On Monday morning we had time to chill. We also needed to contact out transport back to Calama airport, which we had booked in advance with Transvip. They had insisted that we were to call the telephone number mentioned on our ticket and not to give them the time right away.
I asked the hotel receptionist to call them for us. She tried a dozen times but nobody answered. We got a little panicky, because we had to leave the next morning and the plane would not wait for us.
There was still no answer until noon.
We also tried the facebook chat, an email... nothing really worked.
In the end we had to pack up and leave for our daily tour that day, the Mars and Moon valley tour.
We had a quick lunch and booked another tour for the night to go star gazing.
Then we arrived at Cosmo Andino agency where our tour bus would depart.
In a desperate move I asked the agent if she knew a solution for our airport transport problem. She did! She just called the local Transvip bus agent (instead of the center line) and all was well. It can be so easy, if you know how.
It was 30° C, which for me seems not ideal to go on a hike in the dry desert.
We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and had to climb a slight dune. The dry air and the heat made it very difficult for me, but once up on the cliff it was just amazing.
We could see a valley consisting of brown cliffs with white salt on top. It looked like a cake and - indeed - could have been a valley on planet Mars.
Pedro, our guide, explained to us about the local geology and about the nearest volcanoes. After walking along the cliff for a while and taking in the view, he stopped again and told us not to be afraid. Then he gestured towards a small step in the rock. He said we would climb down here. Renés face went white (he is a little afraid of heights).
When we approached we could see that there was a little path underneath, which was on top of a huge sand dune. With huge I mean huuuuuuge, it was a few hundred meters to the ground, where - as we would see - the next very huge dune would start.
So now we were standing on top of the high dune and now what?
Pedro was there to show us: run or walk down the dune, it was just like skiing.
Fantastic - I was thrilled!
When reaching the ground of the upper dune, we all took a short break, made photos and the continued to follow the trail over the edge of the lower dune, just like a bunch of geese. There were quite a few people climbing up the same way to sandboard and we met in the middle of the dune. It as funny as they had not expected anyone from upside.
On the ground I had to get rid of about 2 kg of sand from my shoes.
We got picked up by our driver and drove to the Moon valley. This was a very wide valley, covered with a lot of white salt on the ground, which led to its name.
We visited a natural figure known as the Three Marias (praying figures). Next to it was a rock, which looked like a dinosaur, which I found much more interesting.
After a 10-minute-walk we reached another huge rock, where we could watch the sunset from.
The actual sunset was coverd behind a dune, but the sun beams lit up the volcanoes behind San Pedro, which was very beaufitful. There were 3 stray dogs on top of the rock, which followed the people around the trails. When everybody was leaving, they left too.
Video of our crazy guide running down the huge sand dune
When we returned to San Pedro, we had about an hour before our star gazing tour began, so we went to the best pizzeria in town (again).
There was a (tiny - as this was a small town) protest march going in circles around the town. It was loud but very peaceful. There was no police.
After the delicious pizza we went to the agency 'Una noche con las estrellas' to chat with the agent about Star Wars. After all it was all about the stars.
The tour bus brought us to a little house six km out of San Pedro, where we first received a little crash course about Astronomy and coffee/cookies. After that we sat in the dark watching the sky, listening to an astronomy expert showing us different stars with a laser pointer.
Then we even got to look through a bunch of telescopes to see Saturne, single stars and star clusters.
We were in bed at about 2 am and had to get up early for our airport transport.
While sitting in the transport bus I noticed the desert was changing. Near San Pedro there were scattered tiny plants blooming in red and green. Near Calama it was all sand and dust.
It took us all day to travel to Puerto Montt airport by plane with a stop at Santiago airport.
Here we picked up our rental car, a Peugeot 301 (a normal car). The agent was a little shocked to learn that we wanted to drive with it on the Carretera Austral, which was a typical reaction. Our guide book said they try people to get to rent a 4x4.
We took a road through fields and hills to Puerto Varas, where we had booked 2 nights at a hotel of German ancestry, which was called "Mein Haus" and it had a typical regional dish for breakfast: 'kuchen' (several are called 'kuchenes'). It is the German word for cake and in this part of Chile everybody knows it.
From the hotel we had a great view over the lake and 2 enormous volcanoes, the Osorno and the Calbuco.
The next day we left for those volcanos and the Saltos de Petrohué, huge waterfalls, some 40 km away.
Video of the waterfall 1
Video of the waterfall 2
The Lake District (Los Lagos) features a lot of tiny wooden houses and has a rich German ancestry as you can see from street names (and the famous kuchenes).
We followed a perfectly paved street along the lake's shore and stopped several times to take in the view of the snow covered Osorno volcano. We also spotted a brown falcon cruising over our heads and finally landing in a meadow, galavanting about like a pigeon.
The Petrohué falls can be visited using 3 walking trails. One is by far the most spectacular.
Coming from afar there were very fast rapids (which I wouldn't think many would dare to raft on)
that culminated into many small water falls, scattering here and there.
The sound was deafening. Behind this already magnificent scene two grand volcanoes were overtowering everything: the Osorno and the Puntiagudo.
We stayed until closing time only to take in a small dinner inside the visitor center: some delicious meat + olive empanadas.
The next day we stayed at the hotel until + even longer than check-out time to re-book a few things on our trip (due to the protests in Valparaiso we have decided not to go there on this trip because locals have told us it would not be the same as usual and if we went we had better be stayed in tourist areas - so we switched to staying longer in Patagonia).
Also the hotel had the last WIFI for a week and I needed to upload a few pictures onto my blog.
When we left and had done shopping groceries for a few days we left again for the direction of Petruhué. But before we took a right turn and followed the paved street for Ralún and Cochamó. That way we avoided a small ferry south of Puerto Montt. Which was an advantage, or so we thought.
The route, estimated by google as 4 hours from Puerto Varas to Hornopirén, took us more that 7 hours. At Ralún the unpaved road began, we had to wait for 25 minutes in a construction site and it was raining like mad, but we made it in the end. We also proved that our 'normal' car was perfectly capable of avoiding thousands of pot holes, going up and down steep muddy hills, avoiding pick-ups in narrow roads... It was an adventure - and I loved it!
Video of our roadtrip (unpaved)
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