Travel report #7
Chile - Santiago, Antofogasta and Atacama
Thursday December 14, 2000
Woke up on the plane and got to see a lovely sun rise. Landed in Santiago and met Christian Rakvaag, a friend of Bjarte from work at Hyrdo!
Found a cheap hostel (a favorite among Israelis) and went on a walk and cable car ride to the "city mountain", Cerro San Cristobal. Really nice view of the city! Did also go on the "taubane" over to Plaza de Italia, but that was nothing special...
Friday December 15, 2000
Did not do much this day, other than planning the coming days and wander around in Santiago. B&IA did not sleep much on the flight, and the hostel was noisy...
Arranged rafting for Saturday! Went on a Pink Floyd show (!) at a Planatarum in the evening...
Saturday December 16, 2000
ACTION DAY! Early start, got on a local bus up along Rio Maipo. Nice valley, with snow capped mountains in the far. Not unlike a Norway, except the vegetation...
Got dressed up with wet suits, life jackets and helmets and off we go. Really good fun and a lot of work! We had our own boat together with two from the US and our instructor Sebastian. Thrilling and wet!! Rafting in the Andes!!!
See the home page of the rafting company, they took photoes, but we have not found ours on the site yet...
Afterwards we made it back into San Jose de Maipo and had a really big meal, with lots of meats (til og med ribbe, det naermeste vi kommer norsk julemat i aar). Arrived back in Santiago late at night.
Sunday December 17, 2000
Then a long bus trip to La Serena. We were entertained on the bus by a 4 year old Chilean girl (Carolina), but other than that an ordinary bus trip. Arrived in La Serena and found a really nice place to stay. Our own house more or less, with a OK kitchen where we could cook! Made a really nice supper meal!
Monday-Tuesday December 18-19, 2000
Nice city to relax in, but not much more... We enjoyed our own cooking and had a nice day at the beach building sand castles :-)
Also visited the local museum and saw a real Easter Island statue that they had there!
Wednesday December 20, 2000
On the move again, a marathon bus ride, 13 hrs. Arrived late at night in Antofagasta, a desert city by the ocean! Amazing area of Chile, with sand desert everywhere, and even next to the sea!
Thursday December 21, 2000
Anatofagasta has had some British input, resulting in a smaller version of Big Ben on their Plaza (we called it little Ben...). Also saw red English telephone boxes!
After seeing the fish market with Pelikans and seals, we took a local bus to La Portada (going to far at first, visiting the most boring nowhere beach town called Juan Lopez).
When we finally made it to La Portada it was an amazing sight. A big natural port out in the sea. We arrive on a platoe 30 meters above the sea. We dared down some steep stairs and got to see more amazing natural ports and a lovely beach. Fantastic!
Late at night we got on a bus again, heading towards Calana, at 2700 meters.
Friday December 22, 2000
Woke up in Calama, a desert city (again). Not much of interest here. We made a trip to Chuquicamata, the place of the worlds biggest open mine, but were told to return the next day to get a tour. The road to Chuqui is surrealistic, straight road into the city, all desert around, and huge man made mountains surrounding the place...
Hired a car this evening, a 4WD pickup. Our Christmas gift to each other :-)
Saturday December 23, 2000
Started the day with a tour of the Chuqui mine. Interesting, an enourmous hole in the ground! One of few man made constructions visible from the space.
Then we headed off towards El Tatio. We chose a special route, wanted to see some interesting villages. ChiuChiu the first stop, small, green village in the middle of the desert.
Next was Ayquina, a "ghost" town, we saw only a couple people. But tonnes of street lights!
The road got more and more bumpy, we passed through a small canyon (nice!) and then to Toconce, another remote village. We had to drive steep down and back up to get to the village. More people here. Interesting.
Then, according to our guide book, we could easily contiune to El Tatio via Linzor. Only that we misunderstood the book...
The road (if it can be called a road) was extremely bumpy and at places hardly existing. We had full use of our 4WD and high clearance. A facinating drive, along the road we saw several vicuņas and lots of really nice scenary, and one lonley man in Linzor.
("Vicunja" - saw lots of them, animal related to Lama and Alpaca)
Eventually, we arrived at El Tatio and got the first look of the amazing geyser field. Lots of sources bobbling with hot water and steams of damp rising from them. Nice!
It was getting late, so we had to continue (was to return at sunrise) and tried accomodation at Corfo, but decided to drive for another 2 hours to get something better...
The man at Corfo told us that the road we had driven to El Tatio should be closed, nobody used that road... :-)
Ended up in San Pedro de Atacama.
Sunday December 24, 2000
The plan was to return to El Tatio at sunrise, but we got not get gasoline, the only gas station at San Pedro was out of order...
So we went to a nearby swimming pool, heated by a natural hot source. Nice!
Later in the day we visited Toconao, a nice little green village in the desert, and Laguna Chaxa, a salt lake full of funny shaped minerals and lots of flamingos.
Returned to San Pedro for our Christmas Eve dinner, a nice barbeeque with lots of good, fresh salad. Then early to bed, cause we now had gas and planned for El Tatio at sunrise on Christmas Day.
Monday December 25, 2000
Got up before 4am and drove off towards El Tatio. Had a cold waiting time before the sun eventually came to sight, and an amazing scenary with geysers over a huge area. Walked/drove around the whole field to see all of it. Amazing!
After all the other tourists had returned, we had the warm pool all to ourselves. Really nice!
(see the photoes)
Ended the day at Valle de la Luna, a place nearby San Pedro with weird landscape, easy to understand it's name...
Tuesday December 26, 2000
Time to return the car in Calama, and to say goodbye to Christian. Christian continued north to Arica before he returned to Norway.
We returned directly back to San Pedro again, from where we had booked a 3 day desert safari into Bolivia!
Wednesday December 27, 2000
This should have been the day of departure, but the tour company had some problems so it was delayed one day...
We used the day to see some ancient ruins nearby and to relax in the plaza reading :-)