I left Patagonia from Punto Arenas via Santiago de Chile to get to Atacama Desert in the North of Chile. In Santiago, the plane landed late at night, 11.30 pm. My flight to Atacama Desert was about to leave the next morning at 6.30 a.m. Let’s do a night at the airport. Wohoo, big burger with Lucas, who is a profi-skier and just off for to fly into Austria for Seven days to coach some guys how to ski properly. No sleeping for me that night, just writing. Haha.
During the flight to the town of Calama – who would have thought – sleep was urgently required. 😉 Driving in the Transvip Taxi to San Pedro de Atacama, I thought, is this Egypt? It looks so similar. Arriving in this village of San Pedro de Atacama, it continued: No asphalt on the streets. “Is this Central Africa?”, I asked some other backpackers. It’s a nice place, though, very different from what I have seen before. At the hostel Sonceck, my friends Elisabeth and Jan were already around. “Hey, how is it going? Let’s take a tour in the afternoon!” The tour should become the next special experience. Wild…
San Pedro de Atacama is the base for all trips to Atacama Desert and the surrounded spots. According to Wikipedia, this desert is the driest non-polar deserts in the world. One travel guide said, normally it rains 5-25 mm a year. Guys, this world round trip is supposed to be wild. Wild like the movie “127 hours.” As part of the first afternoon trip, we wanted to go to the Moon Valley in the desert. However, we experienced water, a lot of water! But before that, we climbed through a cave on salty ground. Once, there used to run see water. Fortunately not today, …yet. 😉 If we had taken only two minutes longer on the excursion, a newly created river would have locked us in.
Anyway, an awesome atmosphere was created when a thunderstorm came up. We actually could not finish the trip because of the rain. Clima change is truly happening.
Roll the video:
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After-adventure pants:
Electricity in the air! 🙂
Jan, the most relaxed guy on this planet 🙂
The next day, Elisabeth and I started early for a daytrip to visit some salt deserts. Some visual impressions, starting at a small town:
This cactus grows 1 cm a year which makes it about 300 years in age:
Laguna Tuyajto:
Piedras Rojas next to Salar del Carmen:
As soon as you feel the ground gets loose underneath you, walk back. Quickly. Do not wait. This will happen if you don’t stick to this rule. Haha.
Somewhere in the desert:
World-famous Salar de Atacama 🙂
Smile and be a hero 🙂
Sometimes in South America one eats something not so suitable for ones digestion. You may be especially lucky if you are off the next day at 4.30 a.m. on a three hour bus ride for the geysers of El Taito. Learning of the day for someone on our bus: Always double check if you carry your painkiller for such cases. ;-P The geysers were quite nice. 86 degree Celsius hot nature, boiling alive at 4,100 meters. Some people died as they went to close while a geyser was exploding. We continued to some volcanoes to take some pictures and then further to an ingenious village.
Somewhere close to a volcano driving back from the geysers to San Pedro de Atacama:
In the afternoon we were scheduled to do the Moon Valley again. Excellent South American coordinating: They drove like 15 buses all the way to the entrance to tell us that the valley is closed today. I’m just curious…? Do you guys have telephones to connect and communicate in order to verify in advance? 😉 We went for some beers and a great dinner at Agua Loco instead.
The trip booked for the following afternoon was cancelled as well due to the weather conditions. Elisabeth and Jan flew out to Buenos Aires that morning. So for me it became a chilli-milli day at the hostel and I spent some time with faster internet at that place Agua Loco again. I met a cute Chilean girl. We talked exceptional in Spanish for hours and had some Pizza and Pisco Sour. Working. 🙂
Side-comment to not loose purpose: I feel like my lack of Spanish makes it difficult to discover the attitude of the people here. It’s difficult to get an idea about how they preceive happiness.
Instead, let’s look at this site where Richard Brandson is summarizing his favourite quotes about happiness.
Greetings from #axelgoeswild 🙂
Join for the next location: City Trip – Buenos Aires, Argentina