San Pedro De Atacama Experience (Norte Grande)

The next morning, I took a 5-hour bus ride from Antofagasta (once I was given directions to the bus station that was apparently one kilometer from my hostel) to San Pedro de la Atacama.  The Atacama Desert boasts the driest place on Earth (no measurable rainfall in recorded history).

San Pedro, itself, is actually an oasis in the Atacama desert, and does get some rainfall. 

San Pedro is the Greenery in the Background

I arrived in San Pedro early evening, and dragged my giant and very heavy duffle bag (while caring two backpacks) through the dirt streets of San Pedro about a kilometer, finally arriving at my hostel (La Florida).  That was my workout for the day.

Once I got settled into my hostel, I had to hustle and set up all of my tours for the next few days.  I may seem like I am really winging it, but once I have set a defined timeframe for a particular region (five days in San Pedro), with all due consideration for everything that I need to do there, I have to make all the necessary arrangements up front, so that I can relax going forward.  I did not want to wake up the next morning, not knowing what I am going to do that day.  So, before I could even think about having dinner, I had to set up the next few days.

Based on a recommendation from my Chilean travel book, I located a top-of-the-line tour company that provided all of the basic tours needed to sufficiently experience the Atacama Desert.  One thing about me when traveling by myself is that, although I skimp on accommodations (I only need a bed, shower (preferably hot), and Wifi) and transportation, I tend to splurge on tours, and want to see the best that whatever region I am visiting has to offer.  I ended up booking five tours over the next three days (Rainbow Valley, Cajar Lagoon, Piedras Rojas & Lagoons, Tatio Gyser, and Moon Valley).  So, my next three days were all set with a combination of half-day and full-day tours, and I could now relax and have dinner.

 

Happy Hour 2-for-1 Pisco Sour Special

I have found that all hostels are different from each other and provide different services (most provide breakfast, some do not; most purport to offer hot showers, and some do not; most offer purified water from a water cooler, some do not; some provide goodies, most do not).  This hostel really did not provide any of these things, except for very hot water.  I’m okay with it, as all of the other things I consider as luxury items that I do not need.  But I will take advantage of if given the opportunity.  For example, the last hostel provided fruit and juice, and I went to town on these things, especially after midnight when no one was looking--you know, something like what a rat would do at night.

In addition to Wifi, one thing that all hostels have in common is that not everything works as advertised (at 10-20 dollars each day per person, they are all operated on a shoe string).  In this case, the temperature control on the showers was not really a control at all.  Most hostels advertise hot showers, but few deliver.  In this case, the temperature of the water was scalding, like it was super-heated geothermal water.  This usually is not a problem, and is actually a bonus as the “hot” water provided in most hostels is luke warm at best, and bone-numbing cold at worst.  However, for the first two days, I only had two choices for this shower: scalding hot and cold, so I ended up not showering.  I took a few smelfies the next day, and luckily on the third day I was able to take a reasonably hot shower.

One other problem that I had was that hostel management must have switched my bed halfway through my stay, which shouldn’t happen, but it did in a somewhat embarrassing manner.  Typically, I do work in the common area, and return to my bed in the wee hours of the night or morning.  Well, I did just that, and afterwards, I climbed up the ladder to my bunk bed.  I started to crawl into bed when I see a head pop up.  He was a bit freaked out, and I guess I was little freaked out as well.  I whispered to him as to not wake the others, “dude, what are you doing in my bed?”  He whispered back, “dude, this is my bed.”  I then tell him, “I slept in this bed last night, so I have dibs on it.”  He then told me that there was an empty bed and pointed to it.  Appreciating the possession is nine-tenths of the law (more like 99 percent at 230am), I reIented and whispered to him “alright man, go back to sleep,” at which point I climbed back down the ladder, and sauntered over to the empty bed.  In actuality, I really don’t care what bed I sleep in as long as I am the only one sleeping in it, at least not with a strange man, or for that matter, any man where the size of the bed does not allow for a two-foot no-go zone between us.  But this could have been worse.  These are mixed-gender rooms, so luckily that wasn’t a girl that I climbed into bed with, or all hell would have broken loose.

