Budget Travel, Nomadic Lifestyle, Travel
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On my final day in San Pedro de Atacama I took a trip to the El Tatio geyser field. This particular outing was highly recommended by other travelers that I had met in San Pedro and Chileans absolutely raved about the greatness of the geysers of El Tatio.
A hot spring at El Tatio
This tour departed at 4 A.M. in order to get to the geyser field at sunrise – when the air is cold and the light is soft, lending dramatic effect to the steam rising – which will lose much of its appeal as the ambient air temperature climbs. The day’s highlight was swimming (or “hotpotting” as it was called when I did it in Yellowstone) in a hot spring – and at El Tatio it is a sanctioned event! (unlike Yellowstone). This geyser field is at very high altitude and as such, the air temperature is pretty cold – so getting out of the hot spring wasn’t all that enjoyable.
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Will @ January 11, 2010
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Budget Travel, Nomadic Lifestyle, Travel
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On my second day in San Pedro de Atacama and following my Valle de la Luna tour I took a full day trip to the nearby Lagunas Altiplanicas or high plains lakes. For me, the main attraction wasn’t the high plains lakes at all, but rather the Salar de Atacama as an alternative to visiting the Salar de Uyuni (you may recall from my last post that I didn’t have time to visit Uyuni)
The early flamingo gets the….shrimp?
The tour departed at 6 A.M. in order to get to the Salar de Atacama (Atacama salt flat in English) early enough to view the flamingos in the salt lakes.
The Salar is a very interesting landscape. The high mineral concentration is caused by a lack of drainage and over the years minerals (amongst them vast amounts of salt and lithium) have been deposited in the basin by glaciation and runoff. This area is an extremely inhospitable environment, yet certain species have adapted to live here. Quite remarkable!
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Will @ January 7, 2010
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So, after leaving Peru and taking care of the border formalities near Arica, Chile I really desired to press onward into Chile. I spent a few hours in Arica – basically killing time and drinking beer waiting for the next bus to the town of San Pedro de Atacama.
The trip to San Pedro was an overnight jaunt of about 11 hours. I arrived groggy and was more than happy to accept the first offer of accommodation, especially since it was very near the bus stop and much less expensive than I was led to believe prices would be in this desert outpost. A simple room cost me the equivalent of $8 (USD) and the place had free wifi….perfect!
My first order of business was to investigate tour options to Bolivia’s huge salt flat – the Salar de Uyuni. I had heard rave reviews from fellow travelers about it’s wonders and about Bolivia in general. The problem was, that the holidays were coming up and so I had, for the first time since this trip started, pre-booked transportation, so I was running short on time. The tours available were all three-day, two-night or longer and there was just no way for me to take one and still have time to get to Santiago for the next leg of my journey.
But Wait! Chile has alien landscapes too!
Valle de la Luna; near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
I opted, instead, to take some day-tours around San Pedro de Atacama. The first of which was an afternoon/evening trip in and around the Valle de la Luna. Our guide on this particular tour was a former miner and had learned a great deal from the geologists at his company. He was a wealth of information about the processes of volcanic eruptions and ash deposits, glaciation, erosion and plate movements – all the forces that have carved out this landscape. The tour was absolutely fantastic, interesting and educational and ended with watching the sunset over the desert. It was a pretty spectacular sight!
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Will @ January 5, 2010
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Budget Travel, Travel
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After a few days of seeing the sights near Arequipa, Peru, it was once again time for me to pack my things and move along. Having not taken any of the requisite vaccinations or medicines to head to the jungle (and into Bolivia) my best option was to head back towards the coast and south. I wanted to press on as far into Chile as I could tolerate….hopefully making it to San Pedro de Atacama for the possibility of touring Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni from there. I was starting to run a bit short on time, so the likelihood of a Uyuni tour seemed like perhaps a bit of a stretch, but nonetheless, I thought it best to push in the appropriate direction.
After traveling extensively and seeing some of the best of what the world has to offer, I have a tendency to get pretty jaded. Seriously, after visiting the Kostnice Ossuary in the Czech Republic…well, no church or temple is ever going to live up to that. Having grown up very near the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, I truly believe I have visited one of the best culture/history museums in the world. Scenic beauty….Anyone who has gazed upon the Tetons in northwestern Wyoming has seen one of the most gorgeous places on the planet. It’s hard to top these experiences – I don’t spend too much time visiting museums or churches anymore unless there’s something completely cutting-edge about them. The one thing that is left, that I do get a great deal of satisfaction from are those chance encounters with other travelers. On this particular journey I had one of those experiences that makes life on the road very fulfilling. Even meeting other travelers sometimes becomes exhausting…it’s the same drill, where ya from? how long you been here? how many times you been robbed? ad nauseum… But it’s a dance we all do while we’re traveling and if you can get through it you might just have a great experience.
