South American Adventure Part 2
Days 3–5 (May 28–30) | San Pedro de Atacama
5/28
We arrived in San Pedro via a van from the airport at Calama. This drive offered our first exposure to the Atacama desert: very dry, and lots of mountains. We spotted a few volcanoes far off in the distance. The ride was about an hour and a half, and some of us caught some sleep to make up for the early start to the day, which is to say a flight at around 6:30 am. I was happy to just watch the landscape, which was quite fascinating in its variety of geological features. The only plants existed in or near stream beds, which were all dry when we saw them but probably have water during certain parts of the year.
We finally arrived at our hostel in San Pedro in the early afternoon. This in itself was an interesting place. It is very small, and consists of only six rooms in a one-story adobe brick building on the side of a road slightly outside the tiny town center. The owner’s family lives in an adjacent house. There is also a small building with a bathroom and shower in two small rooms. Other than that, there is a dusty yard with lots of debris lying around. Although it didn’t look like much, the rooms are clean and the beds are comfortable, which I suppose is all you can really ask of a hostel.
After arriving, we tried to grab a quick lunch before our scheduled tour of the “Moon Valley” near San Pedro. Unfortunately, our map was wrong about the location of the hostel, and we couldn’t find the town center. We wandered down a dusty road a fair distance before realizing this. The road was essentially just a large dust path with lots of bumps in it, and as we inadvertently moved further out of town, there were more and more driveways that led to vacant lots, guarded by broken, rusted gates and crumbling walls. When we finally realized where the town center was, it was too late for a meal. We substituted some emergency protein bars that Vikas had brought and prepared for our tour bus. It was late, and we had to stand by the road for a while.
The bus finally arrived after about 20 minutes. We boarded it and joined about 30 other people on the tour. The bus went out of town. We watched the green oasis of San Pedro give way to low-lying shrubs, and then nothing at all as the landscape became entirely inhospitable to plant life. We drove a bit more until a massive sand dune came into view. The bus parked right in front of it, and we got off.
The dune was probably hundreds of feet high, and was completely pristine, as nobody was allowed to walk on it. Our tour guides led us on a path around it that took up to a ridge. We trod through the dark sand, the desert sun making us much hotter than we were in the shade. After a short while, we were granted our first view of the landscape. I was unprepared for what I saw. It as like being on another lifeless world. We could see sand dunes, mountains of different shapes and colors, and other rock formations for miles. Continuing up the ridge, we eventually were able to look down the same dune we had seen earlier from the bus. The vista was stunning in every direction, and we stayed for a while taking pictures before descending back to the bus.
The next stop on the tour was something called the Three Marias. This was a rock formation with three major parts that vaguely resemble Virgin Mary. We were only there a bit, since there really wasn’t much to see. After that was a place called the Amphitheater, which has some interesting curved cliffs, and next was Death Valley, which has places where salt collects in pools that then dry, leaving behind salt deposits. Finally, we went to a vantage point where we could watch the sun set over the landscape. We watched as it illuminated the Moon Valley as well as some volcanoes way off in the distance. The sky turned to some beautiful shades of pink and orange, and then it was back to the small town of San Pedro.
Our next goal was to reserve a spot on a sandboarding tour for that night. We thought it started at 10, but it was in fact at 8. This left only an hour for dinner, without time to go back to the hostel. We went to a restaurant called Lola and ordered, and then I ran back to the hosted to grab a warmer jacket, as the desert temperature dropped quickly after the sun set. I felt a bit nervous running through the dark streets, especially since there weren’t many streetlights. I also stepped in a puddle, soaking my shoe and necessitating a change in footwear. I don’t know WHY the street was full of water in one of the driest places on the planet. A burst pipe? An attempt to wash the dog and horse shit that was common in the roads outside the city center? Who knows.
By the time I got back to the restaurant, the food has just been served. I had a delicious lamb and cheese empanada as well as some pizza that someone else had ordered. The bread in the crust was especially good.
After dinner, we went to the sandboarding shop. There was a group of tourists waiting. The instructors had us take helmets and boards to some vans, which we climbed into. The vans took us out into the total darkness of the desert, the headlights really making it seem like a lunar landscape. No stars were visible due to some unfortunate cloud cover. We arrived at a park owned by the indigenous people of the area and entered to find a huge dune lit by lights. We were given boots and told to hike up a path to the top of the dune, carrying our boards. This was the worst part. Climbing a huge sand dune in the dark is difficult, especially when at a high altitude, and I was gasping for air the whole way. At the top, we were given a brief lesson on how to control our speed and direction. I was one of the first in my group to go, as I was closest to the top.
I shifted by board towards the slope. I could see the vans and a DJ table blasting music into the night at the bottom. The board started gathering momentum and I thought, “HOLY SHIT I WAS SANDBOARDING WOW THIS IS SO-” Suddenly I wiped out while trying to slow down to keep myself from going too fast. The sand flew in my face, but I got back up after a few seconds to keep going. Again, I made it to a high velocity before crashing again. I got up once more and made it to the bottom.
I made the exhausting climb to the top again, and had a smoother run to the bottom. With breaks of various time in between, I made it up and down the hill five times that night. By the end of it, my legs were killing me. I was covered in sand and exhausted, but the thrill of riding down the dune was absolutely worth it.
After a hot shower in the surprisingly nice showering facility at the hostel, collapsed onto my bed shortly before 2 a.m. and slept very soundly.
5/29
I was woken up by Melissa knocking at our door at 7:30 to get us ready for a trip to the ALMA telescope outside San Pedro. l was the only one in our group to choose sleep instead, a decision I don’t really regret. I ended up getting over 9 hours of glorious sleep.
