Alright Geysers...!

The trusty alarm went off at 4:15am and Fiona and I immediately jumped into action to get ready and out of the room in 15 mins. This is a new sport we have been practicing a lot over the past 2 weeks.....

Just before 5:00am we were last people to be picked up on the tour bus, which meant we got to sit right at the back-of-the-bus, with all the additional legroom that entailed... Result...! We set off in the pitch black of early morning and headed in the general direction of Northeast towards the El Tatio Geyser field some 50 miles away, near the Bolivian boarder. The travel distance was not as significant as the altitude change, as we went from 2400m to 4300m, which has been known to have a very detrimental effect on some people due to altitude sickness. This was the reason Fiona & I had decided to do this trip the day before we left San Pedro in order to allow our bodies to acclimatise to San Pedro’s altitude, before assaulting ourselves with almost another 2000m increase.

I sat in the back of the bus zoning out while listening to my iPod as we drifted through the moonless desert and steadily ascended the long climb through a series of switch-backs and long straights. One of the other passengers on the bus was having a hard time with the altitude change, and we stopped for a short while to allow them a sort break before continuing onward. Both Fiona & I were okay, but you can really feel the effects of the altitude change with shortness of breath and achiness in your body as you get higher & higher. About an hour before sunrise we arrived at the Geyser park entrance and we got off the bus to pay the entry fee... Bugger Me Backwards...!! It was COLD, in fact it was -10 degrees C, and our guide took great pleasure in letting us know it would get lower just before the sun actually rose.

Fifteen minutes later, in the half-light of the pre-dawn we stepped off the bus again into a surreal and haunting landscape of billowing mists and the coughing and spluttering of boiling water. The El Tatio is the 3^rd largest geyser field in the entire world and has hundreds of individual geysers or fumaroles. The reason the tour is run at sunrise is that the the air temperature is at its lowest and this makes the steam from the vents more visible and impressive, and impressive it was. Apart from the fact that I had the perverse idea of dipping my gloveless hands into a vent to warm them up, I was enjoying the spectacle immensely. Fiona was wrapped up in every item of clothing she could put on, (including 2 pairs of trousers), wrapped in a blanket, and she was still cold....

We were led through the geyser field, moving from one interesting sight to another until we approached where the bus was parked, and also where breakfast was now laid out on a low wall. Before we reached the bus however, our tour guide, Mariano, reached down into large geyser hole and pulled out a couple of cartons of chocolate milk and a bag full of eggs, now hard boiled from the heat of the water... Ingenious...! I have now eaten an egg cooked by a geyser, and the hot chocolate was also very welcome. As we ate our breakfast, Mariano informed us that the temperature had now reached -13 degrees, but it would change momentarily when the sun rose. He was not wrong, as soon as the sun crested the far mountain ridge it was like an electric heater had been turned on as the warm rays of the sun were now being absorbed through my jacket..... Hmmmm, warm....

We had some further time to wander around and take photos before we boarded the bus to head to the thermal hot pools for those that were brave enough to get their kit off and take the plunge. No, don’t get your hopes up, even I wasn’t dumb enough to put myself through that savage ritual, but a couple of Frenchies on the bus did. Allegedly it was colder than it looked..... Imagine that.

From there we started the long journey back to San Pedro, stopping off to see some Andean wildlife and some wetlands, plus a stop for a goat cheese empanada at the original ‘one-horse-town’ that has only 3 residents. By this point I was starting to suffer the reverse effects of the altitude and with each meter we descended, a small head ache that had developed, proceeded to get stronger & stronger. By the time Fiona & I arrived at the hotel at midday, there was only one thing we were going to do, and that was take some headache tablets and climb in to bed to sleep....

We finally resurfaced at about 3 hours later that afternoon and mooched about the hotel for the rest of the afternoon, drinking tea & coffee out in the beautifully designed gardens in the warm sunlight. We rounded the day out with dinner at a restaurant called ‘Blanco’ that was all trendy white interior, dim lights and subtle house music, and very nice food too.... 

Tomorrow, (Friday I think?), we pack our bags and head back to Santiago, before taking off again on Saturday, spending the rest of the weekend in Valparaiso on the Pacific coast until Monday. As I won’t be taking the laptop with me on that trip, this could be the last post for 4 or 5 days.... Signing off for now...

