31/08/24-03/09/24

31/08/24

Having slept well, we woke feeling refreshed in the bright Atacaman sunlight. There was a fully stocked and functioning kitchen that we could make use of and a real coffee machine; we hadn’t had any since Sucre so this was a delight. We didn’t have time to hang about as we had to get a taxi to San Pedro and thence a bus to Calama and thence another taxi to the airport to pick up our car. The bus station was hard to find given that the only sign was covered in stickers. Tickets successfully bought, we waited a few minutes before boarding the bus. Now we had allowed lots of time to be at the airport by 11am based on driving there. What we had failed to take into account is that the buses take twice as long. So we attempted to contact the car rental when we had signal to explain the situation but the line was terrible. Eventually after an Uber from the bus station, we got to the airport and the car rental desk, which seems to be exclusively run by young emo nerds from 2006. The guy had the right hair and wore his short sleeved shirts over his long sleeved shirts. After some paper work and some rapid instructions in the inscrutable Chilean accent, we had our car.

First stop: supermarket. Now we had use of a kitchen you can be damn sure we were gonna cook! The supermarket had the weirdest layout of any I’ve been in. Nothing made sense! We eventually found all we wanted only to be thwarted at the till because we hadn’t pre weighed and stickered our loose tomatoes, onion and avocado. I tried to explain we would leave them and pay for everything else and then go round again but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise because the “helpful” customers behind us were being helpful by shouting instructions at us. Quite a stressful ordeal. Eventually managed to get through that yes, we understand now, I’ll do a separate shop. Which I did.

After a drive that took half the time the bus had taken, we were back at the hostel. First port of call: sandwiches. Sadly the bread tasted like chlorine, which rather put a dampener on my sarnie. After a while it became clear that I wasn’t feeling so hot (I had had suspicions in the morning but having not eaten anything until the sandwich couldn’t be sure). I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between loo and bed, and we watched a lot more Firefly to take my mind off it. Sadly, no home cooked dinner that night.

01/09/24

Can’t believe it’s September. I woke up feeling pretty rough still so the morning was a lazy one. I managed to buck up a bit by lunch and had a slice of chlorine bread with ham and cucumber, before heading out on a mini road trip to a place called cactus valley. At first we missed the turning, and accidentally went down someone’s off-road driveway… giving the car a good start by going through a ford. We backtracked and carried on to explore which was well worth it. There was a gorge, a pampas-lined stream and generally lovely scenery.

We headed back the way we came and eventually discovered the cactus valley and went to explore.

Feeling good for having not wasted an entire day feeling sorry for myself with the runs, we headed back to the hostel for some home cookin’. Alex made pasta amatriciana (bacon and tomato) and I helped. It was utterly delicious and even better we had sauce aplenty for the following day.

Now one of our main purposes here was to do a bit of stargazing. Given the altitude and the fact that it’s the second driest place on earth (can confirm) it has some of the clearest skies and is home to some famous telescopes and observatories. We headed out but stayed local and found a likely sand dune upon which to place my towel and lie back. The stars did not disappoint! Alex got some great shots with his proper camera and set up but I was pretty happy with my long exposure iPhone ones too! We also almost got divebombed by a bat which I deem a highlight.

Back to the hostel for a quick cold rinse (the sand doth penetrate the leggings) and thence to bed.

02/09/24

Another morning in bed, still feeling dodge and needing to sleep it off. Yes I’ve continued to eat despite the consequences because my appetite has only been slightly diminished which I think is probably a good sign. Eventually got up for the remaining bacon, tomato and smashed avo on the chlorine bread, spread thick enough so as not to taste said bread. We also made road trip sarnies for our next excursion. I stuck with my avocado and tomato.

First stop: a special rock with some pre-Hispanic petroglyphs. That means pictures carved in rocks… in this case, a fair few llamas. But also a monkey that has confused many a historian and archaeologist… given there are no monkeys in this part of the world so they must have travelled to the Amazon. All in all, pretty cool!

After a goodly amount of wandering, we left just as a couple of tour groups arrived. Good timing. On our way to our next stop, we were amused to see a “watch out for animals sign” depicting llamas, vicuñas and donkeys. We were even more amused when about 2 minutes later when we came across an animal not depicted. It looked like a small emu. I knew there was a land bird in South America but couldn’t remember for the life of me what it was called. We later found out it was a variety of Rhea. Anyway, no signs told us to watch out for rheas!

We carried on to our next stop, which is called the Rainbow Valley. Not the famous mountains you’re thinking of; we skipped those due to timing. These are much lesser known and off the beaten track… literally. Had to put our hire car through its paces with a few fords and some proper rocky tracks, not to mention a pair of cheeky donkeys who clearly hung about waiting to mess with drivers; they watched us approach, strolled out into the middle of the road, lay down, and had a jolly good roll around into dust. Honestly such sods. Very funny though.

All the obstacles were worth it… These valleys were spectacular.

At this point, the sun was starting to set, so we headed home via a viewpoint for some really cool sunset pictures… this being the perfect time of day to capture such images.

We got back to the hostel and had the rest of our amatriciana sauce with some more pasta, and prepped ourselves for a longer drive in search of perfect stars. We went pretty high up the mountain, so much so that the ambient temperature went from 7° to -3° in the space of about 20 minutes of driving. We also didn’t see a single other car, only a couple of parked up trucks… we avoided those lay-bys. Absolutely worth it for some of the amazing pictures Alex captured with his proper camera, and my bog standard phone ones weren’t bad either! I’ve had fun tarting about with them to make the colours pop but I’ve left one completely unedited.

We then drove home and went straight to bed, knowing we had a relatively early start for our flight to Santiago the next day. A great finish to our time in The Andes and the desert!