Hello lovely people: the eighth of my occasional blogs from Chile – Argentina – Chile

Chile again – San Pedro de Atacama

Our bus journey from Salta starts at 01:10, only 10 minutes after its scheduled departure time. It’s a single decker, the first in our experience, but still high off the ground because of luggage storage and it is comfortable.

The journey should be about nine hours but we have no idea how the border crossing will be dealt with. As dawn breaks we are in the mountains and we stop, just before 9 o’clock, at Paso de Jama – the northernmost border crossing between Argentina and Chile and at 4,100 metres it is no surprise we feel a bit spacey! The border checks are thorough: first leave Argentina, passport stamped; next enter Chile, customs checks are rigorously pursued, food – especially nuts and seeds – examined and prohibited items are confiscated; all luggage has to be removed from the bus and scanned; Chilean immigration check passports . . . and after nearly two hours we are back on the bus, and in Chile.

The scenery is wonderful: snowy peaks, vicuña, flamingoes and the bus driver even stops so we can see a fox, and we learn that the fox knows the bus is going to pass and hangs around hoping to be fed; he is rewarded with a bread roll today, he seems happy!

The arrival into San Pedro de Atacama is not promising: the bus route takes us past a car and truck scrap yard and then what appears to be the town rubbish dump, both just exposed to the street and all passersby. The town, as we descend from the bus, is dusty and litter strewn. Dogs roam everywhere. The sun is scorching. Not many people are about. If there had been tumbleweed and plaintive music we could have wandered onto a spaghetti western film set.

Our mood is much improved on arrival at our hotel: small (eight rooms), edge of town, twig clad and with astonishing views at the back over fields of corn and sunflowers to snow clad volcanoes Lascar and Licancabur – which is our backdrop to breakfast for the next four mornings. The staff are charming: los chicos from Cochabamba (as they introduce themselves), Rodriguo the manager and the three dogs: Aukan – who is the size of a small horse, very affectionate, and likes leaning; Quila, a friendly soul and the ever-sleeping, shagggy Newton.

After a quick freshen up we walk into town: for late lunch, to explore, to check out some tours. It takes under 15 minutes and although initially we notice only dust and litter we came to enjoy it over the successive days, noticing the dusky pinks in the adobe walls, some interesting architectural details, use of local materials, irrigation channels. The town itself is low rise, local materials – especially adobe – and vibrant, very cosmopolitan in terms of visitors because it is the centre for the astronomic, desert and high Andes tours. Roberto is kept on his toes recognising the accents of the restaurant, tour and shop workers we encounter – many Bolivians, Colombians, Venezuelans as well as Chileans.

Tours: there are many to chose from, some it would be possible to do by self driving but we have no car for this stage of our trip and part of the experience is to learn from guides. So we investigate agencies and apart from our astronomical tour, which Alison M researched and pre-booked, settle on three others. We find, on reviewing our experiences at the end of the stay, that the quality of the guides has a huge impact on the enjoyment of each tour – and (for us at least) that quality is a matter of pot luck. We had two extremely good guides (astronomical and salt flats/lagoons), one poor (Valle del Luna) and one OK (geysers). So a mixed bag, but each experience was more than worthwhile: breathtaking scenery, unimaginably huge vistas, colourful panoramas . . .

The astronomical tour is a group of 12; we have four telescopes to look through ranging in diameter from 80 cm to 130 cm; it is not perfect conditions: the moon is near half full and bright and there is some cloud but our guide is extremely knowledgable and interesting. She points out constellations and discusses navigation, time, space. It is fascinating – but in terms of sheer star numbers and Milky Way visibility does not beat our experience in Karijini in Western Australia in 2019.

The next day Valle del Luna – amazing mountains, colours, rock formations and volcanoes at sunset while sipping a pisco sour – what’s not to love? It is on this tour we really understand the “big ticket” attraction of San Pedro and the desert – our minibus is one of many and the paths we walk and miradors we visit are all well populated. By earwigging tour guides for other groups we also begin to understand how each individual guide, and therefore experience, varies.

Then geysers: a 4:00 a.m. start for a 4:30 pick up is hard but so worthwhile; it is a near two hour bus journey to the geyser field which we explore on foot at sunrise. The temperature is -4 centigrade, finally we are justified in packing the thermaIs! It is located above 4,200 metres and even a short ascent has us breathing hard. We can roam the paths freely, all beautifully marked by local stones marking borders – but are warned not to stray as the geyser water temperature averages 85 centigrade and falling in would be certain death. After the geysers breakfast and a tour of a couple of lagoons – great to see Andean ducks, oyster catchers, flamingoes and vicuña.

Our final tour is slat flats, stromatolites and salt lagoons where we float weightlessly and bob like turtles. These are fabulous, empty, huge land landscapes. And so interesting for us as we encountered stromatolites in 2019, again in WA at Hamelin Pool. We learn there are now only three extant sites of living stromatolites, here, WA and Mexico (although a brief internet search might challenge this) assertion.

I could write lots more but will constrain myself to adding and annotating photographs.

Food and drink: less meat, more fish; good bread and pebre; less wine (this surprises us: we are in Chile after all, even if not in wine country) and excellent pisco sours.

We thoroughly enjoy our four days and leave the driest desert in the world feeling well satisfied with our adventures here and head, by evening bus, to coastal Antofagasta and the start of our Chilean road trip – but that is for another occasion.

Until next time, adios amigos
ALISON