San
Pedro de Atacama
Adventures In The
Atacama Desert And The Bolivian Altiplano ~ By Justin Marshall
|
|
| San
Pedro de Atacama, Chile, a beautiful oasis in the middle of the world’s
driest desert. So dry that NASA has used the desert to test some
of its Mars space equipment. What happened during our first night
in the driest desert in the world? It rained of course, for the first
time since June. It didn’t rain much, nothing measurable anyway,
but you know what clouds mean in the desert. Astonishing sunsets.
With the sky ablaze like a four alarm fire we drove into town.
Being the eager
tourists that we were, we couldn’t get out of the shuttle fast enough to
start clicking away. Brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges, lit up
the sky and our skin, perfect for pictures and our arrival to the desert
pueblo that boasts adobe buildings, great restaurants, and many an internet
cafeé.
After clicking
some 25 pictures of the flaming sky, we made our way into town and began
looking for a place to sleep. Hmmm, $7, $6, $5 a night, what would
it be? We settled on the Casa Adobe for $5, where the water is hot,
and so is the stinking donkey dung. What did we care? Up early,
before noon that is, and home late, all we needed was a bed, and
warm water. Casa Adobe had this.
Our first adventure
took us, along with seemingly every other person in town, to the Valle
de la Luna, or Valley of the Moon. The lunar-esque landscape had
various salt formations, canyons, sand dunes, valleys and crevices formed
from thousands of yeas of wind, rain, erosion, and terramotos, or earthquakes.
We hiked, climbed, and dug our way, literally on all fours at one point,
up the sand dunes. Jennifer is a great travel partner, one of the
few girls I know who can look at the sand dunes and appreciate their true
natural beauty.
|
| If you
visit the Atacama Desert then make sure to stop in the Chilean town of
Arica which lies at the edge of the great desert. Arica has some nice beaches
and the sand dunes of the desert come right up to the edge of town. Arica
also has San Marcos church which was built by the French architect Gustave
Eiffel. Eiffel built many structures in Latin America: the Mercado Muncipal
in Manaus, Brazil; Casa de Hierro in Iquitos, Peru; a church in Santa Rosalia,
Mexico. The train ride from Arica to La Paz, Bolivia is nice. |
|
|
|
|
.
It was a very
special bonding moment for the two of us. Being the gravity junkies
we both are, we took one look at the giant sand dunes and imagined carving
down them boards. Of course if we had had a chance to carve, she
would have done it better, faster, and more gracefully than me. Yes,
the lucky lady hails from Park City Utah, and gets more days on her snowboard
in one season than I’ve had my whole life. As of yet we haven’t rented
the sand boards that are available, so we haven’t done any carving.
We’ve been too busy touring, trekking, clicking, climbing, and eating.
After another
amazing sunset in the Valle de la Luna, which of course gave us the opportunity
to take another 25 pictures, we made our way to town and had dinner at
Adobe restaurant. Are you noticing a trend here? Casa Adobe,
Adobe Restaurant, yes, the brown stone buildings dominate the town, but
not every building looks like it is growing straight out of the ground
, nor are they all named the adobe something or other. Some are painted
white, with beautiful contrasting blue window sills, and some have colorful
Coca-Cola, Nestle, or Kodak signs adorning them.
.
|
The
Bolivian border with Chile.
|
|
|
|
|
Our
second day we went to the salt flats, the third largest in the world.
Lucky me has now been to two of the world’s three largest salt flats.
How many of you can say that? And where is the second largest? Try
Jennifer’s neighborhood. Tomorrow I’ll be very close to the World’s
largest salt flat when we go to Bolivia. After visiting the flats
we got high, very high. I’ve been high before, I am from California
after all, and as I’ve mentioned, my favorite ski mountain is Mammoth,
which is over 11,000 feet tall. Santa Barbara’s La Cumbre Peak is
just a shade under 4000 feet. Any of you who have driven to the top
of La Cumbre, or ridden you bikes as I like to do, can appreciate how high
4000 feet is, or maybe Lake Tahoe at about 6200, then there’s the
Andes where I am now, the tallest mountain range of the Americas, with
almost 100 peaks over 18,000 feet..
After the salt
flat we climbed to some altiplanic lagoons that sat at about 14,000, which
was tall enough for Park City Jennifer and I to notice the lack of Oxygen.
Nothing we couldn’t handle, and of course it didn’t stop us from hiking
around the sapphire blue lagoons complete with Flamingos and a herd of
Llamas. The white Llamas and salt deposits created a brilliant contrast
against the sapphire blue lagoons and creamy blue sky, it was tremendous
(photos of all of this will be included in the next email, and on the web
site after I return to Santiago). |
..
Sunday we
felt we deserved a break from all of the trekking. Vacations can
be exhausting; don’t you all feel sorry for me? We decided to visit
the local, very spectacular hot springs. After a bumpy, dusty hour
of climbing up a dirt road to the hot springs, Jennifer and I found
ourselves doing the NY speed walk down to the turquoise pools, each complete
with a private deck. She and I had our own turquoise pool and deck
for our entire visit. There was also another empty pool and deck,
this one deep enough to dive in, that we visited between naps and dips
in the temperate waters. With the heat of the day steaming hot springs
would have been too much, so as luck would have it the pools are perfectly
warm, slightly cooler than bath water, and each pool has a gushing waterfall
cascading into and out of it, thus making the naps that much better.
Nothing beats falling asleep to the rushing water.
.
.
|
