loquitohermoso

The slight trauma of our driver’s car seizure was tempered somewhat by a very decent flight up to San Pedro de Atacama. Once again, we’d gone for the premium option- or at least Mark had- however I was forced to agree that this actually made really good sense, on LATAM this came out literally less than a fiver on top of a standard fare plus bags, and gave all sorts of benefits including a fully flexible ticket and an onboard meal, as well as priority baggage and bragging rights for your duck.

We arrived in SP bang on time. I had been here a couple of times before, on my last visit taking a tour all the way over into Bolivia, however this time the plan was to hire a car from Calama and see where we got to. Chilean rent-a-car came out with a pretty reasonable deal, albeit for a bit of a shed of a Hyundai with a bit of clearance.

The drive from Calama to SP is really straightforward but gives an amazing feeling or being in the middle of nowhere, with mile after mile of arrow-straight deserted highway, interspersed with the occasional sharp bend, the severity of each denominated by the number/quality of shrines and wrecked cars scattered around it. As you drop down towards the oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama near sunset the Valley of the Moon is at its moody best.

Home for the week was La Casa de Don Tomas, a well known hotel on the edge of town. Hotels are expensive in SP, so whilst this wasn’t really any where near plush enough to justify the low season 120 quid a night tariff, it was nonetheless comfortable and everything worked.

We headed out onto the dusty streets to find a local restaurant, and since Restaurant Ckilkipana down the road seemed well reviewed and had a Spanish-only blackboard outside this was a good place to start.

Unfortunately, whilst my Spanish is generally excellent menu choices and dishes are very regional, and my translation of same let us down slightly, therefore we started with the as-nice-as-it-sounds Cow Hoof soup. Matters improved slightly with a main course of steak and rosemary potatoes, although this introduced a very common theme of Chileans just not cooking potatoes quite enough. Still, for a fiver a head for two courses, you can’t really grumble.

The next morning we headed out onto San Pedro’s dusty streets for a wander. To be honest there’s not much to see, this isn’t a destination town rather a jumping-off place for all of the amazing natural beauty in the surrounds. There’s an ancient church and a pleasant square, and we managed a rather more successful lunch in one of the local’s restaurants on the edge of town. Still with the raw spuds though.

I’d bagged afternoon tickets for the Termas de Puritama, an area of hot springs a few kilometres out of town. These are usually taken in by tours on their way back from the Geyser del Tatio, a few kilometres further on the same road, but since I had seen and been completely underwhelmed by them on my last trip, we skipped straight to the good part.

Like many natural attractions in Chile, the means to get there involved lots of rules and advance booking, two thousand biometric details and a QR code. Whilst we saved loads booking direct and driving I can completely understand why people go for tours to avoid all this faff. Upon arrival Mark got a bollocking for stopping in the wrong place, and then at 2.30 on the dot we were finally allowed into the car park before walking a kilometre down to the springs themselves.

The springs are lovely, a series of man made pools along a thermal river, decreasing in temperature as you meander down the boardwalks. It did reach a point where it was too busy to be pleasant, at which point we got out and headed to the on-site ´coffee shop´, actually more of a trinkets shop run by a surfer dude, incredibly well stocked with hats, bags etc, but no milk for said coffee, a bleak Nescafé affair. Which you find out after you’ve paid. Do better, coffee man!

Undeterred, we headed for dinner in the hotel’s surprisingly posh restaurant… although bizarrely the cheapest wine list we saw anywhere in Chile, coming in around a fiver a bottle for something very drinkable.

Determined to do things ourselves, we set out the next morning to Laguna Cejar, one of the prettiest lakes on the salt plain and somewhere you could also have a dip.

There are benefits and pitfalls to avoiding group tours-ultimately it’s nice to be master of your own destiny and to spend longer in places, however also this means you have to organise it! Anything in the line of natural beauty requires accessing the relevant website- Most of the sites around here are administered by local indigenous groups. The websites aren’t tricky per se, just a little bit rulesy, with specific time slots, arrival times, conditions etc. And in Spanish.

