Our group seems to be alternating big travel weekends with smaller destinations, so the next weekend after Vina del Mar, 9 of us hopped on a plane up to Calama in the Antofagasto region of Chile. I keep forgetting how big Chile is—it took 4 hours on a plane to reach our destination. One of the alums tipped us off to the benefit of renting trucks so we wouldn’t have to depend on the timing and high cost of professional tours to experience the excursions in the area. So, with two big red pickup trucks (complete with roll bars and metal cages), we took off on the hour-long drive to San Pedro de Atacama, a small oasis town in the middle of the driest desert in the world. On our way there, we thought we were driving to another planet. The landscape looked like a cross between the surface of the moon and Mars. In fact, we heard NASA actually uses the area as a mock lunar landing site because the surface is so similar to the moon! There was no green to be seen for miles and miles—until we arrived in San Pedro.
Water is still very scarce in the town since it rains on average once every ten years; in fact, our hostel had no water for part of the time we were there. Showers were limited to three minutes as well. Even the hotels that said they had 24 hours of hot water were definitely stretching that claim. We had beds pre-booked at the Hosteling International hostel located on the main pedestrian-only thoroughfare (Caracoles St). The guys had a triple-bunk bed room for the 6 of them—the top bunk was 3 meters high! And the three girls shared a room with a loft. We didn’t find out until later that night that the building was literally connected to the bar next door that turns into a night club with LOUD music until about 2am—at least we got a 10% discount on drinks there!
The whole town resembled an adobe village with dirt streets, mud walled buildings and open-roof design. The main plaza—just around the corner from our hostel—had a great museum with artifacts from the natives that inhabited the region as well as a cute church with a ceiling made entirely of cactus wood. The whole town was chock full of hotels/hostels, restaurants, and excursion companies. I was also happy to finally see lots and lots of artisan markets with handmade items for sale (not easily found in Santiago). Most shops were full of hand-knitted hats, scarves, socks all made from alpaca wool. I did a lot of Christmas shopping there for sure!!
We had wonderful meals in every restaurant we tried, and we even got serenaded by a live pan flute band the first night (exactly like an episode of South Park!). Since there really wasn’t a grocery store easily accessible in San Pedro, in hindsight, we would’ve brought some more food with us from Santiago since there are no liquid or food regulations on domestic flights in Chile. But, our hostel didn’t have a kitchen, so we ended up eating every meal out—a little spendy, but amazing food. TIP: don’t give gutter dogs French fries unless you wanted five million of them to follow you around forever…Zee learned that one the hard way!!
Brady and Sarah arrived super early in the AM on Friday, so they rented bikes and fried themselves in the sun while exploring some beautiful scenery while waiting for the rest of us to get in later in the day. Adam, Colleen and Mark rented bikes on Saturday morning and also had a blast finding old ruins and fjording streams. Kennis and Zee went on a mission to get to Bolivia, but unfortunately got a little waylaid by the signless roads (that tripped us up many more times during the weekend).
Ty, Brady, Sarah and I waited for my parents to arrive on Saturday (they flew to Chile to visit me for a week before doing a cruise around S America), then we took a roadtrip north to see a “cactus garden.” We took the same road that continues on to the geysers (which we did not go to because 1) you have to wake up at 4am to go with the tour companies and 2) we heard they are “broken” and not so great), and finally found a little oasis area with a small river and awesome HUGE cactuses growing in a valley up the side of a mountain. One of them had beautiful flowers blooming at the top—so amazing in such a barren desert.
We were also wondering why we were all feeling a little queasy and light-headed while hiking around (I’m not in THAT bad of shape) until Ty checked the altitude on his watch: about 13,000 ft!! No wonder…that’s the highest altitude most of us had ever been in (just about 1,000 feet from the top of Mt Rainier would be equivalent).
