Pucon -> San Pedro de Atacama

Yesterday was a longer travel day we we left the green volcanic region of Chile and headed North toward the Atacama desert. We woke up at 5:45 to get to our 6:30am shuttle from Pucon back to Temuco, the larger city where the nearest airport is. From there, we took flight 1 to Santiago where we had to get our McDonalds fill again. That and the Starbucks were pretty much the only places to get food in the whole terminal. We took our second flight to Calama and the change in landscape was immediately apparent. Lots of desert in all directions with some snow-capped volcanos in the background. From the airport, it was about an hour and a half bus to the small town of San Pedro. The town sits at around 8000ft, so the sun is very intense (rip Hunter). Looking at the distant peaks, they must be really really tall if they appear massive from where we stand at 8000ft already.

The architecture of the buildings here is mostly earth-constructed material and single-story. It feels like a whole different world. Our room in the hostel is actually quite cool inside thanks to the thermal properties of mud. Our host, Monica, checked us in and showed us around the common spaces, kitchen, and huge motorcycle garage. A group of Brazilian bikers are also staying here, and it was fun to talk with them about their long travels on the road. They have such a funny vibe, cooking steaks on an open fire, drinking Heinekens, not a care in the world.

We spend the rest of yesterday shopping around, getting food, and planning tours. Ale, the name of our tour agent here, was super cool. She is from Spain and she used to study in India. She commented on the amount of sunscreen we should be using (emphasizing it to Hunter) which I thought was funny. Unfortunately, we are here in the desert at an unfortunate timing due to the full moon. The light will drown out some of the other stars and milky way that would ordinarily be seen here in some of the best dark skies of the whole world. So good in fact that many nations have observatories here. Regardless, we made the most of it and signed up for the astronomy tour last night as the moon was not yet completely full.

We met at 9pm at the tour office and hopped into a shuttle that drove us about 15min outside of the city. As we saw the San Pedro lights fade into the distance, it did feel pretty remote. There was a guy from New York who we talked with and another from Australia. Despite the bright moon, we still saw many stars. The tour operators split us into 3 groups that would rotate through 3 stations. The first station for us was the telescope where we looked at the moon, Mars, a distant star named Beetlejuice, and the brightest star in our sky: Cyrus. Next, we got some information from Camila, another tour guide, about the constellations. Finally, we ended with some dark-sky long-exposure pictures that did not turn out great but were still fun to take. It got distinctly colder as the night progressed, a clear indicator of this harsh environment.

After the rotations were complete, the guides lit a fire for us, opened up the snack and drink bar, and serenaded us with some guitar tunes and native songs. This was our favorite part of the night. Peaceful, quiet, and unique. We got back to the hostel around 12:45am. On the bus ride back, there was an Indian couple talking to our Australian friend about proposing to his girlfriend, about their own arranged marriage, and a random assortment of other topics, which was fun to overhear. The best part was hearing the Indian guy say that if the other dude hadn’t proposed by the next time they met, he would be very disappointed.

But, our night was not over. As we entered the main door, Monica, our host, came up to us and asked if we could help her open her room door. Turns out, she had locked herself out of her own room and had been stuck outside for 5 hrs. We found a butter knife in the kitchen, bent it in a way to insert it between the frame and door, and were able to manually push the door latch inward until the door swung open. Success!

Overall, fun day. Before the tour, I noticed Monica was writing something in English and asked her what is was for. She was writing a few paragraphs about a program aimed towards local guides to learn English. It was fascinating reading her English text because I bet that her English is how our Spanish speech and text appears to native speakers. It was comprehendible, but the vocab and grammar and flow was distinctly off. After helping her change phrases here and there, I got a better understanding of why translation for important texts or writings often reduce the meaning behind the words in the original language. While on the topic of language, it was interesting talking to the Brazilian men because at first, I just thought they were speaking really fast and that was the reason I couldn’t understand them. In contrast, they were actually speaking Portuguese. We were able to interpret each other’s words well enough, but fluid communication was far from attainable. However, still cool that we could kinda translate and get messages across.

Today, we slept in, recovered, did a few more errands, and prepped for our next two days of tours coming up. Tomorrow, we will visit a large geyser field and on Wednesday, we will bike ourselves to the Moon Valley. Thursday we pack up and head out to the airport!