Our morning started with a visit into the heart of the Salar de Atacama, or the Atacama salt flat. Salt flat is a bit of a misnomer as the area gets almost no rain in the year and as a result, the salt crystals grow upward and look more like sharp spikes in some places….
Our next expedition took us to the Laguna Ceja and then the salt flats. We took a dip (or rather a float) in the actual salt lagoons. The lagoon has a 40% concentration of salt and so you can float without any effort at all. We floated a bit and then had a mud bath,…
Our next excursion was to the Tatio Geysers. This is a geothermal zone high in the Andes at 4320m above sea level. The geysers are active at between 6am to 8am in the morning so we had an early start by waking up at 03:15 and being picked up at our hostel at 4am. We…
Remember to click on the images, especially the Pano shots, they look much better when you they are in full size!! Our first excursion into the Atacama Desert was into an area known as Valle de la Luna or the Moon Valley. It is called this because of the absolute starkness of the place. There…
We left the veritable lushness and beauty of being at the coast at Vina del Mar and traveled by bus (for 24 hours by the way!) to the dusty town of San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro (as it is often called) is a rural adobe village in the North of Chile. It is 2436…
The neigbouring city to Vina del Mar is a harbour city called Valparaiso. It is an old city that has been built into the sides of the steep hills that surround the bay of Valparaiso. As with most harbour towns, the city centre is largely reclaimed land and the rest of the city is built…
Well, after the past few weeks, we decided we needed a break, so we moved down to Vina del Mar just over a week ago, from Santiago. We said goodbye to our Couchsurfing hosts in Santiago, Johanna and Mauricio and Steffi and got onto a bus to Vina del Mar. Vina del Mar is a…
We are still in Chile in spite of the earthquake and the resultant aftershocks. It was just over 1 week ago that Chile was hit by an 8.8 Quake which literally rocked the country. Since then, we have seEn devastated towns in the south of Chile, we have heard about 3 Tsunamis that were triggered…
It was like nothing I have ever experienced before. I don’t know what the actual time was, but I woke up to hear some dogs howling and the feeling that the room was moving, rocking from side to side. I heard a rumble in the distance, but in the dullness and thickness of the sleep…
