Spanish win
It being Saturday morning and my time in Punta Arenas down to an entire, ooh, 2 and a bit days, I scrapped my very vague plans to go to Puerto Williams. Instead, I tramped into town and booked a day trip to Tierra del Fuego for the following day. And I did it all in Spanish. Go me. I'm not convinced the clerk was convinced I understood all his instructions, especially since he mimed eating when telling me that food wasn't included...Bless.
I then figured I'd have another go at getting to the Museo Nao Victoria, which if you've read THIS POST, you'll know I rather failed at earlier in the week. Still, the sun was shining, it wasn't too windy and I was feeling sort of energetic.
Along the way I stopped in at the cemetery. Yes, a cemetery. I've never been in one quite like this.
It was fascinating to just stroll around admiring the architecture and also the variety of names.
Punta Arenas is a city of immigrants - folks came from Chile, Croatia and even the UK to settle here - and as a result, there's a right old mish-mash of surnames. I also found this beautiful vault which struck me as distinctly Arabic in design.
Also, a chap with the excellent name Omar Davison. Clearly the people of Punta Arenas knew how to integrate.
After my peaceful stroll around the cemetery, I continued on along the main road in search of the museum. All was going well. The sun continued to shine, the wind had actually dropped...
And then I put my foot in a pothole and buggered my knee up. Clever me. Still, I figured it'd get better given a few minutes, so kept on limping on.
And limping on.
And limping on. At which point it became clear that my knee was in a really foul mood with me and limping all the way to the museum was probably not a good idea. I had, however, made it as far as the Zona Franca, which is effectively an enormous duty free area. I need some new memory cards for my camera, so I thought I'd have a poke around.
Yeah. Even duty free, they're not as cheap as I'd have liked. Memory cards can wait. So I limped all the way back to the hostel, where I wrote away the rest of the day and traumatised myself by killing off a main character's lover. Seriously, it made me cry. I blame the cemetery - clearly it made me morbid.
PENGUINS!
My final full day in Punta Arenas began far too early for my liking, although by far too early, I mean something like 6:30am...After a bit of a detour with the minibus because they'd forgotten to pick some people up, we boarded the ferry to make the 2 hour crossing to Porvenir on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
The Brian Jacques book Castaways of the Flying Dutchman includes a section in its opening pages set on Tierra del Fuego. I read that book when I was about 12. The setting stuck with me and I've wanted to see it ever since.
I was not disappointed. On arrival in Porvenir we first visited the little museum, which included among all the fascinating arrowheads and pottery, a naturally mummified body.
And a badly articulated elephant seal skeleton.
Oh, and I mustn't forget that this is where I saw my first penguins of the day...
We also had a brief stop to see some sculptures of the now-vanished Selk'nam, the original inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.
It's thanks to them that the island has that name. Ferdinand Magellan, on his search for a passage around South America, saw smoke coming from the island and so named it Tierra del Fuego, Land of Fire. Of course, the smoke was coming from the fires of the Selk'nam.
On a rather less cheery note, the Selk'nam were all but eradicated in a delightful act of genocide perpetrated by ranchers and other parties wanting to tap into Tierra del Fuego's abundant natural resources. Fun fact.
Moving on from that depressing comment, our next stop, nearly 2 hours along a gravel road, was the King Penguin colony at Parque Pinguino Rey.
Yup. Penguins. And not the little ones. King Penguins. Second biggest penguin species and the colony on Tierra del Fuego is the only one in (near enough) mainland South America. Very cool.
Especially since there were some juveniles in the process of moulting their baby fluff and therefore having super funky hair-does.
Harold thought I'd be better off taking photos of him instead of silly birds that can't even fly...
I also spotted what I think was a Grey Fox.
It was a fox and it was grey. Still, I suppose it could just be a colour morph of the Culpeo, another not-actually-a-fox species.
It was also blowing a gale, although thankfully not raining. I'm glad I took my fancy alpaca gloves and scarf and my funky orange hat with me though.
From there it was back on the nice warm bus and off on another hour's drive over to the north of the island where we had a short stop in an odd little town called Cerro Sombrero. It has a tiny botanical garden and a big swimming pool.
Something to do with the town being founded on petroleum - one of the first wells in Chile was here.
