The far north of Chile. The Atacama desert, the driest place on earth. We hadn't seen much of it as we approached since it was night, but there clearly was a desert outside of the window as we approached our destination. For dryness though, not what we expected. Thick clouds covered the sky and within 2 hours of us being in San Pedro it had rained. well, there had been a few drops falling, but the locals clearly considered this rain and - according to them - that was highly, highly uncommon for the time of the year. And as so often with uncommon occurences, the unusual weather should define much of our stay in San Pedro de Atacama.
Most importantly, rain in the oasis town of San Pedro meant snow in the high Andes. Tours returning in the afternoon of our first day reported heavy snowfall and for the following four days, all tours going up into the Andes were cancelled. Due to the uncommonness of the weather the cancellations were happening day-by-day (everyone was hoping for better conditions the next day), which gave us quite a bit of waiting time as we hoped for improvements. Overall, we ended up doing much less than we had thought of, but still got a good impression of the area and got to see many very impressive places in this remarkable landscape. And we were much better off than the many travellers who had planned to move on to Bolivia or Argentina from San Pedro - the snow meant that all mountain passes were closed as well.
So we decided to make the most out of it. To get started, we took a trip to the Valle de la Luna, located in the Cordillera de la Sal. An integral part of the Atacama salt flat, this area of the Salar de Atacama has been shifted up due to tectonic pressure of which Chile has so much along its coastline. The result is a mountain/hill range composed almost exclusively of mineral salts, but mixed with sand and mud, which gives it a really interesting shape and colour. Our cheery tourguide did much to make this experience an interesting one and our first evening concluded with a (nearly sunless) sunset at the top of a high cliff overlooking the valley below.
Given the continuing weather issues, our next day trip was shortened as the altiplano lake area was inaccessible. Nonetheless we continued our education of the area with a trip to the Salar itself, walking around the area and doing some bird watching. It struck us how different it is to see animals in their natural habitat compared to a man-made environment - in this case it were the flamingos who were flying right to left and left to right above our heads, going from one lagune on the Salar to the other. We didn't get to see hundreds, but just the few dozens already shifted our minds and got us very excited about our upcoming Africa experience. The rest of the day was spent wandering the town and sampling the excellent food on offer in San Pedro. We also got to catch up on some logistics, such as booking upcoming flights and other travel arrangements.
By now we had settled in to the slow atmosphere of San Pedro and got up late the next day. For lunch we went to yet another nice place, but despite the very nice food lunch was somewhat overshadowed by the trembling earth we had experienced about an hour beforehand. It didn't seem strong to us when it happened, so we were surprised that it had been a 6.5 quake not even 150km away from us! We experienced it as a brief, slow shaking of the earth, almost like a spell of dizzyness and it was more of a "did you just feel the same thing" kind of experience than a shock. Nonetheless it was another fascinating moment. Later in the day San Pedro lost electrical power for about an hour, but we don't know if there was a connection between the two. The locals didn't seem to bother much, so our third and final tour in San Pedro again went to the Salar as planned and advertised. This time Geraldine confirmed her affinity for cold water and went for a swim in the extremely salty (and cold) waters of the Laguna Cejar. Even after rinsing off, she still had plenty of white flakes on her face as the salt crystalised. The tour concluded with a nice sunset (the clouds had thinned a little) and of course some Pisco Sours.
Our last day in San Pedro turned out to be our laziest yet. We tried to book a trip to Chile's second largest mine, Chuquicamata, but due to strong winds the tours were cancelled. The weather had ben clearing up over the last days, so ther was more sunshine, but we had arranged our transfer further north for the evening, so didn't bother with investigating other tour availabilities anymore. Besides confirming some travel arrangements, picking up our laundry, having yet another tasty lunch and buying our bus tickets we didn't get up to much. Until 4pm that was, when we got ourselves to finally take the short stroll to the Pukara de Quitor, a pre-Inca time hill fortress, eventually taken and destroyed by the Spanish around 1540. Walking back along the river gave us another long, beautiful view on the most impressive landscape around San Pedro de Atacama. For all its issue-causing in terms of tours, the slowly retreating cloud cover had actually given us a different view every day, from a grey nothingness at the horizon to a glorious panorama of snow-capped mountains and red-grey hills. Overall, when we grabbed out 8.30pm night bus to Arica, we were very happy with what San Pedro had offered us.
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