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.
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