Regardless of my hostel snafus, I had a great time in San Pedro overall, meeting and conversing with many people on my tours (I’ll talk about these tours, complete with pictures, in a subsequent post).  Honestly, I really just try to keep to myself, but eventually my barriers break down, and once they start asking me questions, I’m off and running.  At times, I may even dominate the conversation, especially with discussions related to travel.  One good thing about going on tours in a small town is that you meet certain people of like mindedness over and over again throughout the tour process, and end up forming a bond with them by the end of your stay, with some of the bonds lasting well after everybody returns home. 

I met a Brazilian couple (Daniella and Rodrigo) and a Chilean couple (Jacyline and Waldo), and we sort of became a group, culminating with me having dinner and drinks with the Brazilian couple the night before return to their hometown in Chile.  Even though Jaclyn’s English was as bad as my Spanish, we would use translation applications on our phones to communicate with each other, so in the end, we were fully able to understand each other. 

Where is Waldo?.  I'm not sure, but I had to be his stand-in.

There he is.

During my conversations with other tourists, I learned that I had to go to the salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia, which requires a 3-5 day commitment.  I was toying with the idea of doing the 5-day trip, which includes a hike up an 18,000-foot high volcano.  Usually I would be up for that physical challenge, but my trekking experience in Peru had humbled me a bit, so I just decided to play it safe (I can’t believe that I’m writing such words), and go with the 3-day, more relaxing, trip.  Also, there are many other places that I need to see in Norte Grande, as well as the Norte Chica region between Norte Grande and Santiago, so I needed to be somewhat judicious on what I spent my time on.

My original plan was to tour Norte Grande, and then fly back to Santiago from Antofagasta January 14^th, and then fly to the Norte Chico region to tour that region for a few days.   However, I had badly miscalculated, and I wouldn’t even get back from Bolivia until the 14^th, with plenty more to see in Norte Grande. 

I was playing around with the idea of taking a bus from San Pedro to my next destination (Iquique on the coast), making my way northward to the northernmost major city in Chile (Arica), seeing all that I needed to see along the way, then flying from Arica to La Serena to tour the Norte Chica region.  I really did not know when I would finish my Norte Grande tour, so I would just be guessing, most likely requiring another modification of my return ticket with a modification fee.  Also, no flight existed between Arica and La Serena, so that plan was not going to work, and really, nothing other than flying from Arica to Santiago, and then back to La Serena would work.  So, it became a very inefficient travel itinerary. 

But, I did know when I would be done with San Pedro (a couple days after I get back from Bolivia, so I decided to totally rearrange my Norte Grande tour by taking a bus from San Pedro to Calama (about an hour), flying from Calama back to Santiago, flying one-way from Santiago to Arica (northernmost point), and making my way down from Arica to Santiago, seeing what I needed to see in the rest of Norte Grande, as well as Norte Chica.  So, rather than bouncing around to and fro, I could, once I reach Arica, travel down Chile to Santiago in a nice orderly fashion.  It’s a bit complicated, but in the end, it just became a more efficient trip, both financially and time-wise.  In my mind, this was an awesome plan.  I may be geographically retarded, but when planning out the most efficient travel itinerary, I am a brilliant strategist.

I also left myself a couple days in San Pedro, after getting back from Bolivia, to just relax, and when I say relax, I mean just hanging out and doing work on my computer, which I haven’t been able to do due to my self-imposed aggressive touring regimen with no built-in downtime.  I have to say that doing a full touring regimen day after day, and over several regions, is quite tiring, and perhaps can even be nerve wracking, having to drop into different regions, learning how things work and where they are, and setting up tours.  There have been a couple days where I stayed up all night before some early morning tours.  However, my Chile trip was not my go to patented formula of becoming a semi-permanent resident of a country as a volunteer, allowing me to establish a nice day-to-day routine during the work week (involving volunteer work, professional work, and blogging), and then going off on excursions on weekends.  So this trip is truly an exception to the rule.

More on San Pedro tours, including some spectacular pictures, to follow . . .

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