Bill and Lynne Grand Tour

San Pedro de Atacama

It was so good to be back in an arid climate. You can take the girl out of South Africa but you cannot take the South African out of the girl. I felt right at home in the Atacama. We joined four van tours in San Pedro de Atacama to see the major attractions of the desert and had a grand time. San Pedro is the mecca for backpackers and extreme sporters - sand boarding down immense sand dunes and mountain biking down sheer rock formations. Quite a few were wandering the streets between the adobe restaurants and shops with bandaged arms and legs.

Flamingo in the Salt Lake

The first day we went out to the salt lake to see the flamingoes and walk over the salt deposits. We saw llama on the way and can now tell the difference between them and alpaca and vicuna. Then we went up to about 13,000 feet to see two lagoons followed by lunch of chicken soup (it included half a chicken each) and pebre which is the closest thing I have eaten to a cornish pasty.

After lunch we visited the oasis of Tocanao. They have an ingenious system of furrows through the town and water is released twice a day to irrigate the fruit trees and vegetable gardens. The water is very "sweet" and the trees are enormous. I coveted the figs, papayas, avocadoes and other fruits. Everything cultivated is locked behind very high fences. Once a year the town comes to a halt and everone spends a week in August clearing the canals. Water is a very valuable commodity. The restaurants are mostly open air and even where they have a covered area, there is always an opening in the thatch for the smoke from the fire to escape. It gets relatively cool at night.

On the last morning we rose at 3 am to drive in the dark for two hours over the worst dirt road ever up to 14,000 feet. Our driver never saw another vehicle he did not need to overtake. That is saying something from someone raised on a farm in the Carlisle Bridge area of the Eastern Cape.


Geyser in the Dark

At dawn we were groping around in the dark with hundreds of other tourists looking at geysers and trying not to fall into a hole or through the crust. The steam from the geysers evaporates after 9:30 am, hence the dawn patrol. We were served breakfast after our guide had submerged a dozen eggs in a plastic bag into one of the geysers and boiled them for six minutes. The largest geyser is called Three Dead Men. I understand this is in memory of the three who went too close to the edge and the crust crumbled. Bill took the final tour to Death Valley in the Valley of the Moon without me as I nobly waited for our laundry to be ready. After I had heard how they had slogged up an enormous sand dune and sat in the sand-blasting wind waiting for the sun to set, I felt I had got the better of the deal.


Atacama Sand Dune

We stayed in a lovely hotel in Santiago waiting for a flight to Easter Island the next day. The hotel was a converted mansion in the heart of the upmarket district and I gorged myself on prickly pears from the local vendors. A few more pips than I was used to, but the genuine flavor.

LS