Fresh from the Desert.....

Howdy gang, Melanie and I arrived in Punta Arenas, Patagonia several hours ago. We had a long day of traveling, two 4 hour flights from the top of the country to the bottom of the world. We just had dinner and drank a bottle of wine so bare with me on this post.

We just spent 5 days in San Pedro de Atacama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_de_Atacama). Some of our plans didn´t work out as we thought, but was made up in other ways. Our little blue rental car was a blessing and curse, more of the former than the latter. More on that later.

We spent our first evening visiting valle de la luna, a national park a 10 minutes drive out of town. We started off hiking through some lava caves, although we didn´t know the caves were part of the trail and it was a good thing we had our head lamps. There was a group of young Chileans hiking throughout the cave, using their cell phones as lights. You could say we saved their lives, although I don´t think they thought of it that way.

We then drove out to a very old salt mine that sat behind a few boulders that were in the middle of the desert. The boulders were a main attraction of the park, we didn´t find out why until later, apparently they are 1,000,000 years old. The salt mines were nice, only I had to hold Melanie back from wanting to lick the ground and I wore out my arms from her determination.

We ended our time at the park climbing a giant sand dune and from there climbing out through a rocky mountain valley to watch the sunset. We could tell why the park was called Valley of the Moon, walking around the park had strong moon like qualities. The pictures don´t do it justice, the few I´ve posted here make them look tiny, trust us, they were HUGE!

We found out that there were some hot springs along with waterfalls and swimming pools 15 miles out of town. The following day we piled into the great blue clunker and headed northwest. Not far from town, the road was so incredibly riveted and bumpy that we couldn´t venture forward. Somewhat bummed to miss out on the hot springs, we heard of some man-made swimming pools south of town, Pozo 3 (not sure why the number 3 is here, it´s not like there were two others). It was pretty much a Chilean family picnic grounds that had a giant pool, 30ft deep in the adult section. It was a great way to beat the heat for a little while, the sun in this desert is a force to be reckoned with. I did mention it is considered the driest place in the world right? In town they have a stop light displaying the danger levels of solar rays. During the afternoon (code purple) it says that white folk like us shouldn´t be in the sun for more than 11 minutes at a time!

After swimming we decided to continue the drive since we were already out of town. We headed East towards the Andes, a slow and steady climb up to around 4,000 meters. There are several flamingo reservations around San Pedro, we wanted to find one of the few in high elevation. The drive was beautiful, crisp clear blue skies and a great view of a volcano in front of us as we ascended. The lonely road ran parallel to a giant canyon, giant boulders lining the walls. We saw a pack of wild alpacas grazing in the mountain range. Apparently the alpacas love it up there because they and see their predators (pumas) from miles around, not many places to hide in the desert range. I pulled over to take a few photos of the alpacas and the high elevation really hit me. I was totally fine in the car, but taking two steps left me faint of breathe and wanting to keel over. We decided it was enough high elevation for the day and figured we would let the flamingos play by themselves. We headed back to town for some dinner and sleep. Melanie got some mushroom risotto made with a fruit that only grows in the Atacama desert, Chañar. They made a sweet flavored Chañar reduction to top the risotto and it was lip smacking good.

We the had an appointment with a french astronomer to take a tour of the stars. Northern Chile is supposed to be one the best places in the world for some star gazing, they have some giant observatories here. You needed reservations a month in advance, we settled for the local tour. Our appointment was for 9pm and was going to be 2 hours long. We had dinner first at a restaurant down the street thinking we had plenty of time. We arrived at their door 5 minutes before 9 and waited around for someone to show. A few minutes after 9 we heard some voices inside their office and knocked on their wooden door. The people inside informed us that the tour left 20 minutes earlier, and as it turns out, our travel time piece is, well, it´s a piece of something that doesn´t involve time. We missed our tour and were really bummed, partially because it was the whole reason we rented a car in the first place. But, since we had the car, we figured we would go star gaze by ourselves. A 20 minute drive out of the tiny 3,5000 person village left a bright sky even brighter. The milky way was hovering over us so close we wanted to grab it with our hands.

Our last day in the desert we decided to give the high elevation another try, this time we were armed with some special tea that locals drink to help the blood get to their brain, making it easier to acclimate. Our destination was two alpine lakes that had breeding grounds for flamingos, what seemed just an hour from town on our map. Well, 45 minutes out of town it turned into a dirt road, and we were hoping it was better condition than the road to the hot springs. It was, for the first 45 minutes. The scenery was desolate and beautiful. As far as the eye could see was desert and mountains. The slow and steady climb with out little putt-putt car started to get more difficult as the road worsened. We were getting passed by speeding tour buses with 4 wheel drive. People would just stare at us like we ate the wrong end of a snake. We eventually made it after 2 hours on the road, Melanie´s back was killing her from the bumpy ride. Blah blah blah, more gorgeous mountains, pretty lakes, is this getting repetitive or what? They wouldn´t let us go down to the water as it is protected flamingo territory. I want to say we saw herds of flamingos, frolicking and fornicating, but I wouldn´t be telling the truth. We were in the wrong part of the season, and we only saw several lone flamingos, and they were so far away we could barely make out the lines of their thin bodies.

We drove back to town, rocking out to Chairmen of the Board on our little travel speakers (we didn´t have the cable for the auxillary input in our car and the local radio was terrible). We were pretty grateful for the rental car, it was difficult at times, but we saw some great stuff thanks to it. It was also much better than donig stuff on a tour.

We woke up at 5am the following day to catch our flight back to Santiago from the Shithole. After getting yelled at by a bus driver for driving down the wrong way on an unmarked one way street, we luckily navigated ourselves back to the airport just in time for our flight. Most of the 9 hours on a plane down to patagonia was uneventful, except for one of the coolest things we´ve ever seen in our lives. South of Puero Montt, we got to witness the legendary volcano Chaiten erupt from the sky on a clear blue day.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE51I77H20090220

see other cool Chaiten pix here, some amazing action last year with volcano battlin a lightening storm.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi/noframes/read/124233



We are meeting up with our dear friends Brandon and Annie tomorrow, then we head off to Torres Del Paine national park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_del_Paine_National_Park

That is all for this report, I cheated and finished this post the following day. It was too hard to stay up after the long day and wine. We met a great Dutch couple, and today we went to a maritime museum where they had pictures and artifacts from Sir Ernest Shackleton´s (one of my heroes) great voyage to the south pole in 1914. If any of you haven´t seen The Endurance, you need to rent it now. We are going to make some squash and musrhoom risotto tonight. The squash here are the size of horse heads. The mercados here cutt of 1/16 pieces for about a dollar. I also go some local scallops (at least I think they are scallops) that I´m going to cook in some chili and lime butter.

much luv to all of you back home

T$M