So…from Areuipa to Tacna (both Peru) is about a 5-hour bus ride. After that, one must arrange other transport to get across the border between Tacna and Arica, Chile. The quickest way is to take a combi (shared cab). There are several sedans around the bus station in Tacna performing this service…they all go with 5 passengers, so, once you find an available one, you may be stuck waiting for a while until the requisite number of passengers are committed to going. On the way, the driver hands out the customs and immigration forms for Chile…of course, Chile being a country with wonderful fruit and allegedly good wine among other agricultural products is fairly concerned with what types of pests might come in on plant or animal products so they take a preventative stance in regards to individuals entering the country. Jordan, one of the passengers sharing in my combi ride expressed some concern over the shells and turtle bones she had collected on a beach in Ecuador. I let her know that my experiences with Chilean customs had shown that they weren’t joking about preventing individuals from importing plant/animal products into the country. She decided to go ahead and try to bring them in anyhow…what’s the worst that could happen right?
The worst that could happen would probably be a pretty hefty fine…fortunately, it didn’t come to that, but she did get held up in customs for quite some time when the inspectors found the shells and bones during routine baggage x-ray. I don’t guess she was held up for too long actually…maybe 20 minutes, certainly no longer than 30 minutes, but our combi driver was getting very antsy about the situation. None of the passengers had any urgent need to get to Arica, but the driver wanted to go. He made it pretty clear that he intended on leaving Jordan behind…of course, this wasn’t my problem..I hadn’t tried to bring animal bits into the country…why should I care what happens to her? Well, I cared because I applied compassion to the situation and knew that if it were me, I would be pissed off if, after I had been given the shake down by customs, I suddenly had no transportation from the middle of the desert and half of my belongings had gone away in the car. So…I resolved that I wouldn’t go with the combi driver…so he would be missing out on two fares if he decided to ditch her. It worked…upon my refusal to get in the car he decided to go ahead and wait.
So, that’s it, we became instant friends and didn’t have to go through the exhaustive “where ya from” dance. When we got to Arica, Jordan let me ride with her in her cab to her motel and I ditched my bags there for a few hours while we walked around town and drank beer until it was time for me to catch my bus southward. While she was certainly one of the more vibrant and seemingly genuine people I’ve met on the road, this situation certainly isn’t unique and every time I meet someone in this manner the experience is absolutely wonderful and memorable. These brief friendships are one of the most rewarding things to me about traveling. Thanks, Jordan for a great afternoon and good luck to you, wherever you are now.
Will @ January 3, 2010
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Travel
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After Machu Picchu and Cusco I decided to head back to Arequipa. This decision was based on a couple of things, namely that the routing I wished to take required me to backtrack a bit, but also, I wanted to take a look at the Colca Canyon.
The Colca Canyon (and Colca Valley) are in close proximity to Arequipa and many tours of the area are available from and returning to Arequipa. One of the most popular, and most convenient tour packages available is a two-day, one-night tour from Arequipa with an included hotel stay in Chivay (a small village near the entrance to the Colca Valley). These tours are CHEAP! Mine cost me just over $20 U.S. and included two days of transportation, an English-speaking (marginal) guide, hotel and desayuno (which must be Spanish for “here, have a piece of bread and jam in the morning”). The Colca Canyon claims to be the deepest canyon in the world, reaching depths of 4160 meters (13,648 feet) – that’s over twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the U.S. The high point on the tour was a mountain pass at 4910 meters (~16,000 feet) but before we got that high, the omnibus stopped at a roadside stand selling coca tea…6 ounces of prevention and you forget all about the symptoms of altitude sickness!
For me, the draw was less about the size of the canyon, but more about the Andean Condors that live in the area. At this time of year, they aren’t as common as other times of the year, but, nonetheless, I was fortunate to see a few, amongst them this close-up view:
Andean Condor
A Welcome Relief
The rustic charm of the village of Chivay was a welcome relief and contrasted sharply with Cusco. Though there are plenty of tourists in the area, the tourism isn’t nearly as in-your-face and the village seems to be mostly authentic except for the special white man tourist restaurants that the tour groups are herded into. There are folklore shows and pan flute-playing bands, but none of them play “LaBamba” and they seem to stick to local, authentic music only. Dances are performed for the benefit of the visitors, but they are performed in the traditional way, slightly cheesy as this may seem, I reckon it’s as good a way to preserve culture and tradition as any and was actually quite educational.
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Will @ December 30, 2009
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