Spring Break in the Desert - San Pedro de Atacama

I think a lot of people back home forget that down here, on the other side of the equator, we are in the exact opposite seasons. I left in July, amidst Topeka's unforgiving heat and humidity, and came down in a giant Northface jacket and leather boots, seeing my breath in the air every time I talked. When the weather finally permitted lighter jackets and opened-toed shoes, our university gave us 10 days off as spring started.

Originally I thought that 10 days would allow for traveling all over the continent, seeing Machu Picchu, visiting my friends in Buenos Aires, or traveling to the tip of South America, where I've heard you can see Antarctica (someone fact check me on that, please). When my group of close friends from Denver decided we should go up to the Atacama Desert, the driest desert on Earth located in northern Chile, for a week I wasn't too sure. However, it was one of the best times I've had abroad thus far.

The distance between Viña del Mar to San Pedro doesn't seem too bad when looking at it on a map. We booked a flight that would last around 1 hour and 45 minutes, and assuming "that's how long it takes to fly from Denver to Kansas City!" of course I was naive enough to think it was fine to drive. Wrong. After taking a bus for two hours from Viña to Santiago's bus station, a bus from the station to the airport, flying from Santiago to Calama, taking another two-hour bus ride to San Pedro, and then taking a car from the bus station to our house, we found out that was the easy way to get there. Google maps says if we would've have driven it would have lasted over 24 hours:

Our group of six decided to take the untraditional route and rent a house together instead of staying in a hostel. Our house was about a 10 minute walk to the center of town, with a bed for each of us and a kitchen stocked with enough to do our best cooking. We'd often make quite a show at the tiny markets, buying entire cartons of 30 eggs, huge amounts of meat, cheese, and bread, and spending $80 all together on our first round of food (this seemed like a pretty hefty number to be dropping to the store owners). The two boys and four girls would switch off cooking and washing dishes for meals. One night, the group of girls got back from our trip to the saltwater lagunas, and came back to very well-made meal of pasta and dessert by the two boys. Chris even went out of his way to leave cooked eggs for the girls when the boys decided to do their own hiking. 

The house

Our front yard

Meals in our packed kitchen

Surprisingly our group seemed to get along very well and stay patient during some testing times together. After learning a little too much about everyone's bowel movements, our toilet seemed to stop flushing and we collectively realized that in some parts of the world toilets still can't handle toilet paper. That's right, after wiping your behind, you have to put your toilet paper in the trash. Surprise! Fortunately Jack was man enough to dive in and fix the toilet, which didn't end up too well for him. We like to say he redeemed himself for breaking two glasses and a bed frame at the house (hopefully the owner of the house doesn't follow my blog...)

Getting into town was a whirlwind of travel companies, restaurants, and shops to buy souvenirs. Every road was made of dirt, as cars driving buy would leave a cloud of dust that blended in with every building. Even nice hotels or restaurants looked like mud shacks on the outside. We were consistently bugged by tour companies on our walk, and we had lots of ideas for excursions in mind after hearing about a group of DU students going to San Pedro last year. However we wanted to try our hardest to find the best deal amongst dozens of companies offering the same trips. We finally decided to book all of our trips with one company, which caved in to our pleas and gave us discounts for booking so much with them (plus, I won't complain that some of their excursions included the occasional pisco sour or meal!).

Our first day of excursions started off with a private horseback ride to the ruins of Quitor. Our private guide took us on a route we did not expect - with no route at all! We rode up mountains and in open valleys with huge rock structures surrounding us, following no path but taking pictures of the amazing sites we couldn't believe we were seeing. I can't even explain it in words. Although the pictures don't do it justice, a few are below:

That afternoon we took a trip to the saltwater lagoons, which were literally in the middle of a desert. These lagoons are famous for showing up as blue-green spots amidst the vast desert on satellite pictures and contain about 80% saltwater. Because of this, once you get past the ice-cold water and just jump in, your body lift its legs from under you and just float. This is probably good considering the lagoons were the absolute deepest body of water I'd ever been in. Good thing I learned that after I got out. We went to another lagoon with all of the famous volcanos of the area forming a backdrop behind it, making for some pretty awesome pictures and pretty salty legs if you were brave enough to sink into the mud and walk in. We watched the sun go down while we drank pisco sours and took some of the most beautiful pictures from our trip.

The next day we visited Lagunas Altiplánticas and the salt flats near the city. The salt flats literally consist of walking through a skinny path surrounded by thousands of grey/brown rocks made of salt (which appear white from far away). Gergana and I were even brave/tonta (stupid) enough to pick one of the rocks up and taste it. Not a good decision, especially in a national park where you probably shouldn't touch anything... The salt flats led us to more amazing photo spots with lagoons under mountains that were filled with flamingos! I kept feeling like I was in an REI catalog. Again, I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Click for a bigger image.

The next morning, a bus picked us up at 4:00am and shuttled us for two hours to the hot springs and geysers, one of the most popular sites to visit in San Pedro. With the sun not up yet and in the warmest clothes we own, we stood there freezing watching geysers shoot up steam and water from the Earth. We decided to take a dip to warm up in the "hot springs," which I should warn you are actually "luke warm springs," as we went from freezing to absolutely frigid in our bathing suits. 

Our tour then took us to a town of 6 (not sure how that works without some form of incest..) where we saw llamas walking around freely and actually ate llama meat on a kabob! Pretty darn good if you ask me.

Our last excursion took us to Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna, or Valley of Death and Valley of the Moon. These pictures don't even come close to how amazing they actually were:

I definitely must give some credit to Kristin Van Horn for some of the photos above. My camera died about 1/2 way through the trip and needless to say I wasn't a happy camper.

Thanks for reading!