My First Week in Chile (San Pedro de Atacama)

Hola todos (Hello Everyone)

Before I dive into the beginning on my trip to Chile, I want to give everyone some information about myself. I am a student at University at Albany, SUNY and am double majoring in Globalization and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I am currently a first semester senior. I have been studying Spanish for almost 11 years now, and spent nine months in Ecuador in 2010. I am studying in Chile at the Universidad De Chile which is in Santiago, the capital.

On February 21st at 8:00PM (East Coast Time) I arrived at the airport for a long, long plane ride (10 hours!) to Santiago with my mom, who accompanied me for almost two weeks. The plane ride wasn't awful considering they had an abundance of movies and the food could've been worse. We arrived in Santiago on February 22nd at 7AM (Chilean Time which is 2 hours ahead of New York).

Since my mom was only going to be here for two weeks, I left the travel destinations up to her. (Whatever I didn't see with her, I hope to see during my next six months in South America). She decided that instead of going to Patagonia which is way far south and freezing, we'd go to the highest and driest desert in the world, The Atacama Desert. A few hours after we arrived in Santiago, we got back on a plane to the Atacama Desert for another two hour flight, which was the most incredibly beautiful flight I have ever been on. We traveled up the coast and could see the Pacific Ocean from afar on the west coast and the gigantic ice-capped Andes mountains to the east. Below us, were hundreds of large hills of clay that were reddish-brown colored, but with shades of blue, green, purple, and black. The contrast of landscape and colors was breath-taking.

Once we arrived at the airport in a town called Calama (nothing special), we went straight to our destination called, San Pedro de Atacama. We stayed there for a week. The first day we got there, we did absolutely nothing. Considering we had just traveled for more or less 24 hours, we slept and laid in the 90 degree weather by the pool at our hotel, Solcor B&B. The next day, we did the exact same thing. Most importantly, I was getting a tan!

On our third day there (the 24th) we decided to get bikes, and bike to two of their main attractions: Valle de  La Luna (Moon Valley) and Valle del Muerte (Death Valley). Well, that was quite the adventure. Firstly, our hotel told us it was about 3 km there and back. Trust me, it did not feel like it (we later found out we basically biked 15 km). We were told that it was an easy bike ride, and much to our surprise, it of course was not. It was more up hill that flat, and we spent half of the ride walking up the hill (mind you we are at 2,500 meters above sea level). Around half way, we made it to Moon Valley, which is gorgeous. It is protected so cannot be walked in, but a view from above is maybe even better. It was a valley of very sharp looking rocks that were coated with salt, making the rocks look as if there were a light brush of snow on them. We then continued on to find Death Valley, which was much farther than we thought. We got to what we thought was Death Valley, and were disappointed. It was a boring seemingly inverted plateau. We then left, and thankfully, the way back was all down hill.

We had intentions of after the "short" trip to the valleys, that we would go to La Laguna Cejar (Eyebrow Lagoon, apparently in the shape of an eyebrow). We went back to the B&B to refresh our water and take a short break after our 3 hour bike trip. This bike ride, we were told was about a 20 minute ride, and we thought, perfect, we can now go to the lagoon and cool off. Well, yet again, our sources were wrong, and it took us an hour and 45 minutes to get there. I wanted to give up and turn around after about an hour. But, we continued and made it there at around 6PM. It was beautiful, of course, and the water was so thick and filled with salt that you literally couldn't put your head under! You just bounced on the surface like a buoy. It was cold, but felt nice, and quite an experience. We then decided to leave at around 7:30PM (the sun sets at about 8:15PM, but it doesn't get dark until about 8:45/9PM. The trip back, was even worse than going there, or at least I thought so. We figured it would be shorter on the way back, but no. We were both sore from our basically 5 hours of biking, and it got dark half way, so we had to bike with a flash lights, which we luckily had, on a rough rocky dirt road with lots of little ditches. We finally made it back, and I promised myself I would never touch a bike again for the next two weeks. We learned that day, to not trust these so called "reliable" sources.

The next day, Monday, we went to the Puritama Thermal Pools. This was maybe the best part of the week. The warm water felt so nice, and it was incredibly beautiful. We took a taxi there, so no strenuous exercise that day thankfully.

On Tuesday, we took a organized tour to the Tatio Geysers. These are one of the biggest attractions of the desert. We awoke at 3:45AM to catch the bus at 4:00AM. It was an hour and a half ride going up higher into the mountains. They say that the Geysers are the best in the morning so that is why we left so early. However, honestly, they are still equally beautiful once the sun has risen. There, we admired many many geysers all around. Some only steamed, but others shot 150 degree water out of their spouts. I was cold at 6AM, so I wouldn't have minded burning myself a little bit, but I figured it wasn't the best idea. The best and funniest part of this trip was that, very very very unlike the U.S., some of the geysers had rocks around them as to not go any further, but the majority were just there with no warning. You could literally just walk into the geyser if you wanted. Only in South America.
After some time there, we went to a bath with cooled water from the geysers. That was wonderful. There was even a section of the pool that shot out the 150 degree water, which you could lean on, but, you had to time it correctly so that you wouldn't be too close when it shot out the water. We weren't so lucky to avoid it every time and experienced some very hot water on our bodies. But it felt nice. We then returned back to San Pedro.

We returned and took a nap because later that night, at 7:30PM we had a moonlit walk tour through Death Valley. We arrived at Moon valley with 2 tour guides to see the sun set because apparently at sunset, the rocks light up and turn colors. But, we may have arrived a few minutes late because the valley did not change colors. We then went on a walk to Death Valley, which we discovered was the actual Death Valley, not the one we were misinformed to bike to. It was dark, but the land and sky were lit due to the brilliant full moon. We trekked all the way down the valley, and I mean all the way. We made it to the bottom and walked through the valley. Apparently it was originally called Mars Valley because the rocks resemble what Mars (probably) looks like. But for tourist and profit reasons, they changed the name to Death Valley. According to one of the tour guides, nothing lives in the valley. And  I mean nothing, so the name is quite suiting. We luckily walked to the end of the valley, which leveled out with the land so we didn't have to climb back up.
The driver met us there, and we then drove to where our night started, overlooking Moon Valley, while our tour guides took us our midnight snack consisting of cheese and bread and Pisco Sours. These Pisco Sours are the alcoholic drink. Pisco, which is fermented grapes, is combined with a sugary sour lemon mixture and served chilled. They taste very good so you need to remember that they go to your head very fast. While drinking Pisco Sours and eating cheese, they brought a telescope, and showed us constellations in the Southern Hemisphere. (My mom was very excited to see the Southern Cross). After some time, we returned back to the B&B and had a very good night sleep.

The next day, Wednesday, we woke up early yet again at 6AM and took a tour called "Las Lagunas Altiplanicas." This tour was beautiful as well. We went very high up into the mountains and saw two lakes that were incredible shades of blue. They are protected so we could only walk so close. They were absolutely stunning. On the way back to town, we were lucky enough to see a rare, endangered animal: a vicuña, which is a mix of a llama and dear. Very interesting animal. Apparently their fur is very expensive and great quality, (that's why they're now endangered.)
The next day, we took a shuttle back to Calama and took the plane to Santiago, again seeing the wonderful view of the terrain.
This week we spent there was indescribable. So many wonderful things, the people were so nice, everything was so beautiful the weather was great the entire time. Besides the bike ride gone wrong, (now I can laugh at it) everything worked out very well. We were very lucky to have experienced this one-of-a-kind place. And to think my adventures are just beginning!!