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Next stop from Salta was San Pedro de Atacama, Northern Chili. A beautiful oasis in the middle of the Atacama Desert with less than 2k people living there. It was GREAT to get away from the city vibe and slowly wonder around this beautiful place in the middle of the desert with stunning mountains surrounding it. Luckily neither Frank or I had any kind of cold otherwise, due to the Swine Flu fuss made, we would have been quarantined at the Chili - Argentinian border.
But we encountered our first problem of going to such a small place is the lack of banks, 0 to be exact, and one Visa atm that never had any money in it. Luckily we had a ´100 dollar bill yall´each to tide us over till we had to make a day visit to a town that had some banks.
There is a whole load of stuff to write here because we were pretty jampacked the 5 days we were there. San Pedro itself is a lovely little town that has enforced that every building constructed must use mud - rock but, as expected, it is full of tourists...not many but enough for this tiny town with only 2 main streets. The restaurants were all pretty good, the food was mostly Chilean and I had some of the best chicken breasts I have tasted. We also stayed in this lovely hostel called Eden Atacameno. The downside of Chili is that it is significantly more expensive than all the countries we had visited. The people are nice too.
So we booked a few day trips with Cosmo Andino, highly recommend and meant to be the best tour company for day trips in SP.
The first trip was a full day covering several beautiful sights around the Atacama Desert. We packed in a lot, so here is a list of the stuff we did:
- Salar de Atacama, a very large salt rubble, rather than flat, with loads of pink flamengos
- Ascended to 4300m or so to the deep blue lakes Miscanti and Miniques mirror surrounding volcanoes
- visited a hidden gorge, the Quebrada de Jere, a random green desert oasis in the middle of the desert producing various fruits.
- Also visited surrounding indigenous tiny villages, Toconao was one of them.
The Second trip was mainly about the Tatio Geysers, and meant we had to get up at 3.30 a.m. to appreciate them at their best. The few hour bus ride was painful taking us up to over 4700m where the Geysers lye in a large volcano crater. We spent 3 odd hours walking amongst these astonishing natural features spouting boiling hot water, with mud/green/yellow and orange algae and steam. After that we observed various flora and fauna as well as great scenery. To top it off we saw some wild Llama packs and thousands of Cacti.
The third trip was about eroded salts and minerals producing amazing landscapes through the Cordillera de la Sal, incredible mixture of sand dunes amongst Death Valley. After that we headed to Valley de La Luna. We walked through crackling canyons, then for a spectacular sunset, changing the surrounding mountains tints of orange to purple...we felt as if we were on another planet, perhaps Mars.
All three trips were EXCELLENT and we had the same guide called Oscar throughout who was born and lived in London, only recently moved to Chili, so spoke perfect Landan English, a pleasant surprise.
Like I mentioned at the beginning the drawback of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere is that we had to do a day trip to Calama to draw out cash from an ATM. Calama is not worth a visit, it is a weird city full of weird people, confirmed by many Chileans as well our own experience. Stay clear unless you need to fly out.
So, a great 5 days and our 3 day 4wd tour through the Atacama desert to Uyuni (Bolivia) to look forward too!
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