Fun Facts & Figures – Part 1

As I did for the previous World Cup Blog for South Africa, and as the start of a continuing series, here is a quick round-up of some of the fun facts & figures about our trip so far: -

• Current Distance from Home: 10,512kms
• Distance walked so far: ~ 77kms...! (More than the last 7 weeks)
• Beers Drunk: Countless
• Great Beers Discovered: SpoH India Pale Ale, Santiago, Chile
• Amount of Spanish Learnt: Quite a lot..!
• Amount of Portuguese: Nothing
• Lost Hours of Sleep: ~ 20 hours
• Planes Taken:  3
• Public Buses Taken: 3
• Trains Taken: 1
• Games of Wizard Won: 2 (Steve) / 0 (Fiona)
• Highest Temperature: 25 Degrees C (San Pedro de Atacama, Chile)
• Lowest Temperature: -13 Degrees C (El Tatio Guysers, Chile)
• Favourite Purchase:  Beer (Steve) / Ethnic Shoulder Bag (Fiona)
• Favourite Quote: “Beer is not a purchase, it’s a necessity” - Fiona
• Favourite Meal:  Steak al pil pil (Steve) / Avocado Salad (Fiona)

Feel free to ask us for any other interesting facts & figures associated with our trip, (leave your questions in the comments section) We will try and get you the answers... Happy Days. 

Resting our old bones

On the Wednesday, we had nothing planned, except to meet for lunch a student of Christine’s who is currently working in San Pedro. Therefore we decided we would have a very casual & restful sort of day mainly based around the hotel in the morning, and then into town for the afternoon.

We met Antonia at a cafe in the main square and sat and chatted for a while, she was very grateful for the chance to practice her speaking English. She is a geographer here in San Pedro for a year on a UN backed project, studying the impact of the regions many stakeholders on the hydrology of the area. As you can imagine, water is a very important subject around these parts, and trying to balance the needs and requirements of the local population, the mining sector, tourism, and many others, all while being sensitive to the indigenous peoples of the Atacama, is a key responsibility. Antonia was engaging, smart and ambitious, with plans to move to London when her year in San Pedro is up, and we felt sure that she was destined for great things in the future.

The first part of the afternoon was spent at the local Gustav la Paige Museum, which details the area’s many diverse ecologies and traces Mans journey through the region over the past 12,000 years.  Gustav la Paige was a Belgian Missionary who spent the last 40 years of his life in San Pedro, where he documented the region, its landscapes, its peoples, and its buildings, and collected and categorised many of the exhibits in the Museum. Well worth the hour or so wandering round.... We also visited the local church that has stood around these parts since at least the mid 16^th century, and boy, did it show its age...! They are in the process of restoring it right now, but I hope they don’t lose that vintage character.

The rest of the afternoon we spent lounging around the hotel & its grounds. It’s nice to be able to make use of the facilities, instead of just rushing in & out and using only as a place to lay our heads. We need to go out for an early dinner, as we were due to be being picked up at 4:30am the next day for a trip to see the El Taito Geysers, and we wanted an early night. We went to a popular restaurant called ‘Adobe’ and sat effectively outside in an internal courtyard sort-of affair, with a warming brazier, and

view above to the stars. I had a fantastic steak dish called ‘al pil pil’ which is apparently  of Spanish origin, and involved large pieces of meat & potatoes in a thick sauce made from garlic & chilli, and wow it was good, (my mouth is watering right now as I type this). We finished off the meal with coffee & dessert, which was altogether far too much and headed back to the hotel for an early night.

Tomorrow we visit the Geysers of El Tatio

High Plains Drifters

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

had hoped for, with impressive landscapes and stunning new vista’s at every turn. Our English speaking tour guide, Simone, took the time to explain many of the features and points of interest, and was on hand to answer our myriad of questions. 

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.

Finally we went into small adobe building and had a cup of hot chocolate, (very welcoming), and listened to the French astronomer talk and answer our questions. His answer to a question about shooting stars took 10 minutes to answer, described the journey of man in their understanding of the heavens, stars and planets, and was worth the price of the tour alone.

We have a telescope in a cupboard at home somewhere, and I will dusting that bad-boy off very soon after we return.