Atacama Desert - Geysers

The Tatio Geysers can only be viewed early in the morning just as the sun rises. This required a 5 am departure from the hotel and a two hour trip with a tour group. Luckily, it was a small group with only 9 of us, though it was unfortunate that the middle three had verbal diarrhoea and talked non-stop, the most trival banalities the whole way….had to put on the iphone earpugs!!  Anybody guessed they were American??!!  Which of course made the four Brits frightfully stand-offish; we kept to ourselves in our couples!!

We arrived just as the skies started to lighten – I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

 

After a much-needed breakfast set up by one of the geysers, the drive home in daylight was very interesting  - the geysers are at about 4,300m above sea-level (temperature -5C so full winter kit required) so it was downhill most of the way to San P’s 2,400m, through rugged cliffs and pretty hills, a bright green wetland area and an ancient old village, now getting richer on the tourists buying their llama-wool items and yummy ( cheesy) empanadas.

 

Back for a time-out at the pool – well, pools actually, there are six small separate pools – honestly, it’s just a great resort/hotel!

And then off on our travels again…next stop La Paz, tomorrow evening…….

Atacama Desert - Flamingos and Moonscapes

 

 

Up pre-dawn to get to the airport in Punta Arenas for a long day’s travelling up to the Atacama desert; our hotel was in the small adobe town of San Pedro de Atacama. After completing a couple of laps of the town in our Avis Kia at around 6pm, we finally found a nice guy who gave me a free map of the town and drew the route on it! We were losing faith after a rough Kimberley-track including a river crossing, and stopped again to ask a sweet young couple on their bike who assured us that, yes, AltoAtacama was indeed just around the corner!  It was so worth the journey – by far the best hotel yet…..



Fabulous dinner, superbly comfortable bed, great breakfast….and then the bad news.  The guys working on a drain outside the hotel got quite agitato as we passed them….flat tyre!!! (Brian and Rod, stop hooting!!) Long story, but it led to a remarkable “local” experience at the San P. tyre shop:

 

 

We had been planning to go up to the famous volcanic geysers in the car, but given this experience and the info that it was a fairly dodgy road, we decided to stick to better roads and do the geysers with the grockles in a van next day.  So with the tyre fixed we set off south to find the flamingo salt pan.  The main road down from Calama had been miles and miles of miles and miles but this road got a bit more interesting as we drove on.  To the East ran the volcanic peaks of the Andes – 150 active volcanos, including this one, which almost wiped out the town of Talabre down the road..

 

 About 100K out of town we found some splendid rainbow mountains:

That was far enough so we headed back to the salt pans:

 

 

 

Stunning walking around the area. Loved the flamingos, such crazy birds!  They feed off shrimp 1cm long that hand out in the salty lagoons. 

 

Back via the Valle de La Luna – and it really did feel like you could be driving on the moon!!    It’s quite a long road, and we walked around a bit – all so amazing, some of the muddy looking pointy turrets are eons old, and all the land around them has been eroded away but they are still standing!!

And home for an early night, as the Geyser trip set off at 5am next day.