The lakes are pretty special and otherworldly, though. Since this was early Spring, the water still wasn’t terribly inviting, although I did muster a quick dip, albeit not the full Monty floating Red Sea pose.

That was enough. Determined to avoid the Google special washboard track that brought us here, we struck out on a slightly better dirt road and then south to the village of Toconao, simply because it was the last outpost between here and Bolivia for a snack.

Initial impressions were far from inspiring, with a distinctly sketchy couple of streets on the edge of town, before finding a nice little square, church, and most importantly a cracking Menu del Día for 6500 pesos- about a fiver. I mean, there was a mystery chicken component broth, but the main was lovely. And a craft beer too, which was horrible, although slightly less horrible than Cristal, the national brew… on a par with the similarly appalling national lager in Argentina.

Google Maps, our oracle for sites of interest, identified that there was a little canyon north of town, which seemed worth a look. I gained a familiar sinking feeling as I pulled the mighty Creta up to the strangely ostentatious entrance arch, and spoke to the nice attendant. Yep, it was yet another place that had a wanky online ticket system. After another 20 minutes of my life wasted, we came back to the gate and presented her the golden QR codes.

The Valle de Jere was once an important mining area, and has a history dating back ages- Now though it’s primarily just a place for Chileans to come for weekend barbecues and the like. Mark wasn’t feeling energetic, so I continued up the canyon alone and into the rocky hinterland, desperately hoping it was a circular path before admitting defeat and returning.

Back into town to Adobe restaurant, which both of us knew was probably going to be touristy and expensive, and doubtless it was, but they had a fire, and a man on panpipes. Which was great for a bit.

Mustn’t grumble, all round. Lomo a la pobre done pretty well… Tres quartos probably the safest level, somewhere between medium rare and medium. Also turns out my panpipe tolerance level is about 45 minutes- Who knew? In revenge I made Mark go into the grungy Rock pub for a pint, however joke was on me and I had my first and last pint of Cristal, a mistake which would not be repeated. The barman had even stated this was the better of their 2 draft lagers, I dread to think.

The next day it was time for the mighty Creta to spring back into service. So far, our policy of sightseeing via Google Maps and an old Rough Guide was serving us well, and I’d spotted Valle del Arcoíris not a million miles from San P, which looked worth a shufti. We started out on the road to Calama which by any stretch of the imagination is incredible ¨big country¨albeit with a number of somewhat alarming shrines on the few 90 degree corners.

Overtaking with a naturally aspirated 1.5 petrol lump is challenging even given bags of space, the automatic gearbox simply making the engine scream rather than any appreciable increase in power. Nonetheless, we made our turn off the main road to see an army truck and a number of soldiers parked up, one of whom put their hand up, simply in greeting. Phew, no diplomatic incidents today.

As we meandered down the reasonably decent road and through a series of bends, a gravel track presented itself off to the left. Oh, how we laughed when the maps indicated that was our route. This became a rather spicier journey than planned, although I reasoned that we could do whatever a Merc Sprinter minibus could.

Eventually we arrived at this spectacular, hidden place. The guardaparque on duty was uncharacteristically jolly, and we had a nice chat about where to go and what to do. There’s definitely a cultural thing about Chilean reserve, I personally like it, but it’s a striking difference between here and anywhere else I’ve ever been in South America. So the chatty ones stand out far more.

I could go on for ages. This was one of my favourite places so far up this way, and the bright Andean sunshine brought the colours out even more. Mark didn’t completely trust me, but I had made sure this was a circular route, and sure enough, despite a slight detour, we found our way back to the car, and then up to the second ‘attraction’ here, which was actually a fairly underwhelming waterfall, with no water in it.

We set back off, having established that, instead of the precipitous track here we could actually just drive a bit further on a proper road. Who knew?

As it turned out, this wasn’t substantially better at first, with a couple of fairly dry but rocky river crossings. Thankfully though, after a few kilometres we hit the road itself.

Once more, as I had done several times during this trip. I hankered about just turning left and carrying on towards Bolivia, but common sense and a large hire car excess steered us back towards town.

