San Pedro de Atacama

I made my way north this past week to visit the Atacama desert--it's striking and wowing spending time there. Parts of Atacama make it the driest desert in the world! Aside from all the grand desert vistas that remind you of movies, there are all the natural wonders too. Here's a run down:

We arrived to San Pedro, the little tourist filled (and i mean filled) town with streets lined with restaurants, tour companies, hostels and souvenir shops one after another. We were tired from a real early flight, but were convinced (by a tour guide, of course) to take advantage of the full day we had and went to the Puripobre termas--usually, you got to Puritama, but Puripobre had the natural warm springs without having to pay an entrance fee :-D. Ale was really affected by the altitude--we were at about 2,000 km, and she actually passed out! It was scary, but the tour guide knew what he was doing. It's generally not very serious and happens to a lot of people, but it was a scare and Ale was sensitive to it for the rest of the trip. She bought cocao leaves and tea so that helped!

The following day we explored the town a bit during the day, and in the afternoon went sandboarding! I had some falls, since that was first time I've done anything like that (I've never been skiing or snowboarding). Definitely a good time--but super strenuous! And the snowboarding is followed by a small hike into Valle de la Luna where we watched the sunset. Really beautiful!

That evening we also got to experience a really awesome party--out in the middle of the desert with a big bonfire and dance music. Pretty incredible to be dancing and mingling with chileans (good practice for spanish at that) underneath the clearest sky and in the middle of who-knows-where. It was really cold, but that made for the fireside chat atmosphere. What a night!

Sandboarding

The next tour we took was a full day one, starting at 8am. It took us to the Salares de Atacama, where not only the salt sediments were sparkling but we got to see flamingos! They are just so beautiful. Hopefully I find a halloween party to go to here, because I've been wanting to go as a flamingo. Now i've done some research!

Look mom! It's like an animal planet shot! I think of you when i see wildlife :-D


Maybe if you enlarge this you'll see it better, but flamingos are just so gorgeous--not only rose pink, but this Chilean Flamingo has black feathers on the underside of its wings. So when they fly, the color schemes going on are just awesome.

After that we went to a couple towns, they showed us how people in the desert get by. The greenery in the photo of Ale and the dog was a part of a whole area where fruit was growing, and where a small river/stream runs by that has pure pure water used by the towns. The other part of the trip was going to the Lagunas--wowww. I think this was my favorite. Riding through the driest of places in the world and then all of a sudden coming across this blue blue oasis is nuts! Plus, I love the salt/white sediments you can see on the shore.

Finally, we woke up at 3am to go on the Geyser tour. At about 5 degrees, early in the morning, the contrast of the hot vapor is most visible with the cold air. So I layered up in some silly outfit (which turned out being okay! us kenyoners are used to that weather, sort of, i just had ice cold hands). They're really something--just like the photos show, hot air spurting up out of the ground! we saw one get started, at first its just bubbling, and once it gets going in under a minute hot water comes spurting out, and eventually turns into vapor. You have to be careful not to stand in it for too long because of all the sediments and chemicals in it.

See that bubbling? This is a small spot of geyser activity--the bigger ones are the ones that spurt out water and vapor. But it's pretty incredible to see bubbling water all over the place.






This was a hole in the ground where we could sit for a moment to warm up (not too long!) You see how hot the vapor coming out really is!

Afterwards we enjoyed breakfast and warm drinks and were looking at some animals, some wild some not, and marshes. I had a taste of llama meat, so good! When we got back we relaxed for the rest of the day, made a delicious pasta and got to bed at a decent hour considering we had to get up early yet again for our early flight home. I'm lucky to have seen a place like that--and Ale was great company. It's nice traveling around with just another person. We also got great practice with our spanish--the Chileans there are impressed when tourists who can really talk with them in spanish show up. So that was great! Enjoy the photos!

Llamas--basically all are domesticated, not wild. Here they are grazing!