We have spent months to plan the itinerary for out trip to Chile, starting with a boat trip from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales, which only leaves once per week. After that we made a planning, a replanning, booking cars, flights and hotel rooms.
I especially had fun with the booking of a ferry in the lake district. There were three options, so I chose the best one for us and wondered why I could not press „BUY“ on their website.
After writing an email to find out what I did wrong (which nobody answered) I found a chat button somewhere. On my asking there why the button didn‘t work I received a curious answer: we put it out of order because we‘ll only be using the route from December. There was no mentioning of the working times anywhere on their website...
Another ferry - also with no information about booking times anywhere - informed me that I couldn‘t book, because it was not 6 weeks in advance yet and so the booking also wouldn‘t work.
After that I decided to relax and enjoy all the things that might or might not go different than expected. After all what could happen.
You need to know that I had a trip to Chile in my mind since I was 16 and that was 24 years ago. Finally now we had everything planned and were going on our late honeymoon trip to be celebrating our first anniversary in Chile. We were both very excited.
And then it happend: one week before our flight protests happend in Santiago and other big cities in Chile. Fires happend, some people died and the Chilean government tried to force it down.
At least that was what we heard back home. It was totally unclear if our flight to Santiago would leave at all, not to mention the flight to the Atacama desert the next day.
We were quite lucky that all went indeed well. The announced strikes did not happen, the government and the more violent protests calmed down.
Both flights went well. And here we are: at San Pedro de Atacama, the tourist center to see all the beautiful spots the area has to offer.
There are so many, we had trouble to choose. And there are much more agencies to chose from.
We ended up trusting our travel guide book which recommended Cosmo Andino to set off on tours off the beaten track.
The guy at the agency was obviously happy that there was a lot of walking involved in all of their tours. Unfortunately my foot was not agreeing with that at the moment (a problem with my shoe that has occured a few times before).
I explained, but felt that the agency guy didn‘t quite want to hear about „not being happy to walk a lot“.
We finally ended up booking 2 smaller tours with him. One to the Rainbow Valley on Saturday and one to the Valley of the Moon for sunset on Monday.
I didn‘t want to try the Altiplano tour (full day, over 4.000 meters high - which means you can get altidude sickness - + 5 km to walk) with that agency, so we looked around for something else and found Atacama connection. The agent was lovely and answered all of our questions and I got the feeling that I was better taken care of for the high altitude trip (for what I am thankful now).
Anyway, we started our arrival day exploring the village, which is very dusty, packed with agencies, handicraft shops and small restaurants. Out hotel, the Casa Algarroba lies a bit out of the center, so we needed to walk for approx. 1 km.
There is a little old church made out of clay in the town center, next to the police station and a little square, where quiet protesters gathered to remember the conflicts throughout the country.
I noticed lots of (stray?) dogs, fireflies, little birds flying around and the heat in combination with the ever present dust and a certain amount of wind.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel and bought water and bananas (the most important food/drink supply).
And indeed we started our trip to the Rainbow Valley early in the morning with a banana. We got picked up at 7 am and got driven to the location with a small group of 10 people. At the farthest point of the valley we stopped and received a delicious breakfast consisting of coffee, cookies and bread with avocado and cheese. Delicious!
While the breakfast was prepared I wandered off and watched a peregrine falcon in the high rocks.
After breakfast we took a 2-hour-walking tour through the valley.
My god, it was so awesome. Every corner we turned or when we looked back, everything looked different and glowed in all colours of the rainbow: green, brown, white, red, black, yellow. Especially the green parts were unknown to me and startled me every time.
Our guide Mauricio was quite funny and made a lot of suggestions where to take pictures and explained a lot about the natural history of the valley, which was the bottom of an ocean millions of years ago at an altitude of about 2.500 meters today.
At about 1 pm we were dropped off at our hotel and held a nap before returning to the town center of San Pedro.
We had an amazing pizza and a lot of water to drink that evening, because we had been told to be prepared for the trip to the altiplano (with the high altitude): no alcohol, no meat, enough water to drink before and to take with us and to buy coca candy to support the body.
The pickup was at 6.30 am this time and we started with 9 people to the great salt pan next to San Pedro. We were told this is bigger than Luxemburg. It was surrounded by mountains and the volcano range of the Andes. There lies a chain of volcanos, all close together, all black or brown, with snow on top, some very active, some dormant. While being on this tour, we came very close to several of them. Amazing!
Our first stop was at the flamingo lake in the middle of the salt plain called Chaxa Lagoon. Two kinds of flamingos were indeed present today: the Andean and the Chilenean flamingo. They both are pink of colour and they were very busy searching for food on the ground of the salt lake.
Before leaving, we had a similar breakfast than the day before and then left for the altiplano, the high cordillera.
We passed several wonderful volcanos. One was so active today that we could see smoke coming from the top.
On the way we also saw many animals: vicunas (a member of the camel family), a red fox, a nandoo (a big walking bird), a small eagle, some vizcachas (Andean rabbits) and greenisch-yellow birds. Curiously enough the rabbits don't have a short fluffy tail but a longer one.
We were told that in the very high altitude we were to walk very slowly due to the thin air. I immediately felt it when we were stepping out of the car and walking - very slowly - onto a hill to take in the view of the Piedras Rojas Lagoon. It was amazing and very colourful, but I could feel the difference to walking in San Pedro.
A lone vicuna didn't dare to cross the street and looked very undecided due to our presence. In the end it just returned downhill where it was coming from.
Hereafter we were driving even higher up the mountain to have a look at 2 lagoons, the Miscanti and Miniques lagoons. They were both named after the volcanos standing next to them and had both very clear blue water with icy shorelines.
We were dropped on top of the hill and walked for 20 minutes downhill. Thankfully the air problem didn't occur much this way.
On the way back to San Pedro we stopped for a tasty lunch, which was included in the package, at the mining town of Socaire and at the road sign marking the Tropic of Capricorn (a latitude around the planet).
