Destination Desert

After a lengthy journey we're in Chile again. The last time we visited (in 2008) our stay in the capitol Santiago was cut very short due to travel arraignments, so this time we spent a whole day and night exploring the town. While nothing mindblowing, Santiago has some very pleasant areas and after a few months in Central America, the European style vibe feels almost exotic. Late in the second evening we board one of their brilliant Cama Class buses (hey Finland, when are we getting these babies?) which have the seats that recline all the way - after all the name Cama means "bed" - and ride through the night 800km to the north to Copiapo.

The stop in the mining town (near the mine where the miners recently got trapped) Copiapo is merely to cut the travel time to Atacama in half to avoid sitting 26 hours on the bus in a row. We didn't find a lot to do in town beyond a visit to Museo Mineralogico and sampling some of the fine wine the country has to offer. And of course to hit the Parrilladas; we've had almost no meat dishes on the trip so far besides some ground beef burgers and such, and a feast of Bife de Lomo is more than welcome. Then it's time for another overnight bus up north to Calama, where we change to another bus and finally get to our final Chilean destination, San Pedro de Atacama (pop. 3k-4k), the tourism hub of the Atacama region.

The small town of San Pedro is full of tiny tourism agencies, all offering the same exact trips to nearby (and sometimes not so nearby) sights including lagoons, geysirs, volcanoes and most strange rock formations on the planet. The weather is rather interesting here; the air is so dry that it doesn't take 20 minutes for laundry to dry. Rain is very rare here and we've yet to see a single cloud on the bright blue skies; in some places of the desert it never rains, making Atacama arguably the driest place on the planet. Oh and a cool Finn called Reijo runs the nicest - and only - bar in town.

We, of course, did some of the excursions. One of them is to get on a minibus at 0400 in the morning, drive 2 hours to El Tatio geyser field - world's highest such, altitude wise - to freeze in the -15C .. -10C temperatures and watch the sun rise from above the mountain range and light up the fuming geysers. Afterwards you get to thaw in a thermal spring about 40C hot. Daytime temperature exceeds 30C in the sun, so the variation is quite big. It felt really strange shopping for woolen socks and hats in the scorching sun. In the afternoon of the same day we went to see sun set over Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley, a strange bunch of sand dunes and canyons just outside the town.

And finally - beach vacation in the desert? Not quite, but our visit to the salty lagoons were still really relaxing. The first lagoon of the three boasts salinity of over 40% (ocean average is 3.5%) and thus allows you to float on the surface no matter what.  

And now our busy week in Chile is up and we're moving on. Next stop: Bolivia.

See all the Chile pictures here!