Bicentenario

This past week and weekend have been very busy. Over the weekend I traveled with 10 of my American friends to San Pedro de Atacama, a town of less than 2000 people that is in the Atacama Desert. We got up at 2 AM on Friday morning to catch our flight to Calama and then took an hour bus ride from Calama to San Pedro. The Atacama is the driest desert in the world; there are some spots that have never registered rainfall. San Pedro is at an altitude of 9000 feet, which means that the temperature during the day rises to about 80 and drops to about 35 at night.
After we arrived on Friday, we checked into our hostel and then decided to go sandboarding. Sandboarding is just like snowboarding, except you are descending a dune with a snowboard strapped to your feet. After every run, we would rub candle sticks on our boards to make them slippery and then hike back up the dune to go down again. (There are no ski lifts in the desert, unfortunately) After sandboarding, we drove to a cliff overlooking the valley of the moon and watched the sunset over the desert. We were on the far east side of Chile, so the sun cast its shadow over the desert and the Andes, which made some really interesting colors. The next morning, we slept in and in the afternoon, four friends and I went on a tour of the salt lagoons. San Pedro is located about 30km away from a huge salt flat, and snow melt from the Andes collects in some parts and makes a bit of a pool. The salt pools have 40%salt content, which is higher than the Dead Sea! We went swimming, and it was amazing how easily you could float on your back without moving at all. After that, we drove farther out into the desert on a very bumpy dirt road and arrived at a site called Ojos de Salar, which means the eyes of salt. These are two round pits randomly located in the middle of the desert and they are filled with water from the Andes. The water was about 3 meters below the lip of the pits, and we had fun jumping in to clean some of the salt off from our last swim. After the Ojos, we drove to another lagoon to watch the sunset and drink pisco (a popular Chilean liquor). The desert is an amazing place, especially when the sun is setting. The land surrounding you is desolate, there are no plants or animals, and the wind is very strong because there is nothing to stop it. After watching the sunset, we began our drive back to San Pedro in the dark, through the middle of the Atacama Desert on a little dirt track that was hard to pick out. To my right were the Andes, and just over the mountains was Bolivia; as it got dark, we watched cars that had just crossed the Bolivian border snake down a road into Chile, their headlights bobbing like fireflies. The driver was playing Andean music through the radio as we all relaxed and bumped our way back to the hostel.

The Andes in the Atacama.  Bolivia is on the other side.

Valley of the Moon

There was a debate among our group about what we should do Sunday. We all finally decided to go see the geysers in Tatio, which is located in the middle of the Andes. This trip involved waking up at 3:30 in the morning and then taking a 2 hour drive into the mountains. We arrived at 6, the coldest time of the day and the best time to catch the geysers. We got off the bus into -13degree Celsius wind and the thinnest air I have ever been in. Just walking around looking at the geysers was enough to make me light headed. No one had thought to bring winter gear with them to the desert, so we were all freezing inside of five minutes. This being a trip in Chile, our guide took us on a walk through the middle of the field of geysers, and we were able to put our heads over the holes in the ground and breathe in the sulfur-tinged steam that was coming to the surface from many miles below. Not all the geysers were the kind that erupted in huge bursts like Old Faithful in Yellowstone. The highest geyser in this field went off every 12 minutes and reached heights of 8 meters. We had breakfast up there, the guides had brought along ham and cheese sandwiches, tea, coffee, milk and eggs. The milk was heated by dipping it into one of the geysers and the eggs were cooked the same way. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to eat the eggs because the geyser decided to go off as they were cooking and they disappeared. After breakfast, we took a 10 minute drive to a natural pool that formed when hot water from the geysers mixed with cold water runoff water from the Andes. The two streams created a pool of water that was just right for swimming and I put on my swimsuit and got in. You could control the temperature of the water by swimming closer to the mouth of the hot stream or away from it. The stream wasn’t always steady, so sometimes you would hear a few shrieks from people who had gotten too close to the mouth when the stream picked up and brought more hot water into their area than they wanted.
The next day was Monday and the last day in San Pedro. We rented bikes and rode out into the desert, only turning around when we ran low on water.

I spent the rest of the week going to asados (barbecues) with my family and hanging out with some new Chilean friends that I made. After a few days of hanging out with Chileans, I was invited to go to Vina del Mar with them for a night and dance at the clubs there. I went, and we had a great time. I will have to tell you more about it when I get back.

I am planning on going to a professional soccer game on Saturday with my Chilean friend Marco, and I am really excited for that! These next few weeks should be more relaxing, I have a few projects/presentations to do for school.