Palegoldenrod

On Friday morning I arrived at a hostel in San Pedro to meet my new travel mates - the guys on the Pachamama tour back to Santiago. First I met one Yerson Muñoz - our guide - a young Chilean with a wicked sense of humour and an unhealthy enjoyment of teaching bad spanish words to foreigners.

My other travel partners were two English couples who knew each other from England and so were very relaxed and a lot of fun. Because the bus was quite empty we could stretch out and take up more room than my trip north to San Pedro - awesome.

I also learnt a whole bunch more Spanish (read: bad words) and, as Yerson was quite relaxed, was comfortable enough to practice a bit of mine. While this sometimes resulted in being laughed at, it was all good, haha.

Pan de Azucar

We left San Pedro a little late (one of the guys had his new iPod stolen and exchanged for a crappy damaged one without music in San Pedro and needed to go to the cops about it for insurance). We stopped by a ruined town in the middle of the desert which was sorta cool.

As a result of leaving late we arrived at Pan de Azucar after sunset… we got out, walked around the bus a little and then decided to push on to the cabins at Bahia Iglesa again rather than camp in the cold at the park. lol.

Bahia Iglesa

We stayed that night at Bahia Iglesia again - a reason for another barbeque (awesome). Some music and drinks and then off again to Valle Elqui.

Valle Elqui - Vicuña

We stayed two nights here… the first night we went to Mamalluca observatory which was pretty cool. This observatory is not a research observatory - rather it is for tourists and education only. We listened to a presentation on the origins and formation of the universe, the lifecycle of stars etc. Then we went up to the dome and had a peek through the big telescope at such things as Jupiter, the Moon and some star clusters. Afterwards we were able to take pictures of the moon through some smaller telescopes outside.

Later we visited “disco” which was pretty ordinary, but we had some drinks and danced anyway, haha. We went to go back to the hostel at about 4am but Yerson was also a bit tipsy and got us lost on the walk home, ahaha. Eventually we all arrived in one piece.

The next day we (finally) got up and Andy and I decided to participate in the day’s activities - horse riding and a tour of the Capelo Pisco Factory. In reality the tour of the factory was not very interesting, and the horse riding (for only a half hour I think) was very short, though the view from the mountain was pretty cool. I think if I go horse riding again I want to ride for a longer time.

We had a quiet night that night - I think we were still tired from the night before.

Fray Jorge National Park

The last day of the trip took us through Fray Jorge National Park just for a toilet stop and a half hour walk. The walk was nice enough - you can see the different types of vegetation in the different parts of the hills depending on the height and whether direct sunlight is received or not. All very interesting.

I don’t have many photos this time because really I wasn’t in the mood for taking photos, though a lot of the scenery was quite beautiful.

I was disappointed at the speed of the tour especially on the way back. There was a lot of driving, and unfortunately waiting for an entire week for the next bus was, in most places, too much time… Maybe it would be better in Summer when the buses come through a few times a week rather than just once. Hmm.

In general, Pachamama was a good service, though there is a lot of driving involved covering these distances, especially on the return leg.