I walked into town and explored a bit by myself for a bit until 1 pm, when I met the rest of the group at the ALMA drop-off location. Unlike me, they were all tired, so we decided to get lunch, visit a museum, and go to the hostel to rest in the afternoon.
We wandered for a while in search of a restaurant with decent vegetarian options for Vikas and settled on one that seemed good. He had some nice vegetarian tacos, while Stefan and shared a massive barbecue special. It was a massive amount of meat, but somehow we finished, though we did have some help from Melissa and Jimmy.
After that meal, we tried going to the museum about indigenous cultures, but it was closed. After a brief stop to see the town’s church, we came back to the hostel. I did some laundry in a sink in the yard of the hostel and hung my clothes out to dry in the desert air. Unfortunately, the sun was hidden behind some clouds, so they had to hand overnight to dry.
I read Dune (an appropriate book for the desert) and wrote this journal while others continued resting. We later went back to the town to get ready for the stargazing tour. We were trying to find one gelato place in particular, but the location on our map was wrong and we just couldn’t find it. We gave up looking because we needed to report to the stargazing tour shop, only to find that the tour had been cancelled due to the cloudy weather. In the driest desert in the world, we had been screwed over by clouds.
At this point, we decided to go to dinner at a pizzeria I had screened before the trip as having good online reviews. It turned out to deserve those reviews, as we found when we ordered three delicious pizzas. And a couple of minutes after leaving, we found the gelatoria we had been looking for. They had some interesting local flavors. I tried quinoa gelato, which was delicious. I also tried some made from the seeds of a South American tree called algarroba, which tasted like coffee and chocolate. After this successful culinary excursion, we returned to the hostel for the night.
5/30
Today we got up early, right as the sun was rising, for a tour of the Rainbow Valley. It was very cold, in the low 40s if had to guess. Although there was some confusion about when our van would be arriving, we were ready for it when it came go the hostel before 8 am. Our guide, who I think was named Chris, spoke great English and was very friendly and engaging. We had a lengthy drive into the desert. Our first stop was a rocky outcropping made of limestone, which we learned had been near trade routes hundreds of years ago. On it were carved numerous etchings of animals, mostly llamas. Eventually, we entered a canyon with a tiny river flowing through it, the canyon floor covered with grasses and shrubs. We eventually came to a group of mountains that were beautifully multicolored due to the different minerals in them.
We drove past these mountains to an area at the bottom of a canyon. We climbed out of the van and did some exploring of this canyon.
First, our guide showed us a narrow path into an area that was almost entirely closed off by the canyon walls. Above us, we could see the clear blue sky. This was an important space to our guide, who told us about how such spaces allow one to clear one’s mind and embark on new beginnings. With so many other tourists in there, I wasn’t exactly feeling this sense of calm, but it was a nice space nonetheless.
Next, we climbed around another area of the canyon. I was able to climb fairly high up the wall, which was difficult because it was mostly made of clay and salt crystals. The vantage point was perfect for making echoes in the canyon. I was able to talk to the rest of my group on the opposite wall at at a normal speaking voice. Finishing out the tour, we backtracked to the colorful mountains and took some pictures in front of them. After that, we drove back to San Pedro.
After a quick lunch (vegetarian sandwich with some delicious goat cheese) we went back to the hostel to be picked up by our next tour to some hot springs. Unfortunately, the van had arrived early, and left without us. This was incredibly frustrating, but the woman owner of the hostel was able to find a replacement ride for us by making some calls. We were picked up by a man in a truck blasting AC/DC and other classic rock music, and enjoyed another scenic drive to outside San Pedro.
Our destination this time was another canyon. We parked near the edge and Walked down to the bottom, which was lush with reeds. The hot springs were at the bottom. After changing quickly to avoid the cold air, we quickly entered the hot spring and immediately felt the relief of the warm water. It was the perfect temperature: not too cold and not too hot. The water was very clear, and deep enough for us to be submerged up to our necks by crouching a bit. We relaxed for over an hour in the water.
When it came time to leave, we quickly ran from the hot spring to the changing room and got dressed as quickly as we could. From there, it was a difficult walk up the canyon wall, given the cold and thin air. We got back to the truck and drove back to San Pedro.
That night, we ate our last meal in San Pedro. We went to a restaurant that accepted dollars, which I used to pay. Melissa and Stefan both got a delicious dish called Pastel de Choclo, which was a very thick beef stew/quiche that was a perfect balance between sweet and savory.
We returned to the hostel for warmer clothing and then went back to town for our stargazing tour. The sky was perfectly clear that night, which was an enormous relief. We boarded a bus that once again took us out of the town and to a house that was very sparely lit. We went outside and stood in a circle, at which point our guide, a Canadian named Les, came out and started talking to us about the night sky.
Les proceeded to talk about the history of astronomy, and the whole time my eyes were transfixed on the sky. I had never seen a night sky so dark and full of stars. The Milky Way stretched clearly across the sky. Les told us about the seven heavenly spheres proposed by older civilizations, and also pointed out some major constellations. The big dipper hung very low on the horizon, a change from what I was used to. I recognized Scorpio in the sky as well, but many of the constellations were different from those I knew from the northern hemisphere.
After this talk, Les took us over to some telescopes he had trained on different parts of the sky. Three were tracking Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. Mars happened to be about as close as it would get for 11 years, and was quite bright in the telescope. We also got to see the binary star of Alpha Centauri. A few were pointed at star clusters that were barely visible with the naked eye but contained a multitude of smaller stars. After this, we went inside for some hot chocolate and asked Les questions about astronomy until the bus was ready to go. I showered quickly that night and went to bed as soon as I could.
