Palegoldenrod

OK, OK. You’ve come to expect everything a little late with me. I’m sorry. Again.

So here is a bit of a spiel about my recent wanderings around the north of Chile. I booked a loop tour with a company called Pachamama By Bus. Now I prefer not to travel with tours, but these guys are good because they take you to places that a direct bus can’t, and also you can jump on and off whenever you want and often as you want. You just need to wait for the next bus to come through, which in winter is weekly.

Some background info (very rough). Chile is roughly divided into two contrasting climates – desert to the North of Santiago (in fact the driest desert in the world) and temperate fertility and greenness in the South. As Santiago was getting cold I decided to take refuge in the desert!

Here is a very brief rundown for you

My friend Beatrice had just finished her internship on Friday afternoon, so we decided on Friday night that we would leave with the tour on Saturday morning. All very last minute, haha.

Day 1 – Santiago to La Serena

We left from Barrio Brasil, hostel La Casa Roja (looks like a really awesome place) at 9ish am. Our tour guide was Maria Jose (nick name Cote) a young woman who looks like she has character, though a bit tired. Our driver was Marco, who seemed fun from the start. Cote spoke English very well, Marco knew a little. Beatrice and I, having spoken an awful lot of English and not enough Spanish, determined to try and speak Spanish as much as we could.

Our travelling companions consisted of:

• a group of 3 English girls travelling together
• a group of 3 English boys travelling together
• a group of 2 English girls who had run into the 3 English boys in the past
• an Australian girl
• a solo travelling English girl

The trip took us to a small town for lunch, where we had a peek at a cool little church that is built into the rock right on the beach. Then we went straight through to La Serena where we arrived just in time for sunset on the beach.

We have a short amount of time for a bit of shopping and then to dinner. A few of the less tired of us go out for a few drinks but generally everyone ends up in bed at a reasonable hour. Aburridisimo

Day 2 – La Serena to Bahia Iglesa

In the morning we had a newcomer to our midst. Chrissie, a german girl, had arrived overnight. She originally intended to join us for the departure from Santiago but had become stuck in Argentina and had only just managed to join us in time in La Serena.

From La Serena we went north along the coast to Punta Choros, where we went for a boat tour to a few protected islands (including Isla Demas) to check out the penguins and other birds and plant life. On the way to the islands we saw a bunch of dolphins and everyone get very excited and started taking photos of empty water or whitewash, haha. We jumped off on the only island we could (the others are completely protected) and had some lunch and a wander around before we went back to the bus and pushed through to Bahia Iglesa.

Our accommodation in Bahia Iglesa was cabins on the beach – simple, but clean and warm. And did I mention it was close to the beach?

Day 3 – Bahia Iglesa

The weather was pretty nice so Beatrice and I went for a walk down to the beach. The sand is really white (its not really sand, it is crushed shells) the water is very blue; the rocks are black. The sun was out. It was nice.

The interesting thing for me was seeing the desert extend right down to the ocean. Having grown up on the East coast of Australia, I am mentally conditioned to expect coastal areas to be greener than the interior of a continent. But here… there is nothing. In many areas absolutely no vegetation at all.

We went for a short trip to nearby Caldera, to visit the internet cafe and pick up some groceries for dinner.

In the afternoon Beatrice and I went for a walk through other parts of Bahia Iglesa. We climbed a hill with the cross on it and got a nice view over the village and into the desert. We then had a pack of dogs follow us back to the campsite. Beatrice was terrified.

Later in the evening everyone helped prepare food and Marco cooked us a barbeque (yorm). Drinking games ensued, spearheaded by the English. The highlights of the evening included several climbings of the tree, several fallings from the tree, and one incident of Carly being kicked in the head by a person in the process of falling. All in all it was a big, good night.

Day 4 – Bahia Iglesa to Antofogasta

We hauled ourselves out of bed to shower and made our way to Antofogasta. On the way the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere in the desert and bought icecreams from a man on the side of the road with a freezer box.

We also went to a sculpture of a giant hand. Cote told us that there is another hand in the very south of Chile, in the lush landscape, with only its fingers showing. These two hands show the contrasts of Chile – desert and lush green.

We arrived late in Antofogasta and missed out on the light to get decent photographs of the Arch, a naturally formed archway of sandstone just off the coast which is a famous landmark of the area.

The hostel in Antofogasta was very nice

Day 5 – Antofogasta to San Pedro de Atacama

From Antofagasta we set off for San Pedro. I found it unbelievable how much time could be spent driving through a desert… it is HUGE.

In the middle of nowhere we arrived at the town Baquedano, important because it marks the entry into the heart of the desert (our guides needed to provide the police with a list of passenger names) but also the junction of two important rail lines through the desert. I think one runs north-south and the other east-west. At Baquedano we had lunch and visited a railway museum which was pretty cool.

We continued on for hours and eventually stopped at a few different places in the salt flats followed by the tiny Oasis village of Peine. We learned that a lot of water in the area comes from subterranean supplies and is heavy in arsenic among other things.

For sunset we went to Chaxa Lagoon, a reserve for flamingos. It was beautiful. I was just saying so when my camera’s battery ran out, so unfortunately I missed the opportunity to photograph a lot of the event. But the experience was well worth it.

We arrived at San Pedro early – our hostel greeted us with a warm fire and warm red wine with cinnamon and lemon I think. It tasted interesting but nice.

We all went out for dinner, a few of us came back early and I sat and drank and talked with Marco and some other hostel residents around the fire for a few hours. It was a nice night.

Day 6 – San Pedro de Atacama

I woke in the morning to find Beatrice and one of the other girls had been violently ill through the night and were still unwell. We weren’t sure if it was altitude (San Pedro is quite high – about 2300m above sea level), food poisoning or a viral bug. Those two girls had gone to bed fairly early – the others were also feeling a little under the weather but due to a big night rather than anything else.

We had a free morning, where I wandered around the village and jumped on the interwebs. Some of us had lunch at a local cafe (the food was sooo nice) and then we went to the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) in the afternoon.

First we went through some cool little caves near the entrance of the valley, then checked out some cool rock formations, and then on to the main viewpoint for the sunset.

We needed to climb a large sand dune and then part of a mountain ridge for the best view. It was well worth it, even though the altitude was effecting most of us. The view from this ridge at sunset is the view seen on so many postcards from Chile.

There were a lot of people up on the ridge, but it was still awesome. We took the shortcut way down (ran down a steep part of the sand dune) and then it was back in the bus to San Pedro and out for dinner again.

I told Cote and Marco that I wanted to stay in San Pedro for a week and get the next bus. I needed a break from travel and San Pedro was beautiful – both the village and the area around it.

Unfortunately Beatrice was too ill to stay with me. We agreed to catch up again, either in Santiago or Germany (when I finally get there) and in the morning I said goodbye to most of my new friends.

Visit my flickr area for more (many more) photos. Coming up next: my week in San Pedro de Atacama and my return trip.