Lakes, geysers and canyons
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2007
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24
50
Trip End
Jun 22, 2008
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San Pedro de Atacama,
Chile
Friday, March 21, 2008
An oasis in the middle of the Atacama desert, SPA has been an important stop-over for centuries and it is an unlikely magnet for travelers. But a magnet it is. It is a very small town of mud and adobe houses, most of which are tour agencies or hospedajes. Although it is an oasis, that just means there is some water - no beautiful lake with palm trees here. But the desert scenery is outstanding - utterly bare hills, snow-capped volcanoes and very flat desert, often completely bare but with patches of small hardy shrubs about a foot high.
Valle de la Luna
The most popular outing here is to a desolate place to climb a sand dune and watch the mountains change colour as the sun sets. We decided to bike out with a stopover at the Valle de la Muerte.
Muerte is a muddy canyon with grey sand dunes and striking forms gouged in the clay. It is an austere place apart from the sand-boarders.
When we got to the Valley of the Moon we discovered that it is not just a place to view the sunset from, and we really hadn't time to see the sights. We had a quick dash through a narrow canyon and cave where the the mud has a drizzled look, and everything is more solid than it looks, and is deceptively iced with salt that looks like snow. Then we dashed off to view the sunset from the famous dune. The view is fantastic. Looking at the mountains across the Salar de Atacama (a salt flat) you have your back to the sunset with strange rocks to your right resembling petrified whitecaps.
Valle de Muerte
A flat salt-encrusted area is to the left and behind, while a rounded rise catches the last of the sun. The mountains did not perform their full colour changing repertoire this time, but it is still a lovely spot.The ride home in the dark was uneventful and I was pleased to find out that much of it was downhill which I had not noticed on the way up but which explained why I had found it quite hard going. I had thought that I was just unfit, but I barely had to peddle most of the way home. And I was grateful that we had thought to bring our head mounting lights - the bikes do not come with lights and it was very useful to be able to wrap our lights around the handle bars and at least be able to see the road.
The museum
The local museum comes highly recommended for its display of mummies. But it has taken these out, deeming them disrespectful, and now has nothing to say on the indigenous population's cosmology, religion or burial practices. This reduces the museum to a straightforward display of artifacts and some history. The Atacameņos were pretty conservative when it comes to material goods and their artifacts are not eye catching.
But some facts for the record. Settlement occurred 11,000 years BP by hunter-gatherers who migrated with their camelid prey between the high altiplano and the more temperate lower altitudes. Between 5,000 and 1500 BP they settled into agricultural communities and were raising llamas. They produced professional but plain pottery, the main form of ornamentation being a face on the side of the pot.
From 1500 BP they came under the sway of the more flamboyant Tiwanaku culture, but they held to their conservative styles.
The canyon at Valle de la Luna
Their most interesting artifacts are the engraved tablets for snorting drugs, nicely worked with handles with anthropomorphic figures, monkeys and snarling heads that could be dogs, bats or big cats. The Incas arrived, and were soon displaced by the Spanish, and the site of the last battle is still well preserved by the desert environment.Laguna Cejar etc
This trip intrigued us with the chance to swim in an incredibly salty lake. It is not really like swimming at all because the water is extraordinarily buoyant. Minimising your natural buoyancy (ie 'standing' vertically) my shoulders were well clear of the water. You sink if you try this in the sea. You can sit as if on a chair. You cannot duck dive deep enough to get your feet under the water (and your nose, burning from salt, will punish you afterwards too). The typical reaction on first encountering this water is to burst into giggles. Afterwards, the salt dries so thick that it is visible. Nancy observed that it was like being the string in the science experiment at school where you make salt crystals.
Afterwards we went to two sinkholes with comparatively fresh water, called the eyes of Atacama, and finished at a brilliantly salty salar to watch the sunset with a pisco sour, with a closer view of the mountains than from the valle de la Luna the night before, and this time there was a bit more colour changing going on.
It was a good trip.
Tatio Geysers and a minor hiccough
But things were about to unravel painfully.
Valle de la Luna late afternoon
The next morning we were to get a 4am tour to the highest thermal field in the world. Somehow both alarms failed us, and, running in bare feet in the dark to try to delay the bus passing our home, I tripped over some roots and ended up in a concrete ditch with two very badly skinned toes. I don't know how I managed not to break them.But we managed to get our tour (only because they made a second try to pick us up) and I heroically hobbled through the next eight hours of a pretty good trip to a field of fumaroles and geysers at 4,300 m. The geysers weren't up to much, and apparently are much more energetic in winter. But it was still a nice place, and on the way back we saw very shaggy llamas (some with bows), gorgeous graceful vicuņas, and little rabbit-squirrel crosses vizcachas.
Back in civilisation and with the shoes off, the medical consensus was that the toes could very easily get infected and the best hing to do would be to lay up for a few days. They were somewhat disapproving that we had waited all day to come in as it was, but we only did that because it was so difficult to clean them - full of dust and glued to the sock with blood. They were very approving when I confirmed that I had not got into the hot pool at the geyser field; but I skipped that, not even thinking about the lively homes to bacteria they provide, but simply because I couldn't imagine getting my shoes off and back on again. I had been thinking that I could just wash them out, stick a band-aid on them to keep the flap closed, and head off. I was wrong.
So once again, we were forced to spend longer than we had planned in a Chilean town. The excursion to Bolivia would have to wait.
