South America lives, we did not have an airplane leaving at the booty crack of dawn which in and of itself was rather glorious. Lindsey and I, who both arrived to San Pedro before Christine and Kathryn and left after them, experimented with a new (cheaper) way of getting to the airport and succeeded in metro and bussing there and arriving in plenty of time for our flight to Calama, a city that Lonely Planet literally describes as a ¨shithole¨ rich off of copper mining about 1 hour northwest of San Pedro de Atacama. After taking a taxi from the airport to the bus station (where we later learned many people get robbed, doesn´t Calama sound like a lovely place?) we successfully purchased bus tickets to San Pedro, the funny part is it was then 2pm and we were sold tickets for the 130 bus seeing as it hadn´t yet arrived nor did it arrive until 3:30pm. Apparently the rumors that bus travel in the north of Chile is far worse than any other part of the country are true. However, by about 5pm we had successfully arrived in San Pedro, having been dropped off in the outskirts of a little adobe village in the middle of a vast desert valley. After going to our hostel and realizing they had lost our reservation but successfully re-reserved 4 more beds and this time at a cheaper rate, Lindsey and I decided to go for a run to see the town a little bit and partly to ditch a smoking French man that had decided he wanted to hang out with us. Having been ignorant of the fact that we were about 5,000 feet of altitude and having not run for 2 weeks, the run was a bit labored but it was absolutely gorgeous. We ran through the tiny dirt roads surrounded by adobe houses while surrounded by a setting sun and massive Andean volcanoes as our backdrop, probably the most incredible run I have ever been on.
After the run, we went to dinner at a very cute little restaurant called The Cave and figured out our tour plans (basically you have to do a tour do see most of the things up there because they are a ways out of town) while we shared a pizza and a bottle of wine while being slightly entertained as a massive group of Stanford students sat at the table beside us. Then it was an early bed time with a brief waking up at 12:30 for me when Kathryn and Christine arrived and an hour waking up at 2am for poor Lindsey as the dinner did not seem to like her stomach (luckily it was brief).
Saturday:
Saturday morning we awoke with Christine and Kathryn having arrived (and had a ridiculous night in their hostel room finally resulting in switching to ours after a cop had to be called to chill out crazy french man Linds and I had previously ditched via our run) and we indulged in the (pathetic) hostel breakfast of a piece of bread with coffee without milk or tea. Then, we rented bikes and road out to some Atacameño ruins called Pukará de Quitor. It was about a 2 hour ordeal back into an absolutely incredible valley and then a hike up to the top of the hillside covered in the old ruins that served as a fortress against the Inkans. It was really cool and got me very very excited to hike Machu Picchu next month! I´ve decided riding my bikes when I´m traveling is one of my very favorite things to do because it allows you to see so much, is cheap, and is always fun!
After the bike ride we grabbed one of the million set lunch menus at one of the restaurants in town (San Pedro has definitely taken full advantage of the fact that it has quickly become a tourist destination) and ate a 3 course meal before heading out to SANDBOARD! Our guide, who kept telling us his name was Kelly Slater and he was from Huntington Beach while he was clearly Chilean and also started smoking a joint while taking pictures of us sandboarding/ was absolutely hilarious, picked us up and drove us to Valle de la Muerte to a massive sand dune, handed us some snowboards and some wax, and we trekked up the massive dune to have our first go at it. In the end, we trekked up the massive dune 6 times improving each time on the way down and having TONS of fun while looking out on an incredible view and getting sand places not even imaginable. One of my favorite parts was when I was up on the dune waiting to go down and saw about 7 horses on the horizon of a dune peaking over the top on the dune and then trotting down the front of it. It was absolutely epic and picturesque like something out of a movie set in the Sahara. As part of the tour after sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte, we were driven to Valle de la Luna and served Pisco Sours while watching the sunset over one of the strangest landforms I´ve ever seen: a dessert that really does look like the moon full of craters.
That night (sans shower and thus still very sandy due to the fact that our hostel failed at having hot water quite often and the nights were freezing so wet hair at night=bad idea) we went to a ridiculously cheap dinner of chicken and fries followed by a beer with our hostel roommate including a guy from Canada, a guy from England, and a girl from New York. Then it was to bed early again 1) because there´s nothing to do in this tiny desert town at night any how and 2) because we had a 3:30am wakeup call the next morning!
Sunday:
After a 3:40am alarm and some very quick throwing on of tons of layers (which still proved to not be enough) we were picked up by an absolutely ridiculous truck that must have been bigger than the streets themselves of San Pedro and headed 90km/2 hours out of town up into the high plateau of the Andes to the Geisers del Tatio. Our guide suggested we sleep since the terrain was going to be rough, and he wasn´t kidding! Needless to say, little sleeping actually occurred as it was also very very cold. When we arrived, we got to wander the geyser field at 13,000+ feet of altitude while the sun rose and the moon was still in the sky. It was beautiful and insanely remote and gorgeous; it was also insanely cold (14 degrees) and my toes were literally in pain and took a good hour to feel normal again but it was definitely without a doubt worth it! The tour also included an awesome breakfast cooked out of a magically appearing stove out of the side of our massive truck/christmas train/garbage truck of fresh pancakes with dulce de leche, ham and cheese sandwiches cooked to delicious meltiness, and coffee and tea (with milk!) all served while sitting in magically appearing chairs and tables in the middle of the geyser field. Needless to say, far better than our hostel breakfast :). On the way back into San Pedro, we saw groups of vicuñas (smaller llamas) wandering the plateau and stopped in a village called Machuca with a population of 10 (plus about 60 tourists at any given time) where Lindsey and I tried (and enjoyed) llama meat kebabs!
