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.

Penguins

 

 

And up at crack of dawn, which dawned fine and calm, and into the boats for such a fun hour watching the thousands of penguins and seabirds go about their daily business.  It’s the penguin breeding season when they all come back to their burrows after months at sea; lots of chicks:

 

 

We took hundred of photos, they are all just so funny/sweet!!  There were also a few sea-lions poking their heads up off shore, looking for breakfast – not so funny!

 

One poor couple were raising 4 chicks – one normal, two OK, three difficult – but FOUR…!  Take a lot of fishing to feed them all, but they look robust:

The penguins didn’t have the island all to themselves, they share it with cormorants, kelp gulls, terns and the horrid skua,  voracious predator of baby chicks!

 

And that’s about the end of this bit of the story- back to the ship for a welcome breakfast, packing and then disembarkation at Punta Arenas.  It’s a nice town,  central square, good naval museum, lots of fine old buildings, and a very interesting old British steam ship  rotting quietly at a disused pier with two steel wrecks.

 

We both love Patagonia and we will be back….. but tomorrow we fly up to Atacama, and that promises to be another exciting adventure!