At this point, I started losing patience with the American group on the bus. They'd been somewhat annoying for most of the trip - nothing I could put my finger on, but they were rubbing me up the wrong way. As I got back on the bus in Cerro Sombrero they were blithely making rude comments about the other people on the trip. Either they didn't realise I was there, didn't know I'm English or didn't care. Either way, it pissed me off. Obnoxious bastards.
Ahem. Moving on.
Onto the much shorter ferry back across to the mainland. We almost got stuck on the island, courtesy of the ferry having been cancelled for a large part of the afternoon due to the wind rushing through the Straits of Magellan. Luckily for us, they'd died down by the time we got there, although it was still not quite smooth.
Back on the mainland we made our final stops to view a couple of rusted old boats, both built in the UK if I remember rightly.
And at one of the first farms in the area, which courtesy of being declared a historic landmark (or something of that variety) still has a whole load of wool in one of the barns from when work stopped.
And so back to Punta Arenas where I stumped back into the hostel at nearly 10pm, utterly knackered and went straight to bed like the old lady I am at heart.
Oh, the luxury
Last day in Punta Arenas and I spent the whole morning writing. Or trying to in between Google Docs failing on me. Then it was time to take a taxi to the airport, which was... interesting. I felt so sorry for the driver. There he was stuck with a 20 minute drive out to the airport, so he tries to make conversation.Only, my brain completely refused to work and I found myself having to ask him to repeat everything several times. To his credit, he persisted and we had a very broken conversation in which I'm pretty sure I told him both that I was going to Tierra del Fuego and had aleady been... Evidently I haven't been practising tenses enough.
Once I got checked in, I stuffed a completo down my face - a completo being a hotdog with all sorts of toppings on it. I'll admit, I mostly just wanted the hotdog. Strange how such a disgusting item of pretend meat can be so yummy.
Onto the plane, where my stomach, possibly due to the completo, decided to play silly buggers for the entire 4 hour flight. By the time I got to Santiago I felt grotty as anything as I lugged my rucksack through to the exit, somehow got an official taxi and so arrived at my accommodation for the evening.
Said accommodation was the cheapest hotel I could find near the airport. I'd decided I didn't want to be farting about with getting into the city and back the next day. It was only a Travelodge type thing, but hey, I had the room to myself, a TV with English-speaking channels and breakfast included. Bliss.
Turbulence doesn't down planes...
After a glorious night's sleep in my lovely queen-sized bed and an enormous but healthy breakfast, I caught the free hotel shuttle back to the airport. I arrived early. I always arrive early. I figured I'd have plenty of time to grab a sandwich and a cuppa from Starbucks for lunch.Starbucks took forever to make my iced tea (apparently they were out of black tea? WTF?), but it was at that point still nearly an hour until my flight, so I nibbled at my sandwich and sipped at my tea for a few minutes.
Then they announced boarding for my flight. So much confusion. In said confusion, I couldn't remember if they'd allow me to take my drink on the flight (not sure why they wouldn't...) so promptly downed my very cold iced tea in about 2 minutes flat.
BRAINFREEZE.
Wolfing down the sandwich was also unpleasant. This may explain why an hour or so into the flight I started feeling ill.
It does not explain the overwhelming anxiety in the half hour before we landed, during which we hit some turbulence. Not even really bad turbulence. Enough to cause a couple of those horrible stomach dropping moments, but not that bad.
I have a morbid fascination with plane crashes. Or rather, the causes of them. So my brain started a little mantra as my completely irrational anxiety got worse.
Turbulence-doesn't-down-planes-turbulence-doesn't-down-planes...
And on and on until we landed, which was somewhat bumpy. I've had worse. I have no idea where that anxiety appeared from and I really hope it doesn't pop up again.
Anyway, safely on the ground in Calama, I successfully bought myself a return transfer to San Pedro de Atacama, tourist hotspot and an hour and a half later stumped out of the air con and into the dry heat of the Atacama.
It was by now gone 5pm and I had no intention of going anywhere. I read and I wrote and I tried to decide which of the many natural wonders that surround San Pedro were absolute must-dos.
My scalp can't take another sunburn
On my first morning in San Pedro I was super productive. I booked a trio of tours through my hostel, bought groceries and acquired myself a sun hat. My scalp has been sunburnt far too many times already on this trip and given that the hat only cost me 2000 pesos, it doesn't matter too much if I lost it.I think this was also the day I booked my stargazing trip, in which case I was definitely super productive...