If you ever get a chance to try llama meat, do so and you will be pleasantly surprised! I figured, when the heck else am I going to have the opportunity to eat a llama kebab?! The last stop we made on our return trip to San Pedro was in the middle of a mountain side covered with an endemic species of cactus with a little river flowing between the two hillsides in the middle of the high plateau.
We grabbed a quick lunch of empanadas before being picked up for our second tour of the day to the Salt Lagoons in the Salt Flat of Atacama. I was a little skeptical as some of our previous hostel mates had said that the Laguna Cejar, one of the places we were headed, was missable. However, I think they were very very mistaken as this was possibly the most fun tour we did! We first went to the Laguna Cejar where we swam in the lagoon in the middle of the Salar.
It is like the dead sea in that it has such a high salinity content that you literally just float which is a very strange, cool, unique sensation! Then we headed to the Ojos del Salar which are two twin lakes very close to each other in the middle of the Salar with reflective water.
(moon walking on saturn. . .aka in the Salar near the Ojos)
After that, we drove to someplace in the middle of the Salar to watch the sunset, take pictures, and have Pisco Sours and chips.
This, unfortunately, is where my camera met its end falling into the Salt Flat after the string portion I was holding it by decided to separate itself from the rest of the camera. Though this is clearly upsetting, there was nothing I could have done and was not even that upset about it at the time as I was surrounded by the coolest most aw inspiring view of my life. We basically had a 360 view of the sun setting and turning the surrounded volcanoes pink as they reflected in the water of the Salar. It was absolutely majectic. We spent some time salt island hopping before the sun completely set giving way to the most incredible (I really need more adjectives) starry night sky I have ever seen with Venus shining brighter than I´ve ever seen a planet in the sky, an amazing shooting star, and the Milky Way. We also ended up having an impromptu dance party with a tour group full of Indians and our Chilean tour guides for a good hour before deciding the time had come to return to town.
I took the fastest/coldest shower ever that night as I was absolutely covered in salt before heading out to a quick dinner with our hostel roommate Rachel again and then crashing having been awake since 3:40 and had another tour at 6am the next morning. The day had been absolutely indescribably perfect.
Monday:
Once again on Monday morning, we awoke before the sun at 5:40 to leave for our final tour which started again back at the Salar at the Reserva Nacional los Flamengos where we watch an epic sunrise over the Andes while looking out at Chilean and Andean Flamingos in the salt lagoons in the middle of the Salar. We walked around the reserve a bit before eating breakfast in the sun (it was definitely cold, but not nearly as bad as the day before) and then heading up in the car back to high altitude of nearly 13,000 meters through a town called Socaire. We briefly stopped in Socaire on the way up to reserve lunch on the way down and visit the tiny church and see the Inkan plateaued agriculture. The town had a very tiny population of almost all indigenous Atacameños, and we were told we could take pictures but to be careful and not accidentally take any pictures of the indigenous people. From there, we continued gaining altitude up the plateau until we arrived at an incredibly secluded, absolutely sublime view of two high plateau lakes surrounded by snow capped 6,000+ meter Andean Volcanoes with llamas drinking out of the lakes. It was almost a surreal view it was so absolutely incredible and easily and without a doubt among one of the coolest most awesome things I have ever experienced without a single soul besides us in sight. Absolutely stunning.
On the way down from the lakes, we stopped and ate a 3 course lunch in Socaire made in a tiny little restaurant in town that was clearly just someones dining room and kitchen. It was delicious! Then we continued down the mountain to a town called Toconao (population 700, we're getting bigger!) and stopped for a bit to shop in the Artesan stores and wander the town before heading back to San Pedro.
(A llama that I saw herding some goats :) )
That afternoon, Lindsey and I took the free afternoon/evening oportunity to play a little catch up by going to an internet cafe, doing some shopping around town, reserving our transfer to the airport for the following day, and showering while Kathryn and Christine got ready and left for their flight home that evening. Lindsey and I ate some absolutely delicious canelones with wine at a very cute restaurant in town and then did some reading and packed up before crashing early after two very early wake up calls in a row.
Tuesday:
On our last half day in San Pedro, Lindsey and I woke up early enough to grab a quick hostel breakfast before renting bikes for 2 hours to bike out to Valle de la Muerte (where we had sandboarded) before catching our transfer back to Calama. The beginning of the ride was a bit tumultuous as a pack of stray dogs decided they were going to follow us and I am very very afraid of being bitten by a stray dog. However, we soon figured out that these dogs were not going to bite us and figured they wouldn't go past the city limits. Wrong. They followed us the entire 2 hour bike ride along the highway, back on the sand path into the stunning valley, and even after we ditched the bikes to walk the last bit towards the dunes! After realizing they were nice, however, it turned out to be pretty funny! It was an incredible bike ride, definitely the coolest I've ever been on and a great way to finish out an absolutely amazing trip up to the Atacama desert.
We returned the bikes, grabbed some quick empanadas, and hopped on our transfer back to Calama to board our plane back to Santiago.
It was a trip I will absolutely always treasure and never forget, full of landforms and views unlike anything I have ever seen before that were truly spectacular. I'm so glad I got to go!!!
SEE YOU IN 4 WEEKS <3 :)
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