San Pedro de Atacama

So I know this post is long overdue... in fact, without a little push from my oh-so-adoring mother, I may have forgotten to post! Whoops! Anywho, here goes, it'll pry be a long one, sorry! This past weekend, a group of gringos and I made our way to the desert. Yup, the desert. Why go on a weekend vacation there, you may ask, and believe me, we were asking ourselves the same thing! However, after hearing about the travels of friends from years past and from our university here, we decided it was a must do.  We booked our flights/buses one week prior to leaving, and from there the rest was pretty easy!

Most of the group left on Thursday afternoon, but because my friend Lindsey and I both have class Thursday night, we booked our flights together for early the following morning.  Getting to the airport was an adventure in and of itself! Linds and I met at the bus terminal in Viña del Mar, which is about a 15 minute walk from my house, but because it was 5am on a busy street, Papá insisted that he drive me. I wasn't complaining... it was cold and my backpacking backpack was heavy! Once at the bus terminal, the long day of traveling commenced. Almost 2 hours on bus to the Pajaritos station in Santiago, then another 25 minute bus to the actual airport, 1.5 hours waiting at the airport, almost 2 hour flight to Calama, and then another 1.5 hour bus ride to San Pedro de Atacama! Phew! Because getting to the airport in Santiago was quite the interesting situation just by itself, and because we were proud of ourselves for making it all alone, we decided that we deserved a Dunkin' Donuts at the airport. That's never a bad decision.  Then, after leaving Viña del Mar what had seemed like days ago, we arrived in SP around 2:30pm.  Flying into Calama, and then driving to SP seriously felt like being on another planet. The landscape is only what I can describe as very "Mars-like".  After a beautiful drive, we were dropped off right at our hostel, and we could already hear the music playing and people talking!

The hostel, Hostel Rural, was such an interesting place! It had so much character and such a great atmosphere.... clean rooms/bathrooms, hot water, and good water pressure. What more can a traveler ask for!? That afternoon, the Thursday group showed us around the town a bit, where we got to see a desert cemetery (beautifully kept, and even more beautiful with the mountain range in the background), a white stucco church, and many fun little tiendas! Gifts may or may not have been purchased. For dinner, we originally weren't sure what we were going to do, but that was until we saw a handmade sign around our poster that advertised an asado, including all you can eat cowmeat (that's how it translates), chicken, sausage, bread, rice, salad, vegetables, wine, and beer. For $5000CLP, about $10USD, we figured that was well worth our money. And it was. I was stuffed at the end of the night. While it was slightly sketchy that the meat was cooked over coals in a wheelbarrow, my hunger overcame my doubts, and the food was delicious.  There were so many travelers in our hostel, people from Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Ireland, and New Zealand to name a few... it was such a cool experience to be able to talk to all of them at the asado and get to see such interesting perspectives on the world! Minus the fact that I had trouble understanding our NZ friend after he had a couple beers, the conversation all around was great :)

View of hostel: L to R: bedroom, hammocks, front desk area

View from the church in San Pedro

Shadows at the cemetery

Volcano in background of cemetery

Saturday morning, we had a tour booked that was meant to pick us up at 6:30am. However, the bus showed up 15 minutes early, and apparently we were supposed to have been ready at 6:15... whoops! I explained to the driver that we had been told by the person who booked our tour to be ready at 6:30, and that it was a miscommunication, so we would finish making our sandwiches and getting ready as soon as possible. While he and the three other passengers in our bus were a little frustrated, we made it to the bus and were on our way.  The first stop of the tour was at the Salar de Atacama (the Atacama Salt Flat).  There was so much salt. Weird, I know. The greatest part about this part of the tour was getting to see los flamencos (flamingos). They were so beautiful! A lot of people in our group learned that flamingos can actually fly! I'm embarrassed to say I also learned this... but really, all I really had ever seen them do was stand there and sleep! After this, we went to Lagunas Altiplanicas, which were some lagunas up in the mountains. They were so blue and beautiful! After that tour, we all went back to the hostel, enjoyed some hammock time, a little more shower time, then showered and got pizza and a cute little place in town! Overall, great day.

Flamingos at Salar de Atacama

  

Laguna Miñiques

Llamas on the way to Lagunas Altiplanicas! Bah!

Salt at Salar de Atacama

Kassi and I relaxing in the hammocks after a hard days work!

Sunday was my favorite day! We rented bikes with the intentions of biking to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). After a flat tire and a pedal fell off of two different bikes, we fixed the situations and were back on our way! It was a great ride, it felt so nice to be outdoors in shorts and a t-shirt again! The weather here in Viña definitely isn't terrible, but it was hard only having a month of summer before I came here, so the hot desert was very welcome! We packed lunches this day, and had a great time exploring a cavern and just walking along through the Mars-ish landscape.  After returning our bikes, we took more hammock time, and then went on another tour in the afternoon! This tour was a sunset tour of Laguna Cejar.  Laguna Cejar has 70% salt volume per liter, so swimming was actually not really swimming as much as it was just floating! Such a cool, and very cold, experience. In the deepest part, we were able to put our feet down as though we were standing up, and didn't even need to swim at all in order to stay afloat! The water just reached my collar bone, and kind of bobbed a little from there, but there was no need to kick or move my hands to stay afloat! So weird.  After drying off and trying to rinse the salt deposits off our bodies, we got changed, enjoyed some pisco sours, and watched the puesta de sol (sunset) over the desert. What a perfect way to end an amazing weekend. 

Nathan, Laura, and I being extreme and whatnot.

Lindsey, Katherine, myself, and Kassi in front of the Valle de la Luna sign

Floating in Laguna Cejar, everyone else was too scared/cold to jump in, but I showed them how it was done.

Sunset from Laguna Cejar

Monday was another long travel day... Laura, Nathan, and I left really early in order to get back to our night classes, and were again traveling from 6:30am until about 3:00pm. Well worth the amazing trip. Again, sorry for the lack of blogs these past two weeks or so, but I'm sure the rest of September will be full of memories, especially because it's Chile's independence day/week coming up! Woohoo, get excited! Chau until next time.