My first trip was booked for that afternoon, so at 4pm I tramped up to the agency's office and then onto a minibus headed for the Valle de la Luna. First stop, this wonderful lookout where I discovered that my hat, while effective, is also prone to getting blown away by the wind which renders it rather useless.
I suppose I should be glad it was later in the day, so the sun wasn't so strong. There were some amazing views in the valley, which is in the Cordillera de Sal - the Salt Mountains. Seriously, the ground here seems to bleed salt.
There were odd rock formations dotted all over, courtesy of all the sand and wind, such as Las Tres Marias, although there are now only two Marias, because an idiot tourist knocked one over a few years back while trying to take a photo.
We also stopped off at the former Victoria Salt Mine. By this time the sun was starting to drop a bit and the light was lovely. Just a shame my photography skills aren't quite up to making the most of it. Still, I like this shot.
From there, we had a quick stop at the tiny museum, where I grabbed an empanada for tea and tried my best to read the Spanish descriptions on the shiny rocks. After that, our final stop for the day was Mirador Coyote or the Coyote's Lookout. The place had beautiful views out over the valley.
And was perfectly positioned to view the sunset. I even tried my hand at a little timelapse. Promptly remembered when I got back to the hostel that I don't have anything with which to stitch said timelapse sequence together. So here's a photo of the sunset instead.
Back at the hostel, I figured I'd have an early night. My next trip would be leaving at about 5am the next morning and I needed sleep.
This plan was destroyed by my dorm-mates. I went to bed at 9:30pm. I tried to sleep with the light on because there were other folks in the dorm. They sodded off after a while, so I turned the light off and started nodding off. And then they came back and turned it on again.
Which went on until after midnight. They were also noisy and I'm still amazed I didn't say anything. I got to sleep eventually, but the thought of waking up at 4am was even less pleasant than it had been earlier in the day.
Mm, llama
At 4am I somehow managed to drag myself out of bed. Quietly, despite my urge to make as much noise as possible as vengeance for the previous evening.I regretted being polite when I first found that someone had unplugged my battery pack, so I had no back up power if my camera died. And then, once I'd tramped out to the kitchen in search of tea, realised that I was wearing the wrong shoes.
And not just a wrong pair of my shoes. Someone else's walking boots. Some bastard had moved my boots, which I'd carefully placed at the bottom of the bunk bed ladder so my feet would go straight into them. So I had to fumble about in the dark dorm (still bizarrely trying to be nice) in search of my boots.
By this point, I was in a foul mood. A really foul mood.
Fortunately for me, while I was waiting in the cold for my minibus, I was surrounded by a group of stray dogs. Anywhere else, this would have freaked me out, but I've found that in Peru and Chile the stray/feral dogs are very friendly because the locals seem to look after them. These guys were quite happy just to sit next to me and demand the occasional ear rub.
I fell asleep pretty much as soon as I got on the minibus, which meant I was rather more with it by the time we arrived at El Tatio geyser field, nearly 2 hours from San Pedro.
El Tatio is the third largest and possibly the highest geyser field in the world, with around 80 active geysers. Due to the altitude of over 4,000m (and resulting lower pressure) the geysers here don't tend to have the dramatic fountains that you get at, say, Old Faithful and Strokkur. Mostly they just bubble away merrily and steam a lot, especially in the early morning when the air temperature is low.
Here's a bubbling pool.
And here's the river which flows from the site, steaming in the morning.
Some of the group went for a dip in the bathing pool, but while the hot water was appealing, the thought of getting out into the cold air afterwards wasn't, so I gave it a miss. I stuffed my face with the included breakfast instead and admired the view of the mountains.
With the sun now up, the temperature had started improving. I'm glad I'd taken my alpaca scarf - the lovely but thin one I brought from home wouldn't have kept the cold out.
From El Tatio, we began to make our way back down the mountains to San Pedro. We made a few more stops on the way including Vado Putana, a small lake area with all sorts of birds. Not sure what any of them were... This pair with chicks looked a bit like a large coot.
Also a lagoon where I got my first good look at flamingoes. I'd seen them elsewhere in both Chile and Peru, but only from a distance so it was great to get a closer look.
We also made a stop at the little village of Machuca, where I tried llama. It was delicious.
And finally, a stop at a viewpoint which took in the volcanoes, salt pans and desert that make up the landscape around San Pedro. Seriously, the land is out to get you here.
