The last significant stop in our travels in Northern Chile was the awesome desert village San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a significant indigenous settlement in the Atacama Desert, located at the edge of a large salt flat, in the foothills of the Andes, overlooked by snow-capped mountains and volcanos. It was an important trading post between the indigenous inhabitants of the Andean Altiplano and those of the coastal areas. Now it's still an important meeting place for different people, as it's the tourism capital of the Atacama Desert. It's a special place, a desert oasis which retains its character but has excellent infrastructure - tour providers, amazing restaurants, internet, awesome hotels and hostels, and fantastic people. It's also very much a part of Chile.
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| the ubiquitous Chilean fire hydrant - no idea if there's any water in it... |
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| San Pedro's church - tower and church sort of separate like in the Altiplano |
The quickest way to get here is by plane to a mining town called Calama, then a couple of hours drive through the desert. The flight is spectacular as you fly along the Andes most of the way!
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| a plane in the desert - yay! |
This part of our trip coincided with a visit to Chile from Struan's parents, Bonny and Stuart. It was fantastic to have them visit us here in Chile, our next few posts will feature some more of them and a few other visitors that we've been lucky to have from the UK. We should also mention that some of the photos on this post are from Bonny - thanks!
Time to show off some of the San Pedro cuisine - not what you'd expect to find in a desert!
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| Cheers! Pisco Sours! |
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| yum! |
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| yum! cheers! |
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| yum! ta-daa! |
There's a few more of those to come...
But first, here's some pics of one of the trips we took out into the desert. There are many tours available, one of the favourites goes to the
Valle de la Luna - the Valley of the Moon. It hasn't rained in the Atacama Desert for a long time, it has the lowest level of rainfall in the world, and some parts haven't seen rain for millenia. This means that the effects of erosion, from wind, and originally from water, have created a unique landscape. We spent the day in the desert then watched the sun go down across the valley.
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| desert glamour |
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| salt |
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| Anna interrogating the guide |
So back to San Pedro...
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| wooden signs please - don't ruin our town |
Although San Pedro is undoubtedly a different place from what it must have been a few years ago, before the tourism industry really came to town, it's definitely maintained its character and it remains a special place. There are a couple of ATMs but, like the pic above shows, the municipal authorities specify that all establishments have to have wooden signs so as not to detract from the local style. It's good to see this kind of thing, particularly in Chile where these concerns are not always high on the agenda. That said, the UK seems to have managed to systematically destroy the character of many of its towns and cities - all sanctioned by the local authorities to make money for some property developers and push up commercial rents. For shame!
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| and another thing, what about the Cambridge guided bus debacle...grrr |
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calm down man |
Enough of that, let's lighten it up again:
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| look, some long-legged San Pedro pussy |
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| Stuart in a crazy hat! |
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| Anna with a pizza that's bigger than her! |
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| wahey! |
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| crikey |
Okay, enough, we'll do another post on San Pedro as we've got a few more photos to show. For now, here's the
huipala flying proudly in San Pedro - the "national" flag of the Andean people, which we've mentioned before. San Pedro is a part of Chile, but it's also a proud part of the indigenous Andean tradition.
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| the huipala |
Although we were in San Pedro a few weeks ago now, it happens to be Easter Sunday as we write this - by happy coincidence there's a great photo of the huipala
here, carried by a Aymaran Bolivian, people we wrote about in a previous post, in a series of photos of Easter around the world. Happy Easter from Chile!
Now, bye until our next post - here's some San Pedro dogs! Chao!
2 comments:
That is really a place I would like to visit - must be amazing! When are you coming back? Or are you not coming back in the end?!?
you guys really seem to had a lot of fun there, i was also planning to spent my next vacations at san pedro with some of my friends, now after reading your post and looking at all those pictures i have made up my mind that i will definitely go this time.
San Pedro de Atacama
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