Well this is certainly different. Up in the Atacama desert miles from anywhere. Barren, dry and empty. Our flight from Santiago the day before yesterday landed us in a very small, isolated and rather spooky airport at Calama which ( apparently the centre of the worlds largest copper and lithium mines ) where we were met by our driver and driven off into the of the desert. There were other passengers on our flight but I haven't a clue where they went as we were the only car about for miles. Haven't seen them since. They were just spirited away. Richard reckoned they were all miners headed in the opposite direction to the copper mines. Well maybe...
Anyway what can you say about this particular desert? Stone crags, shale, stone mountains in the distance. Not a tree or a bird or a bush in site. Dead quiet with a long straight road which went on mile after mile without variety. It is a desert after all. There were little shrines every so often along the roadside. We joked that they were the casualties of driving accidents....... Like how bad would you have to be to have an accident on miles of straight road with about 2 oncoming vehicles every hour. Beware Chilean drivers at all costs! Anyway our rather handsome young driver (looked a bit like Che)
spoke no English so was unable to tell us anything to add life or knowledge to the journey so we just sat there and watched it all go by. Mile after mile after beige coloured mile. I fancied it was a bit like being on the surface of the moon. After one very long hour we arrived in the little town of San Pedro Atacama. The town itself didn't cheer me up much. Cement colored streets lined by brown single story houses made of clay and local stone. The streets were so full of ruts and pot holes that the driver couldn't do more than about 5 mph and still had us all shook up as we arrived at our hotel and staggered through the lobby. And so
on to the hotel. This was designed and built fairly recently with the objective of being ecologically sound and in sympathy with the environment and we thought it did that rather well! The overall design is very minimalist and so, we discovered when we went to dinner the first night, was the food.

Now this is two days later and you'll be glad to know there is more here than initially meets the eye. Having met some rather sweet Lamas and then getting a nights rest we rose early next day and went off cycling. We cycled about an hour to an archaeological site to the north which had been a village inhabited by native Indians several hundred years BC. Don't remember when they lived there from exactly but they left about 800BC when the river changed it's course. I don't think the photo makes it very clear but what we saw were the tops of the houses in the village. Over the years the sands had blown over and hidden the village from view and it was then discovered again about 50yrs ago. However at the moment archaeologists are reluctant to excavate down to reveal it for fear that exposing it will leave it vulnerable to the elements and bring about it's eventual destruction. Nobody seemed to know what the future plan would be. The next day we walked to where their next site was which was a fort built into the mountainside. Here this tribe was eventually discovered by the Incas who moved in on them in about 1470 and though they were none violent did take control politically and administratively for the next 70yrs. Then the Spanish came and despite the Incas being well in control and pretty smart they were for some reason ineffective at repelling the Spanish and so the Spanish got their feet under the table and the Incas were given their marching orders. All good stuff. We had a good look round the fort and then much needed rest (a pretty hot day) before making a climb up a nearby mountain to see the memorial made to the indigenous Indians that were hung by the Spanish. Our guide said officially
the number hanged was 25 but he felt sure their were actually hundreds given that the Spanish are 'so
bloodthirsty'. Don't think he had any more proof than that but that was good enough for us. They also apparently cut out their tongues if they refused to speak Spanish..............and so with that incentive all speak Spanish now.

I could say more about this area but don't want to bore. I started off feeling it was the most alien and inhospitable place I'd ever been and ended up feeling it was probably the most extraordinary.

Our next stop is going to be the mining district further north of here where we'll be for a couple of days. By the way if you were wondering about the Chilean miners that were trapped last year that was down south and quite some distance from here. Also discovered that the shrines on the roadside were indeed drivers and they had fallen asleep at the wheel Felt bad.

Dad went to an area called Moon Valley on his own one afternoon when I'd had too much sun so he can tell you about that.

It got its name as it looks like a crater on the moon. Around a couple of miles across. They stated that NASA used it to test the Moon and Mars rovers.

There you go Dad's contribution! Speak again soon.