After that glorious morning, I had a very lazy afternoon, during which I think I might have had a snooze.
But it's not cloudy...
Friday started not quite as early - only 7am. Again, I made friends with some of the local dogs while waiting for the bus. At least this time my annoying dorm-mates had gone and I was able to get a good night's sleep.First stop today was at the Salar de Atacama to see both the salt flat and the flamingoes that live and breed in the lagoons.
I love flamingoes. They're both ridiculous and strangely elegant.
Quick breakfast and then onwards to our next stop. Somewhere along the way I fell asleep, but I woke up when we hit the gravel road. I established over the course of these trips that driving on the wrong side of the road for extended periods seems to be perfectly acceptable if you're trying to avoid potholes. And there were lots of potholes.
On the way up the mountain we came across some vicuna not far from the road. As with the flamingoes, I'd seen these guys at a distance a few times, but this was the closest view I'd got.
Cool animals - alpaca are the domesticated form. They're one of the two wild camelids found in South America, the other being the guanaco from which the llama is derived. Vicuna have such fine fur it's almost like hair and it's been considered a luxury for centuries - within the Inca Empire, only royals were allowed to wear vicuna wool. This might have as much to do with the fact that vicuna don't domesticate well. In order to get the wool you have to catch them and you can only do that every three years and the yields aren't very high.
A few minutes past the vicuna, we finally arrived at our destination - the Lagunas Miscanti i Miniques, named at most of the tour agencies as Lagunas Altiplanicas, because they are lakes on the Altiplano, obviously.
Miscanti and Miniques are also the names of the volcanoes (dormant or extinct, I think...) that overlook the lakes. And they have flamingoes and vicunas up here too.
Harold had to pop out to say hi for a minute.
The lakes are at fairly high altitude - something in the region of 4,000m - and our guide said that normally he has at least one person on each trip who struggles with it. Personally, I didn't even get the out of breath feeling I'd had in Peru, but we weren't doing anything too strenuous.
From the lakes, it was a simple case of heading back to San Pedro. I spotted a guanaco on the way, but we didn't stop so I couldn't grab a photo. Shame, because it's the only guanaco I've seen so far - they look like vicuna but with a black face.
Our last stop was at Socaire, the last village on the Chilean side of the pass which goes into Argentina. Pablo, our guide, was clearly very passionate about indigenous culture and had a little bit of a (good-natured) rant about how the Spanish destroyed the local culture and how the Atacamenos are now rebuilding it. I was intrigued to find that the recently extinct native language, Kunza, was probably an isolate - that is, it doesn't have any relation to any other language.
I found Socaire interesting because there are the remains of agricultural terracing in the village, just like the terraces found in the Peruvian Andes and associated there with the Inca culture. Here, our guide attributed them to the Tiwanaku, a somewhat mysterious culture which predates the Inca (see the site called Tiwanaku). Some theories suggest that the Inca were in some way descendent from the Tiwanaku culture, since Inca mythology has the first Inca, Manco Capac and his sister-wife, rise from the waters of Titicaca, an area around which the Tiwanaku were dominant.
Anyway, I digress. These things fascinate me.
From Socaire, we headed straight back to San Pedro, where I first made a trip to the stargazing company to reconfirm my booking for the evening. I was told to come back at 8:30pm as they didn't know whether it would be going ahead yet. Strange, I thought, given that there were only a few clouds hanging around.
Then I took myself out for lunch because I was getting bored of pasta. I ended up having a delicious quinoa and quince starter and an enormous Spanish omelette.
This might go part of the way towards explaining why I then spent the afternoon sat on my bed feeling awful. I don't think my stomach appreciated that huge serving.
At 8pm I dragged my miserable, grotty-feeling self into town to get the update on my stargazing. Only to be told that it had been cancelled.
Great.
So I rebooked for Saturday night, hauled myself back to the hostel and went to bed. Ugh.
An eventful week! Finally, after spending nearly 3 weeks in Chile and apparently not doing a whole lot. Oh, and guess what? I've written nearly 100,000 words so far this month. Go me.
Next week, I've got a few more days in San Pedro during which I'll hopefully go stargazing and then I'm heading back to Santiago to catch a flight to Australia. Via Argentina. And New Zealand.
Jet lag awaits! Any tips for dealing with it?