There was quite a cool looking archaeological site just prior to returning, but a strong desire for lunch, and an even stronger desire to escape the carload of Argentine tourists who had been plaguing us all morning kicked in. I think they just wanted to be friends, but appearing millimetres behind my bumper in a series of bends which I was already nailing did not endear me to them.

By this stage we were utterly ravenous. The thing about this area is that there’s virtually nothing outside of the main town, aside from the occasional village with virtually nothing in it. So, straight back to town and onto Calle Caracoles, one of the main streets, and home to Caracol restaurant, and the site of my next hilarious linguistic screwup.

Now, I know in Spanish that Caracol means snail. That´s the name of the street, and the name of the restaurant, right? So, when they said they were out of Carbonara, the next best thing was a Caracol queso pasta. I did not take this as literally as I should, and by the time the lady’s explanation of same had dawned there was no way I was backing out.

So, pasta with snails it was. Not unpleasant except for the points when I thought about their…frills. Thankfully though washed down with a really good local wine and only about a tenner each.

Regardless of all else, you can’t go wrong with cheesecake though. Later that day, Mark headed back to the hotel and I decided to hit the local municipal gym. Over the last year, weightlifting has become a bit of a habit with me and it’s a shame to lose it over holiday, therefore this was my option. I walked in and spoke to a really friendly guy on the counter who didn’t have change so let me in for half the normal fee, and I managed a surprisingly decent workout in amongst the somewhat fierce parishioners.

The next morning, our final in San P, we set out on the final adventure. Initially intending to rent bikes, we decided instead to drive to a nearby valley and then set out on foot along the Garganta del diablo (Devil’s throat) path, allegedly circular however clearly not. We had definitely chosen the wrong day for this, as it was utterly baking, magnified significantly by the towering mud walls of the valley.

We were besieged by a huge school party on bikes following our route, and in hindsight this would have been a splendid idea, this really was too far to walk, but getting your steps in is never a bad idea, right?

Suitably desiccated, we set off further up the valley in search of a church mentioned upon entrance. I started following a minibus, reasoning that we could do the same terrain as them, right? And that it was likely a tourist group who wouldn’t be going anywhere wacky. I maintained this faith despite an ever more challenging path and a few really quite deep and sandy river crossings. After a while the bus pulled up to the entrance to a compound, and the driver came back to ask very nicely if we would stop following him home.

Having returned back down the valley for more than a few dirt track kilometres, we found the very obvious entrance to the pretty little church and grabbed out shots before returning to town, trying to visit an archaeological site on the other side of a particularly wide river crossing that we managed, just, to find it was closed.

That evening, we decided on something cultural for our last night in San P, visiting the brilliant little Meteorite Museum at the edge of town and learning about some very, very in-depth astrophysics, guided by a super bright Uni student. What a brilliant little place.

And so came the end of our time here, with a relaxed morning driving back to Calama Airport. En route we decided that a £5 car wash was probably a good investment to avoid being too honest about our little Hyundai’s week of adventure and off-roading, given the thick layer of salt and mud on every external surface.

Thankfully this paid off, with our first rental car clean sweep for a while, no scammy additional charges tacked on, unlike it seemed our last fill-up.

I have visited a lot of countries on many continents, and have an innate talent for sniffing out wronguns. The Colombian guy at the fuel station immediately tripped the “whereareyouFROM” radar but did do us a favour pointing out the most common scam in Chile we’d completely missed.

Card machines in Chile have a few odd options. The first is asking if you want to pay in instalments. Kind of a roadside Klarna. I have no idea if these would actually work on a tarjeta gringo, however the answer is always ‘uno’.

The second is more insidious. Whilst in the UK most card machines in retail premises just charge you…the price, in Chile they almost all come with a tip option. If you don’t have an option on the screen the employee has already cancelled it… or as we were coming to find, awarded themselves a tip anyway!

At least El Colombiano had the good grace to ask as he had added the tip, to be told in rather blunt Lat Am Spanish that this should be removed. This actually happened a couple of times at fuel stations, and it was invariably entertaining to see the mock surprise that this terrible mistake had occurred. Silly me!

As scams go, it’s a pretty benign one.

Next stop…back down south, with the thrilling prospect of breathing normally in slightly lower and less arid climes.