Lucy and I are both lovers of the desert, so we knew early on that we couldn’t miss the grandmother desert of deserts, the oldest and most arid desert in the world: Chile’s Atacama desert. A desert known not only for the obvious oldie, dryie, desertyness, but for it’s remarkably clear night skies which make the Atacama an important outpost for some large and important astronomical observatories.
The access point of the Atacama is the small pueblo of San Pedro de Atacama — essentially a small network of single story mud dwellings posing as overpriced restaurants, overpriced hostels, and tour offices. Skirting town are a few expansive spas and yuppy ranches — yep, it’s one of THOSE deserts. A mystical yuppy desert with lots of UFO watchers. Still, we managed to find a nice affordable place in an unlicensed hostel, The Casa de las Musicas, run by kind of a funny guy who moved there to make music and never left… a guy who flawlessly whistled renditions of Ennio Morricone themes as he cruised town on his bike. You could hear him for blocks. Outside of the predatory tourism practices downtown, San Pedro had a few things to offer, including a lovely old cemetery, and an impressive set of ruins just north of town.
Generally, you book a number of day tours to see the area as most of the attractions are hundreds of kilometers away. We opted to take the road less traveled, quite literally, and as soon as we saw the Wicked Vans kiosk we stepped in and made a reservation. We spent the next 3 days and 2 nights on the highways of the Atacama, looking out over sinewy roads with uninterrupted, breathtaking views of the massive volcanos that line the east side of the desert.
I think we would both credit “the road and the ride” as being the very highpoint of the experience, but along the way, we made a few noteworthy stops including:
Laguna Cejar
The Atacama’s “salar”, or salt flat, begins just south of town. Though mostly bone dry, there are a few lagoons that form through the filtering of water being pushed up from the aquifer below. One such lagoon, the Laguna Cejar, unsurprisingly has an extremely high salt content. Like the Dead Sea, bathers float on the surface with no trouble. It’s a little strange at first, your legs want to rise from under you, making treading water kind of a balancing act, but eventually you get the hang of things. It’s also freezing cold, and sets every scratch or abrasion on fire… but worth the experience.
Laguna Chaxa
An hour or so south of Cejar, in the center of an endless expanse of lumpy salt formations, is another set of small salt lakes that make the Laguna Chaxa and the Los Flamencos National Reserve. Aside from its strange natural beauty, this Laguna is host to a large colony of flamingos that come to feed on the innumerable brine shrimp in the water. We would come to see many, many more in later days, so we’ll leave more of the flamingo story for then, but it’s worth noting how remarkable it is to see these marvelous animated pink yard ornaments in the natural world — who knew this was their home? And who knew they ate sea-monkeys!?!
The Altiplano Lakes
At the far south of our expedition lay the lakes Miscanti and Miñiques. Between you and us, it probably wouldn’t have been worth the drive as a destination, if it weren’t for the incredible drive there which wove through the high mountains, through tiny sleepy pueblos, and offering dramatic views of the entirety of the Atacama salar.
Valle de Luna
Valle de Luna is a small park just outside of town that is also probably the most visited feature in the area. Tours fill fast for the afternoon trip to the park that shuttles tourists to its corrugated landscapes in order to catch the sunset from its stone perches. It’s a gorgeous park full of rhythmic peaks, sand dunes, and stony faces encrusted with crystals of quartz and salt. Though we actually had intended to arrive earlier, as we needed daylight to find a place to park the camper for the night, we happened to hit the park on time to see a lovely desert sunset. As that last sliver of melted gold disappeared on the horizon, we high tailed it again for the open road and found a nights sleep off a small temporary access road in the sands.
The Taito Geysers
The long drive north to the Taito geysers was breathtaking at every curve — one of the great drives in the world. Starting at San Pedro, the first leg north lead us into the red iron deserts, through huge roaming packs of Llamas. As we climbed, we would thread through slot canyons, exploring arroyos full of the saguaro like cardón cactus, weaving through massive orange boulder fields, startling small herds of grazing guanaco and vicuña, passing pink spotted lakes of feeding flamingos, and finally rising to the magnificent desolation of the high mountain plains and their expanses of mighty silence.
It is a humbling thing to be so surrounded by these massive mountains in northern Chile. Subtle mineral colors play across their surface; each capped with an eternally icy crown.
Finally arriving at the Geysers was a unsurprisingly a little anticlimactic, though to our delight we were greeted on arrival by a pair of semi-tame zorros (foxes) that looked to be waiting for a handout. That kind of thing is always a little sad, but we enjoyed seeing them. The park was small but neat, and visitors are given unrestricted access to its bubbling mud pots and steamy vents. Perhaps a little too much access, but that is the way of things down here — the risk is on you, if you want to put your head in a geyser, go ahead. Tour groups generally come for sunrise here, as the small geysers pack a steamier punch in the cold of dawn. Since we decided to arrive later in the day we had the place to ourselves. After a short dip in a rather lukewarm hot springs, we headed back towards San Pedro on the same gorgeous roads, this time enjoying the southern views from our high vantage points over the Salar and the valley below.
The camper we rented was something like a Chevy Astro, with two sliding side doors and a rear door. The bed was fitted with cabinetry that allowed it to transform from a padded sleeping platform to a small dinette, though after using the dinette once I found it cramped and unappealing. I imagine it would be pretty handy in foul weather.
The van came equipped with a camp stove with cooking supplies, including flatware, pots and pans, an accessory table and some folding chairs — things that would turn any dusty roadside pull off into a home for the night.
It doesn’t get old, watching the sun set out there. Seeing the milky way in such dark skies — the stars seemed stuck in folding merengue clouds. We would stay up late hunting for shooting stars and unfamiliar constellations in the southern skies, all against the silhouette of volcanos.
Though the sleeping bags provided would keep us alive through the freezing nights, they provided little in comfort, and we would both struggle for sleep both nights on the road… but it was always worth it. When the sun finally rose, and the restlessness of our bodies messaged a time to rise, we would pull our sleeping bags up to our eyes and open the door to the van, revealing the new worlds of sand and distance and alien worlds of stone and salt that had slept silently through the night.
