Pachamama! Part II

...Continued

Having been disappointed by the lack of geyser (that's water spring not east end bloke) action wed been promised, we were all looking forward to swimming in the salty Laguna Cejar where the dense salty water doesn't allow you to sink. Instead you float like a cork! Great for a novice swimmer like moi. Arriving there we were blinded by the intense light bouncing off the Laguna - again must buy new sunnies!

Blinding!

I've never swum in the Dead Sea so entering the Laguna and suddenly floating was a completely new and exciting experience for me. It is great fun until you decide to swim anywhere, as swimming is nigh on impossible. The trick is to just use your arms to swim and leave you legs floating. After we all started to turn wrinkly with the water, we decided to get out. What we hadn't anticipated was the amount of salt that would still be stuck on our bodies! All of us were white...me even whiter than usual, which is saying something as I am the milky bar kid normally. The water that had got into our hair had also cause it to dread lock which was bizarre. Thankfully our guide Javi had predicted all of this and had brought sufficient bottles of fresh water for us all to rinse off with. Unfortunately I forgot to rinse my bikini so it ended up all starchy and hard!

Milky bars are on me!

Once we were all clothed, we jumped back into the bus and headed off to some Salt Caves. En route, our guide Javi asked whether any of us were claustrophobic, thinking she was being a little dramatic we all answered no. On reflection, having realised how small parts of these Salt Caves were -  we were crawling in places with head torches - I think most of us would have declined the trip. But we did it and I think we were all quite relieved to have done so given that this was earthquake ville and should there have been a tremor we would have all been goners! eeek!

The exit!

One of the gaps outside we had to squeeze through...

The ground above the Salt Caves...

Next stop was the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) which as the name suggests is a valley that looks like the surface of the moon. Literally. With craters and rocks everywhere. According to my mate Google it is one of the driest places on earth, with some areas having not received a single drop of rain in hundreds of years! Apparently a prototype for a Mars rover was also tested here by scientists because of the valley's dry and forbidding terrains. Amazing.


The total lack of humidity here means scarcely any life thrives, either animal or vegetable. Instead, minerals rule in the form of rather phallic looking figures of salt and clay. Three of which can be seen at the highest point of the valley known as The Three Marias.

The Three Marias

Walking on the ´moon´...

Having had our photos taken in front of these giant phallic looking rocks, we then drove a short way to a giant sand dune which had formed nearby. Climbing to the top of the hill overlooking this dune (we were forbidden to walk on the actual dune itself) we sat patiently until the sun went down creating yet another stunning view to add to the already rather jam packed collection I've been fortunate to see in South America : D

View of the sand dune and the desert below

The entrance to another galaxy...;-p

Brain?

Those two ant like figures in the distance are people!

More ants...

Sunset

The next day we hit the road early from San Pedro heading South this time towards an abandoned town called Pampa Union which used to mine Nitrate. This ghost town was literally smack bang in the middle of the desert with nothing surrounding it for miles. Walking around it in the midday heat was surreal as most of the buildings were unrecognisable due to having crumbled so much. The only things that stood out were the random broken TVs and sofa chairs strewn everywhere which made it resemble an art installation straight out of Tate Modern in London.

Tracy Emin would be proud...

Armchair by Citygirltravels

From here we drove another four hours (long journeys enable you to play mindless games with others including going through the alphabet and naming countries in the world. A great game for those who have done degrees in International Relations it would seem - yes Im talking about you Amy and Rachel! I've never known anyone to know so many African countries...) to the beautiful Pan de Azucar (Sugar loaf) National Park. Not to be confused with Rio de Janeiro´s Pão de Açúcar in Brazil. 


Whilst here we visited a rather peculiar Cactus Museum which unexpectedly had a rather magnificent collection taxidermy and skulls. Given I do have a strange fondness for taxidermy I did get quite excited by the stuffed flamingo, penguin and ferret, much to my fellow travellers disdain...

No idea what this skull is of  - cow?

I said Ferret earlier on, Im now thinking its a beaver?

P-p-p-p-penguin

Accommodation that night consisted sleeping in tents on the beach. Id like to take the opportunity here to once again say gracias to Inge and Kathy for pitching the majority of the tent as my contribution was fairly useless. 

The camp site setting was stunning, with views of the Sugar Loaf in front of us. Thankfully there was also a bathroom with toilets and showers available to us which made the camping experience certainly for city girl me a little less difficult. Although the showers were only available between 7pm and 9pm due to the shortage of water. Ive noticed this is a running theme in Chile. Every shop, supermarket and restaurant we visited hardly ever had any bottled water and if they did it only tended to be fizzy. 

Sunset on the beach part 1

Sunset on the beach part 2

Surprisingly we all slept really well, despite the ground being hard and three of us squeezed into a two man tent. Upon leaving the beach camp site we noticed a sign telling us what to do in a tsunami - a common occurrence due to the earthquakes in Chile. Very glad I read this upon leaving and not arrival as I think I would have freaked out and not slept!


Next stop was Vicuña at the end of the Elqui Valley. This journey took us all day, stopping en route at the house where Gabriela Mistral who was the first South American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize in Literature for her poetry, was born. The house was tiny but the church next door was pretty so I spent more time in there.

