Touring the Atacama Desert

We were in for a shock arriving in San Pedro de Atacama after our 16 hour night bus. For the majority of our time in Chile, we've been in low season. That was still the case in San Pedro, but the only people in the town are tourists and people selling things to tourists. It's in the middle of the Atacama Desert - the highest (San Pedro is 2,400m above sea level) and driest (some weather stations have never received rain) desert in the world. This makes it an uncomfortable place to be. The temperature fluctuates between scorching hot in the sun, to chilly in the shade, to below 0°C at night. Not great when none of the hostels have heating in the rooms. The extreme aridity painfully dries out your nose, throat and skin.

The tourist-heavy main drag in San Pedro

The main attraction is the surrounding scenery - volcanoes, salt flats, lakes, valleys and the night sky. Despite having learnt the lesson that tours are bad many times before, we decided to go with a tour company in order to see as much as possible. Although the tours were good, we're left feeling a bit flat - there's no effort, and therefore less reward, in being taken to see spectacular scenery in a convoy of minibuses with 10-100 other people. That said, the scenery is spectacular.

The valleys of Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna, both near to the town, have completely different characters. Valle de la Muerte consists of red rocks and dusts in strange formations. Because of the colour, it was originally called the Valley of Mars, Valle del Marte in Spanish. This was mistranslated to Valle de la Muerte, or Valley of Death, and the name stuck. Valle de la Luna, Valley of the Moon, similarly appears like the moon. Much of the rock is formed from salt crystals and gives the valley an otherworldly moon-like appearance.

The Valle de la Muerte

The 3 Marias rock formation in the Valle de la Luna

The Tatio geyser field

Another of the big draws around here is the Tatio Geysers, the highest geyser field in the world at 4,320m. This is now Jo's new highest place record. We set off before dawn to be there for sunrise, and to 'enjoy' breakfast at -10°C. The geysers were stunning against a backdrop of even higher mountains in the early morning light. We also visited some nearby hot springs to relax later that afternoon, although stepping out of the warm water into the frigid shade was painful.





Our final tour was to see the Miscanti and Miñiques altiplano lakes at 4,220m above sea level. These were again beautiful set against the 6,000m volcanoes behind them. We continued on to the Atacama salt flat, surrounded by mountains reflected in the shallow pools of water. This made for perfect photographs of flamingoes ignoring the flocks of tourists.

Flamingoes in the Atacama salt plain

Us, the Milky Way, and the Southern Cross

The highlight of our stay was a stargazing trip. The Atacama desert has perfect conditions to view the stars - it is so high and dry that there is little atmospheric interference. As well as being able to see the Milky Way and other galaxies (the Magellanic clouds) with the naked eye, there were several telescopes set up for us. We were taken around various amazing views - Saturn, star forming nebula, binary stars and other galaxies amongst them.






We've met up with a Swiss couple that we'd met in Pucón, and we're now hoping to travel with them for a bit around the remaining parts of northern Chile, starting in Iquique.

Wine Tasting, Stargazing and a UFO Landing Site

After a busy few days of long hikes near Curacautín, we thought we needed a break and have spent the last week or so based in and around Talca, the capital of the Maule Valley wine region. The Maule Valley is known for its red wines, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon, and some of the wineries are fairly easy to access by public transport; on our first day we took local buses to check out a couple of the nearest ones.

Hiding among the wine barrels

The first winery we visited, Balduzzi, offered a tour in English at a reasonable price, including four tastings. We enjoyed seeing all the machinery used, for example in pressing the grapes, removing stems and so on. Our favourite section was the huge room where the reserve wines are left to mature in huge barrels - the powerful scent in here of oak mixed with wine was quite intoxicating! We tasted two reds and two whites, one more of a dessert wine. All were fine though not spectacular; the spicy Carménère was the pick of the bunch.

Enjoying the sights at Gilmore winery

The second, Gilmore, was more out in the countryside, very picturesque and much less visited by tourists. We didn't bother with a tour but sat outside in the sun with our wine, admiring the vines and the beautiful Mediterranean style garden. The wine here was also better  - we only tried two types but the Merlot here was much more full bodied and satisfying than either of the reds at Balduzzi. The measures were large enough that two tastes was plenty! Gilmore made its own artesanal beer as well as the wine; obviously we purchased a bottle for later.

Volcanic formations at Altos de Lircay

Despite our designs on a restful time, we couldn't come to Talca and not visit the nearby Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay. We duly caught a local bus at 7 am and after a couple of hours bouncing along in the cold arrived at the reserve (actually 2 km outside it - the bus can't make it all the way down the road). We walked through forest and then steeply uphill for some hours, passing huge formations of solidified lava in outlandish shapes and colours. The culmination of our efforts was reaching El Enladrillado, an incredibly flat plateau made of massive volcanic stone slabs in a very ordered layout - it is popularly rumoured to be a UFO landing ground! From the edges there were stupendous views: a panorama of snow capped mountains in every direction, with the far away river just visible down in the valley. One of the nearest mountains was Volcan Descabezado, or the 'headless volcano' - the summit is so wide and flat it really does look like its top is missing.

Looking over the canyon from the Enladrillado, towards Volcan Descabezado

We headed out of Talca to spend three days in a hostel right out in the countryside, Refugio Tricahue. The Belgian owner has found a pretty stunning setting - the hostel is right next to the Rio Maule, with steep, tree covered slopes rising sharply on the other side of the valley. We had a great time chilling out here, venturing out on some short walks but mostly sitting out in the sun enjoying the quiet and the lovely scenery. The highlight though was the night sky. The lack of light pollution here, together with the glass ceiling in our room, meant we had the perfect conditions for stargazing. I have never seen so many stars. Falling asleep gazing up at the Milky Way was really something special.

The Maule valley, from the Tricahue park