As is customary on our World Cup adventures, we always seem
to spend some time in a desert region of some description. Last time out it was
a sandy wastes of Namibia, and before that the fringes of the Tunisian Sahara.
So a trip to Chile would not be complete without spending some time in the
driest spot on earth, the Atacama Desert.
Less than 5 hours after we got out of a taxi in Santiago, we
back in one, heading for a 7:00am flight to Calama, in Northern Chile. At
5:00am the traffic is very light and we were standing in the check-in queue
less than half an hour later. The flight was an uneventful one for me, mainly
as I caught up on some lost sleep, but Fiona spent the trip gazing out of the
window as the Andes passed by serenely and the temperate farmland turned into
long stretches of desert wasteland. Off the plane and in to our transfer, had
us at our hotel Altiplanico and unpacking by 11:30am.
The hotel is a sprawling collection of contemporary adobe
style villa’s set in a very well designed and maintained desert-type gardens.
There is a lovely pool at one end of the complex, but the water temperature was
so cold there would be distinct chance of hypothermia if we tried to use it, I
guess it gets better usage in the summer where temperatures can top out at 40 degrees
C. Our room is super comfortable & very quiet, no TV, and with a separate bathroom
wing and an outdoor shower, which is a very invigorating way to start the day.
This must be the very bottom of the low season as I am guessing that of the 40
or so rooms they must have, there cannot be more than a handful of people
staying here... Quiet luxury....
After a spot of lunch at the hotel, we took a short stroll
into the main centre of San Pedro de Atacama. In the days before we arrived,
the town had experienced a sand storm followed by snow, which even closed the
airport for a while. Considering this is the driest place on earth, to arrive and
see large patches of snow all around was somewhat strange, even worse was that
the roads had turned to vast tracts of mud...! Slowly picking our way through the streets, we
wandered the main strip, carefully avoiding both the mud and the hawkers trying
to drum up custom for either their tours or their restaurants. After finding
the main square and a shady spot we sat for a while feeling very tired &
out of breath.
What we had both not taken into consideration was that San
Pedro was at 2400m and that we were feeling some slight effect of the altitude,
probably not helped by our now fading jet-lag or the less than 4 hours sleep
the night before. Too tired to even sit in a bar and have a drink, we returned
to our hotel and crashed out for a few hours, followed by doing a bit of
research on what tours we actually wanted to do, and find some recommendations.
We eventually slunk out of our room at about 8:00am to hunt down some dinner,
had our first Chilean restaurant meal in a place called ‘La Casona’, and were
safely wrapped up in bed by about 10:30pm, praying for the gift of sleep...
Praise be to the deity of your choice..... We slept through
to 8:00am with no interruption. Let me tell you that you don’t know how good
that feels after a week of disruptive sleep....
Consequently, we were up, showered & dressed in time for
breakfast, and felt that we had a new lease on life. The previous
evening we had planned the mornings activities, and if it all
worked out, we would have the next few days sorted out in terms of tours &
sightseeing. Our planning worked. Later that afternoon we would be heading
off to see the ‘Valley of Death’ and the “Valley of the Moon’, followed by
dinner in town, and then to make the most of the exceptionally clear skies out
here in the desert, off on a star-gazing / astronomical tour.
Our afternoon trip to the various ‘Valleys’ was the sort of
experience that we
The Valley of the Moon was the most impressive part
of the tour, with vast salt-stained ravines & canyons, untouched sand dunes
of enormous heights, and weirdly eroded rocks dotting the landscape, just what
we had come to see. No wonder NASA uses this area as a testing ground for their
Mars Rovers...! We had the chance to wander through this ‘moon-like’ place for
a couple of hours, before climbing 300m up the well named ‘Duna Mayor’, (Big
Dune) to watch the sunset. Stunning...!
We returned to town and headed out for an early dinner at
place called Ckunna, before the star-gazing trip at 8:00pm. The tour company
had warned us that it would be cold and that we should dress appropriately, and
Fiona took this advice to heart by wearing nearly everything she had with her.
We even brought her some gloves...! 
The star-gazing was amazing as the Milky Way was on full
display, along with Mars, Venus & Saturn, and the people giving the tour
were extremely knowledgeable. I learnt more about astronomy, space, and our human-kinds
place in the cosmos in 2 hours than I had in the past 50 years. I was left
feeling decidedly small & insignificant in the scheme of things. From the
introduction we moved to a bank of 12 telescopes set up to view various points
of interest, and we were given a full description of what we were being shown
at each telescope. The view of Saturn & its rings just about blew my mind,
I have never seen anything like it. There were other planets, star clusters, nebulas,
and interesting objects to view, but Saturn was indescribable, Fiona though
that the telescope was just showing a representation of the planet, it took
some convincing for her to believe she was actually ‘looking’ at Saturn.
We have a telescope in a cupboard at home somewhere, and I
will dusting that bad-boy off very soon after we return.
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