The cute church I found more interesting that  Ms Mistrals house

View from the church looking out

That evening we all went for dinner and drinks in the main plaza of Vicuña where the whole of the town were out in force watching a musical about the earthquake that struck the town of Concepción. (No I don't know why you'd make that into a musical either...) Walking through the plaza was like venturing onto an episode of The League of Gentlemen, with all the characters (in this case locals) staring at you wondering who you were and what you were doing in their town!

This sense of not belonging appeared to be the theme for the evening. We ended up in a nightclub called Karma (the word Bad should have been put in front of it...) where upon arrival we were literally the only people in there - it was 1:30am but being South America this is quite normal. We ordered a round of beers and Pisco Sours (more about this local drink later) and headed to the dance floor.  Slowly the club started to fill with locals, but still we were the only ones on the dance floor. It took several rounds of us performing the conga and generally dancing like nutters out of an asylum before the stony faced Chileans decided to get up and join us. I found this reserved behaviour very uncharacteristic of the rest of South America (namely Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil as they are the only countries I've visited thus far), where you would usually be welcomed by the locals and have to beat off the male lotharios! I think this Chilean reserve is due to the history they have endured over the years, including a military dictatorship which has made them all less open than the proud Argentinians and Brazilians.



Stumbling home was highly amusing, as despite there being eight of us, we all managed to forget where the hospedaje (type of hostel) was...it took three attempts of putting the key into the wrong doors until we realised our hospedaje had a huge illuminated neon sign beaming away. I blame the Pisco...


For those of you not in the know, Pisco is a colourless or yellow to amber coloured grape brandy which the Chileans claim to be their national drink. Once again, as with the war over the most southern point city in the world which I mentioned in an earlier blog, this claim is also disputed by the Peruvians. They also claim that Pisco is their national drink as they invented it. As such they have have tried and failed to claim the exclusive right to the use of the Pisco label name as an appellation of origin. Chile has cheated some what by renaming this town Pisco Elqui (it was originally called Las Gredas) to reinforce its claim to have rights over the drink!


The next day we visited this town of Pisco Elqui which is home to two of the oldest Pisco distilleries in Chile. We visited the Aba distillery which has won numerous awards for its Pisco and even made it over to the UK for the UK Cocktail Challenge which took place in Camden, London this year! They explained the process of creating the drink, and how it starts off as aguardiente which is similar to Italian grappa which is extremely strong alcoholic content - circa 60% proof! It is then distilled further to become Pisco which has an alcoholic content of circa 35% proof depending on the mix. We tasted some of both. At 10:30am in the morning. Not a good move. Half of us almost gagged with the first shot of aguardiente - you could feel it burning down through your oesophagus. The shot of Pisco was less harsh but equally potent at that time in the morning! Needless to say we all woke up pretty quickly.

Where they distil the grapes

The vineyards

Where they process the grapes

Aba pisco is sold in London apparently?! 

Having tried both the aguardiente and Pisco, we were then given a shot of Mango Pisco which as the name suggests is mango flavoured Pisco. This stuff is lethal. The mango disguises the alcohol taste and makes the drink go down really easily. Dangerous stuff as we all realised that evening back at the hospedaje when we put away two bottles worth. I shall most certainly be looking up which bars in London serve Pisco when I get home : D


After the distillery we ate some lunch to soak the alcohol up, the food was nothing really to write home about, Im finding Chilean food isn't actually that great compared to the delicious meals I've eaten in Argentina and Brazil. 


That evening we visited the Mamalluca Observatory that was nearby. Chile, I discovered, is considered to be the Astronomy capital of the world due to its exceptionally clear and dry skies - especially in the Atacama desert region in the north where we were. Many observatories are built here as it is a rather stable country compared to others such as Afghanistan which may have good conditions for star gazing, isn't exactly safe. 

Clear skies = excellent views

As such the imaginatively named EELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) is being planned by the European Southern Observatory organisation to be built in the Atacama Desert. 

It was fascinating to be told about all the names of the stars (Supergiant, Supernova etc), to be reminded of who invented the telescope (Galileo Galilei) and the theories about what is going to happen to the sun - that it is expanding and is apparently going to explode and take out all of the nearby planets in its path including earth! Nice. This of course is only a theory and is expected to happen in hundreds of thousands years time. Phew...


We were then taken up into the observatory itself to gaze at the stars and planets. Did you know how to distinguish between these? no? well a star blinks / twinkles whilst a planet doesn't and is brighter. Amazing.

Main observatory

Other observatory

The final, and I think most exciting part of the evening, was spent looking down a giant telescope outside at the moon. Our guide then allowed us to take a picture of it down the telescope using our cameras:

Dark side of the moon...

Our tour of the North of Chile was finally coming to an end. En route back to Santiago, we stopped briefly at the Fray Jorge National Park where we visited the Valle del Encanto (Enchanted Valley) which has remains of ancient Molle culture settlements and a lot of rather amusing looking cacti.

The claw...

don't touch!

How much does this cactus look like the Kelloggs cockerel:-

Despite having a bit of a nightmare reaching the start of the Pachamama tour, Im glad I finally made it as I met some amazing people and saw some stunning places. : D