Later that same day we were determined to go sandboarding (snowboarding down sand dunes), so we rented boards and took off to Valle del Muerte (Death Valley) in pursuit of dunes. This time the signless roads REALLY got us…a couple hours of driving in dust and no dunes L, though the people riding in the truck beds had great fun. We definitely found out why you need trucks and not sedans to drive around Atacama that day. Some of us gave up on the dunes at that point since the sun was about to set and we were by then at Valle de la Luna (the Valley of the Moon), which is THE place to be to watch a sunset. We hiked up to the top of a big hill and settled in for gorgeous colors flooding the valley. Some of the guys took the other car and the boards and finally found some dunes to board down. They each got about three runs in before they were completely beat…but they said it was definitely worth it!!
Back in town, we wondered why the town was so dead on a Saturday night. After dinner and drinks in a virtually empty bar, we found out from the bartender that there’s a huge “electronic party” in the desert every Saturday night. In fact, he was closing early to attend it himself. His instructions: Go to the square, wait for a van, pay $2 and it will take you there. Sound sketchy to you? Of course! So, four of us thought we should go….Ty and I wimped out after we didn’t catch the first two vans that came by. Finally, Brady and Zee got whisked away in an unmarked black van with a group of other unsuspecting tourists…thankfully there was indeed a party and they made it back safely (they said it was pretty sweet partying with about 200 people under the stars with a huge bonfire!).
The next day, all but Brady and Zee who were still recovering, loaded into our two trucks in pursuit of mountain lakes and flamingos. We learned our lesson about driving in unknown towns when we got our car stuck during an exploratory detour through Toconao, a little tiny village—thankfully some locals helped us out with a tow (while shaking their heads at the crazy gringos of course!). We drove for a couple more hours, saw a whole bunch of alpacas and babies chomping on trees in another oasis area, and then finally started ascending into the mountains (many of which are active volcanoes).
Up in the mountains were two gorgeous lagunas in which the flamingos feed in the mornings. We were too late to see them there, so we headed back the way we came and went to the salt plains, which is where the park guides told us we’d find the birds.
On the way to the salt plains we stopped in a TINY town with only a few buildings for lunch. There was another group of tourists in one of the two restaurants, so we filled up the place with our group. When we asked the owner for menus, she said “No menus” and then went in the back and started bringing out food! It was quite a feast—and super tasty!! Bread, soup, chicken or beef (whichever you got put in front of you), rice, potatoes, and a fresh orange for dessert. Thankfully she charged us a reasonable price since we had no idea what we were paying until after the meal!
After lunch, we continued on…None of us quite knew what to expect with salt plains, but I think we were all blown away by the area. The sheer temperature change from the mountain lakes where it was very chilly to the extremely hot temps on the desert floor was crazy (we thought we lost Ty forever).
The plains were completely covered in white, crystalline salt formations except for the small rivers and lakes that ran through. Who knew flamingos would like an environment like that? But, sure enough, they do! Three different species of flamencos call the area their home and eat tiny little plankton-like food, not shrimp. So, they were actually much less pink than flamingos we’re used to seeing in the US. There were also lots of other birds and cute little lizards running around everywhere. We also decided that one of us MBA needs to go back to that park and give them a marketing plan and projections on how much money they could rake in just by installing a water/soda vending machine or ice cream shop—NO access to anything edible or refreshing at the park!
After a really long day, most people crashed after dinner. Ty and I decided to check out the stars since we had heard the desert there is one of the best places in the world to see the night sky. Apparently, the US is investing millions of dollars into building a huge telescope in Atacama. Since we are in the Southern hemisphere, we didn’t recognize many constellations, but good ol’ Orion showed up nice and bright. Karl and Kristen went the next weekend and said they were able to see Jupiter with their bare eyes…
The next day, after having been sucked dry of all the water in our bodies, we were ready to head out. So after a lazy morning of shopping and exploring the town, we packed up and hopped on earlier flights home. Finding gas for the rental cars was one of the biggest challenges of the weekend too!
(Thanks, Dad and Colleen, for providing some of the photos for this post!)
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