What's drier than Death Valley?
Trip Start
Dec 14, 2007
1
177
187
Trip End
Mar 16, 2009
San Pedro de Atacama,
Chile
Friday, December 26, 2008
We noticed a remarkable difference between the two countries the minute we arrive at the Chilean boarder. Instead of the usual boarder crossing procedure of queuing up at a little rickety wooden desk attended by an overweight official wearing a stained uniform who hardly raises his head to look at your face this was a serious looking boarder crossing
Dusty streets of San Pedro de Atacama
. Neatly dressed officials sat behind thick Plexiglas in air conditioned offices equipped with computers, scanners and seemed to be taking their job quite seriously. After we had our passports stamped, fortunately no visa's required this time, it was on to the customs department who made everyone one the bus open and unpack all their luggage looking for fruits, vegetables, animal products or anything else that was on their list of 'not allowed'. This process took longer than expected and the poor Japanese girls that were travelling in our group had to unpack all their souvenirs that had been collecting throughout South America and had each thoroughly inspected. We fortunately only had to relinquished a bag of dried fruits Inge-Marie though she could smuggle in, this was worse than when we entered Australia.
After all the boarder formalities were finalised it was back to in the mini-bus and on to San Pedro de Atacama. As the name suggests San Pedro or St Peter is a little town in the enormous Atacama Desert which co-incidentally is reported to be the driest desert in the world and is 50 times drier than Death Valley in California. In Vine Hooligan terms; drier than an empty bottle of Extra Brut!!
The town's popularity has been growing over the years and San Pedro is now a popular tourist destination in Northern Chile for star gazers, history lovers interested in pre-Colombian artefacts, archaeological buffs, nature lovers and even adventure travellers looking to do a little sand boarding
Hanging around at the hostel
. A big surprise to us was the number of luxurious hotels and resorts in and around town and finding affordable accommodation was quite a challenge. Prices in Chile were significantly higher than in Bolivia, Ecuador or Peru but we were told that San Pedro was one of the pricier places in Chile, even more so during this time of year.We were lucky to find a lovely double room in a hostel on the outskirts of town called La Ruca Hostel which a neat outdoor courtyard area with hammocks and even advertised free WiFi. The free WiFi as we had discovered many times over in South America does not mean the establishment has its 'own' internet connection with wireless transmitter; all it mans is that you can pick-up an unblocked connection from somewhere in the vicinity, very sneaky! Weak signals aside the hostel was great and only a short walk from the town centre.
After a day in town we started noticing more differences between Chile and the other countries we visited thus far in South America. Besides the government department we noticed that the people looked a lot more European, fairer skin lighter hair and more European facial features. Also gone were the traditional outfits and it was hard to believe that just a few hundred kilometres over the boarder life was very different. For us it was a pleasant change to not be sticking out like two gringos on an annual vacation.
A short walk through San Pedro and you get the feeling that this dry and dusty little town has not changed much over time. Many of the streets are unpaved and streets were lined with white washed adobe houses with flat roofs made of clay and straw
Great big pepper corn trees in the square
. The town had a pleasant buzz with the hordes to tourists milling around in the streets and chilling in the parks under the massive peppercorn trees. Stylish restaurants and interesting bars were in abundance and it was a great to have all this choice for a change.Since we only planned to spend a few days in San Pedro in order to make it to Valparaiso for New Years eve we didn't have much time to explore all the region had to offer but one attraction we did not want to miss was a tour to the Valle de la Luna or otherwise known as the Moon Valley. Every one of the hundred tour desks in town offered a tour to the Valle de la Luna and as apposed to the meticulous selection process we undertook for a Salar del Uyuni tour, this time we were happy to go with the cheapest tour with the only criteria being an English speaking guide. But experience has taught us not to be too surprised if all your criteria are not met so we just had a good chuckle when the driver/guide arrived and couldn't put together two words in English!
At the end of the day the sights were self explanatory and no amount of words, in any language, could have done justice to the amazing views. We started at a lookout point from which we had endless views of the surrounding desert and the strange mountain formations, after which we visited the Valle de la Muerte, Death Valley for a quick walk around. The highlight of the afternoon was a visit to the Valle de al Luna which is said to resemble the surface of the moon.
I wasn't sure how they were able to claim that the area resembled the surface of the moon unless they consulted Neil Armstrong or one of the other moon walkers but with a little imagination it wasn't hard to imagine yourself being on the moon
San Pedro de Atacama
. The interesting rock formation and windswept landscape with not a plant or animal in sight could easily have made a realistic backdrop for a fake moon landing. One of the popular attractions in the area are the Tres Maria's which are geological formations caused by successive folding of the earths crust. The three consist of super hard salt like crystals that withstood water and wind while everything around them eroded over millions of years. Really very cool!We ended the trip with walk up a massive sand dune from where we could watch the sunset over the desert. This clearly was a popular tour in town as we were joined by more than a hundred other sun set admires. Even with the crowds the trip was well worth it and was a great way to spend the afternoon and get an idea of how remarkable the world's driest desert was!
After two days in Chile and an afternoon's tour in Spanish we started noticing another big difference between Chile and the rest of the South American counties we'd visited, the language. It was still Spanish but was very different. Just when we thought we were doing alright with our limited but sufficient Spanish the Chileans changed all that. For starters the Chileans don't seem to pronounce the entire word and simply seem to cut the end of most words off, for example gracias now becomes gracie. To make it worse they speak much, much faster making it hard at times to work out if they were even speaking Spanish.
And lastly after we thought we'd mastered the all the Spanish numbers to a hundred everything changed when US$1 equated to almost Peso 650 Chilean and almost everything you bought totalled in the thousands! I guess we were going to have to practice a little more!
