The R&R Big Adventure

Desert Days

It has been a busy few days in the Atacama. Soon after we arrived at our hotel on Monday we were off on a tour to explore the Valle de la Luna, the stereotypical landscape one associates with the Atacama – an other-worldly scene of sand dunes, craters, and all kinds of different rock formations. The light at sunset really made the views magical. However we had to leg it back to the hotel after that for our ‘astronomical excursion’ – which we thought would be a bit of gentle star gazing, spotting the odd constellation etc. When we arrived to an old Chilean astronomer’s place, just out of town, our tour party were shown to what looked like old car seats arranged in a circle, with a couple of (what appeared to be in the dark) Heath Robinson-esque telescopes set up in the middle. With so little light pollution, the stars truly were amazing: the crescent shape of the moon inverted due to our position in the southern hemisphere, and as that disappeared under the horizon (rather than ascending, as it would during the night in the northern hemisphere), the Milky Way became clearly visible. So far, so good, except our astronomer started discussing how stars were born and died, the theory of black holes, and the potential existence or not of other life in the universe. All wonderful stuff, but not at 10.30pm, after a long day of travel and tours, that started with a 3.45am alarm. His accent (and that of the translator) were very soporific as well, which didn’t help matters. We did (amongst other things) see Saturn and its rings with the naked eye through the aforementioned telescopes, which, to be fair, was quite cool.

Finally getting to bed at midnight, we were woken by our alarms at 4.50am, in readiness for our next tour leaving at 5.30am, to get to another part of the desert: this time visiting red rock salt lakes, various lagoons (Miscanti and Miniques), both at an altitude over 4,000m, before coming back down in the afternoon to the salt flats of Atacama. Not as pristine as Uyuni, but with more photo-friendly flamingos, as it was a nature reserve. Have a look at Instagram for some of the views.

This morning was an even earlier start – 4.30am – to see the natural geysers at El Tatio, another 4,300m ascent into the mountains surrounding the desert. It was sub-zero when we arrived at 6.30am, but the early start and cold air temperature was necessary to fully appreciate the steam emanating from the various geysers, including the aptly named, Killer Geyser. At least there wasn’t a strong smell of sulphur coming from them at that time in the morning. Even by 8am, when we stopped to have breakfast, with a view back to the site, the steam was already much diminished in the rapidly warming air.

Back at the hotel late morning, we decided to skip the afternoon tour to other lagoons (I’m sure they were fabulous, but we needed a rest) and R&R have spent the afternoon having some much needed R&R. Our final excursion tomorrow is to see the Rainbow Valley, so called due to its multi-coloured rock formations, which we are looking forward to, as we didn’t have time to see a similar natural phenomenon when we were in Cusco, Peru.

We’ve struggled to get a barman to come to the hotel pool for a much needed late afternoon G&T and V&T respectively, but I suppose that is all part of the R&R Big Adventure.