San Pedro de Atacama
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2007
1
21
38
Trip End
Feb 24, 2008
San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina
Saturday, December 1, 2007
One reason it's good to be back here -- good coffee. I stayed at an inexpensive hotel last night ($8 for my own room, with shared bathroom) and it came with breakfast this morning. And with breakfast at this fairly cheap hotel, I had a nice cup of coffee. In Chile (at least in the North), even in restaurants they give you Nescafe instant coffee. I didn't drink much coffee at all in Bolivia or Peru (stuck to mate de coca), but I remember once ordering coffee and getting a cup nearly filled with hot milk into which I could pour a little bit of coffee.
So let me fill you in on the last few days. I got to San Pedro de Atacama around 10am on Tuesday. The ride was OK, except on the bus from Iquique to Calama, we stopped at a checkpoint around 2 or 3am and we all had to get off the bus. My bag was even one of the ones searched quickly. Then, I had to wait about an hour and a half at the Calama bus station for our connection to San Pedro. After getting to San Pedro, I walked around to a few different hostels with a few people from my hostel in Iquique. We finally settled on one (not great, but cheap) and ended up sharing a dorm room there. Buses to Argentina from San Pedro only run three times a week, so I bought a ticket for the next bus, on Friday (meaning I had to stay in San Pedro for 3 days).
San Pedro (altitude 2,440 meters) has become a really popular tourist town over the last several years. I think every local who lives there works in the tourism industry, as it seems like all of the buildings are hotels or tour agencies. Because of this, it's also very expensive. Getting to Chile from Bolivia/Peru was a bit of a price shock, but San Pedro seemed twice as expensive as Arica and Iquique! Most of the places which had a "menú del dia" were selling it for around 4,000-5,000 pesos ($8-$10), not including drinks. I ended up getting lunch twice at a place that sold only chicken (whole, half, or quarter) and fries -- for 1,350 pesos, you could get (and I did get) a quarter of a chicken and good helping of fries.
The trend of waking up at ridiculous hours continued, as my first morning in San Pedro I woke up at 3:40am. At 4, a group of us were picked up for a tour of the El Tatio geyser field. It is one of the largest geyser fields in the world and also one of the highest (at an elevation of 4,300 meters, or more than 14,000 feet). We left at 4 because it took about 2 hours to get there and the geysers are most impressive between 6 and 7am. We stayed at the field till 8am and the geysers did get much smaller by then. It was freezing (below zero) but warmed up a bit once the sun came out more. We had breakfast there at the geyser field and then went to some nearby thermal baths for a swim. These hot springs were different from the others I'd been in because the temperature of the water was not very consistent. It was a bit cold, especially at one end of the pool, but there would be like underwater waves of really hot water as well. Anyway, it was nice. We stopped at a few places along the way home to take pictures and got back around lunchtime.
The main thing for Thursday was doing a tour of the Valle de la Luna. Valle de la Luna is a beautiful area near San Pedro that looks like a moonscape in many places. A small group of us left at 4pm and first drove to Cordillera de la Sal, a small mountain range next to the Andes. We then drove to a place called Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) where we got out of the car and hiked about half an hour. Really nice desert scenery along the way. Our driver picked us up and we went to Cañon de la Sal where we did another walk over sand dunes and through a small canyon. Finally, we drove to a spot where we could climb a hill and watch the sunset over Valle de la Luna. That was cool to see, we had a great view of Licancabur Volcano (5,920 meters, or nearly 20,000 feet), which is on the border of Bolivia and Chile. I had seen this same volcano during my tour of Southwest Bolivia, when I didn't think I was going to end up traveling to Chile.
I had taken out what I hoped would be the right amount of Chilean pesos in Iquique before heading to San Pedro because I heard that, although San Pedro does have an ATM, it often does not work. And since San Pedro would be my last stop in Chile, I also did not want to take out too many pesos. I ended up doing OK in that regard. The last night in San Pedro we went to a bar that gives out free pisco sours from 8:30-9:30. I had 4,200 pesos on me (approx. $8.30). I wanted to save about 1,000 to get some food the next day for the bus ride, so I was able to use the 3,000 for 3 cans of cheap beer (Escudo, not particularly good beer) at the bar. The next day, I bought bread and bananas and was left with just 10 pesos (2 cents), so it pretty much worked out perfectly.
Speaking of pisco sours, this is an interesting drink because Peruvians and Chileans have a big rivalry about it. Both think that they have the best pisco and that they invented the pisco sour. Pisco is a white grape brandy -- Peruvians make their pisco sours with pisco, lemon juice, syrup, bitters and egg whites. Chilean pisco sours don't have egg white in them and therefore are more clear, while the Peruvian kind is foamy. Talking about this is a good way to start a fight between Peruvians and Chileans.
The bus from San Pedro left at 10:30am and I got to San Salvador de Jujuy at around 7pm. The border crossings weren't too fast, and the bus just sat for a while at the Argentinian crossing after everyone was on the bus. We also stopped once for half an hour and were given tea and a ham and cheese sandwich at a roadside restaurant.
The ride itself was really nice towards the end especially, as we passed through some beautiful scenery (some of which I plan to return to over the next few days). We saw a couple of rainbows, one of which was projected onto the hills, which I'd never really seen before. We took a really windy road down some mountains and then drove through a fertile green valley, surrounded by hills of different colors. Most of the tourists on the bus were getting off at Salta (including the two people from my Iquique hostel who were going to Argentina), I think I was the only one who got off at Jujuy (other than locals). One guy got off before me at Purmamarca -- the area looked great, confirming that I wanted to visit there while I'm up here. OK, that's it for now, will be spending the next few days in some really small towns with great scenery.
Comments
Los colores!!!
Hey Alex--Everything sounds great!!! Purmamarca is a MUST. So beautiful. You'll like Humahuaca, too. And are you still planning to check out Iruya? You'll really enjoy this region, I think...it's a terrific place for some solitude and quiet thinking.
suerte!
besos,
Nat
It feels almost home to be in Argentina...
Fantastic pictures! Can only imagine how it looks in real life. Your picture up close shows a seasoned traveler. Love to see you looking so happy...