San Pedro — Atacama meets Andes
We had a plan to go to San Pedro de Atacama (most popular destination of Northern Chile) at the end of our program but then a long weekend was sufficient to entice us to go earlier. Our plans also coincided with that of Aimon, a fellow volunteer from Pakistan, who had the courage to travel 25 hours in bus all the way from south of Santiago!
This small town exists only for tourism. Unlike everything we have done in Atacama till now, San Pedro is what people really mean when they talk about travelling to Atacama. Full of tour agencies and gringos (foreigners), the town provides access to a lot of amazing places nearby, besides being an entry point for Bolivia and the famous Uyuni salt flats there.
Valle de la Luna (Moon valley) is close to the town and has a very unique landscape — stones and sand formations of a range of color and texture, with frequent presence of salt. It’s hard to imagine a more barren place than this. It seems so apt that they tested a prototype of Mars rover in this area. A strong sandstorm kept slapping us every few seconds when we were there. While we went to the valley by road, there is an amazing top view of the formations from the Mirador (viewpoint) of Pukara de Quitor, which are ruins from pre-Inca times.
It was the final of Copa America on one of the nights we were there. At 8 PM, there was no one to be seen in the streets of San Pedro. Everyone was glued to a TV screen in a cafe/bar and a grand celebration followed Chile’s victory. It’s a really big deal for everyone here! There was a country-wide hangover the day after. Even today, I began all my classes in school with a cheering for the championship win (Chi chi chi, le le le, viva Chile!) as the students couldn’t stop talking about the win and making fun of Messi.
To the south of San Pedro is Reservas Nacional Los Flamencos (Flamingo National Reserve). The highway to Argentina leading to them is in between Salar de Atacama (Salt flats of Atacama) and a series of Andean volcanoes. We saw a few species of flamingos in Laguna Chaxa. It is always nice when one can be close to animals in wild and they are not afraid. These pink beauties mostly eat tiny water organisms like brine shrimp and algae and they have a very peculiar way of eating it. I saw one flamingo continuously moving in circle around its submerged beak. Another one was in a running-like motion but not really moving from its place. Whatever helps them get tiny food out from mud, I guess!
Every volcano seems pretty naked and having a gentle slope as there is zero vegetation and no smaller mountains leading to the tallest ones, which is usually the case. But the volcanoes are quite high (6000–6500 metres), steep and most importantly, active. A guy from Sweden showed me the road crossing the Andes to Bolivia and said he would be heading there in a couple of days on cycle. Turned out he is on a solo cycling tour across South America. He started from Buenos Aires 2 months back and has a plan to reach Colombia in another 4–5 months. Super inspiring dude! In the Andes, human habitation can be sparse and he has been living off canned food for many days already.
There are bunch of high altitude lakes among the volcanoes. All the water is salty as this was all a part of the ocean some millions of years ago. Piedras Rojas (red rocks) is a beautiful formation of round rocks near small salt flats. The rocks had a great color contrast with the fresh snow from a night before. On our way back from these rocks, we also saw some Vicuña (Andean camel) herds running. Animals are so beautiful when they are running (or birds when they are flying) and the reason is not a predator.
Most of the places near San Pedro need an organized tour to visit. Even though we prefer to travel on our own, the Chilean tour operators I’ve met till now have been quite different than those in India. Though all of them are commercially-minded, a good number have studied tourism in a university. Even those who don’t call themselves eco-friendly usually respect the environment. I wonder when India would have a good course to educate tour organizers!
Though any touristy place can always seem crowded, it is also a great way to meet people from many countries. I was surprised to learn that volunteering is more common in South America than I thought. One other interesting thing is that many travelers speak in Spanish (of varying levels, of course). It’s funny that we chatted with a girl from South Africa in Spanish, even though her first language was English. It’s just a great way to practice! While Spanish has a wide enough presence to make foreigners bow down to learn it, most local languages don’t. And I wonder that as economic development happens in any place in the super-globalized world of today, what could be done to preserve the local language? Although we don’t talk about them as often as say performing arts or religious rituals, languages are a very important part of culture and I think economy is the reason behind death of most languages. The level of self-sufficiency of any local community has exponentially gone down during history and people don’t really “need” the local languages as much.
There was a lot we couldn’t do in San Pedro and might have been fun — go to Geysers del Tatio, cycle to Laguna Cejar, see the celebration of San Pedro festival etc. Despite its trade-offs (being an expensive and touristy place), San Pedro has a lot to offer to everyone and the natural beauty is unforgettable.
