Thursday, Oct. 2, 2003 - 11:50 p.m.
San Pedro de Atacama (Chile)
On Tuesday, I had inquired about bus tickets and found out that the next bus to Salta wasn't until Friday. So the next day I bought a bus ticket, it was the most I'd ever paid for a bus trip so far, about $25 in Chilean pesos! Up to now, generally buses have averaged about $1 an hour (so an 8 hr bus ride is about $8). This bus journey would be about 12 hrs long.
We all needed money so we went to the casas de cambio and then I went to the travel agency and found out I could exchange my Bolivianos for Chilean pesos, but only about 400 B's at a time (about $52). They gave a much better exchange rate than the "house of change" did. After that Mairi and Mhairi and I went and got something to eat, check our e-mail and get our laundry (which was supposed to be ready at noon).
Later we inquired about tours. San Pedro has attractions of geysers, salt lakes and what's called La Valley de la Luna or Valley of the Moon. The Scottish girls weren't interested in the geysers or salars since we'd already seen some on our tour out of Uyuni. So we looked into tours of the Valley of the Moon. We also learned that there were sandboarding tours that also included the Valley of the Moon. Since we are all snowboarding enthusiasts we signed up for sandboarding for the next day, which didn't start until the afternoon.
We were finally able to get our laundry at 6pm in the eve.
By next day (Thursday, Oct 2nd) we'd started to avoid the hotel lady because we didn't like getting hassled about paying for the room in advance. But we did pay for the room each day for the previous night. I noticed that Chile is a more developed country than Bolivia and we all relished the hot showers. In public bathrooms there would actually be toilet paper and sometimes even soap! Meals were averaging about $5-10, which is still cheap by US standards, but more than I was used to spending.
Mairi and Mhairi needed to get a bus ticket to Arica, Chile, a coastal town near the border with Peru. The two girls had originally planned to go to Peru via La Paz, but due to the protests and road blocks had decided to go to Peru from Chile instead. I went with them to inquire around. We had no problem finding buses going from Calama (about 90 minutes away) to Arica (9 hrs from Calama)--however we had no luck finding buses from San Pedro to Calama!
M & M (Mairi & Mhairi) were going to go to Peru next, visit Arequipa, do the Inca Trail and then return south to Argentina. We talked about maybe meeting back up in Argentina and they also invited me to go to Brazil with them, something that I'd recently started thinking about anyway. The only problem with going with M & M was that they would be in Rio de Janeiro a week before I planned to end my trip. Originally I'd planned to go from Bolivia to Argentina, then to Iguazu falls to Uruguay (Montevideo) to Buenos Aires and then south to Tierra del Fuego, then up to Patagonia and the Lake District and finally end in Santiago, Chile. Now I started considering going in this circuit the other direction so that after Buenos Aires and Iguazu I could head up north into Brazil and end in Rio de Janeiro.
At 2:30pm we met at the travel agency for our tour. There were 2 Israeli guys and 2 Chilean guys with us. It was hot as we drove off in the minivan. As soon as we left the small community of San Pedro we were in the dry, barren desert with lots of mountains surrounding us. some of them were volcanoes. We rode through this strange landscape, then took an unpaved side road through strange rocky hills.
We stopped, got out the sandboards and walked up the rocky road until we reached a big hill of brown sand. Our guide gave us a briefing on Sandboarding 101in Spanish, I translated for Mairi & Mhairi. Basically they were just simple wooden boards with two velcro straps, one in the front, one in the back that you slip your feet into. Our guide said not to zigzag a lot while going downhill. Then we took our boards, waxed them down and climbed up the steep hill. It was hard work! There was no chairlift. It seemed to take forever to reach the top, then we trudged along the spine of this hill of sand. When I turned around to look behind me I saw an breathtaking view of dark brown hills of sand and mountains stretching out with a bright blue expanse of sky above.
Soon we had all assimilated together in a row, sitting in the warm sand, facing the slope of the hill. The slope looked daunting. Our guide gave us a demonstration, making it look easier than it is. Then one by one everyone was going sliding down the hill. I hesitated. It had been 18 months since I last went snowboarding and had also sprained my wrist. Finally, I stood up on the board and was the last one to go. I found it a little challenging to keep my balance. My body wanted to go faster than the board. I thought that the board would slide along the sand a lot faster and found it very difficult to control the direction of the board, much less zigzag, once I started sliding.
The sun beat down on us and my throat was constantly dry. Once I slid down the hill halfway I then walked the rest of the way down to get my camera and a drink of water. After the grueling climb up the hill I went on another run. This was a lot of effort for an average of about 10 seconds of sliding down this huge hill of sand. When you first start out, you have to point the board straight downhill, then lean into the incline and scoot the board a few times for gravity to take over and you start to slide. You don't go that incredibly fast due to the friction between sand and board, and the friction soon brings you to a stop, even though you're only halfway down the hill.
After one of my 10 second runs, sitting in the sand before tacking the trek back up the hill I heard a whoop of excitment and looked up just in time to see Mairi cruising down the hill on her board, going faster than I'd managed to go, body & board in fluid motion, her right hand holding her floppy hat to her head to prevent it's escape. In 10 seconds it was over, she said that run was the most like snowboarding.
We managed to aquire an impressive amount of sand in our shoes during our 2 hours of sandboarding. I only managed to get about 7 runs in, by the time I was getting the hang of it, it was unfortunately time to go. While I'm glad that I went and had the experience it also made me appreciate how much better snowboarding is. There's a lot less friction between snow and board and the board is a lot easier to manuever and control. Not to mention there's a chairlift!
After this we went to the Valley of the Moon. We first went to a strange scenery of what looked like wrinkled rock and a suggestion of a lunar landscape. Similar to the Dali rocks, there were some warped rock formations. We walked around and took photos. Then we drove to another part of the valley that is a popular place where all the tour groups go to watch the sunset.
We had to climb up another hill of sand and up to an outcropping of rock. We scurried up the rock to another ridge where about 50 people were already sitting, waiting for the sun to set. As we walked past the people to find our own seat I saw some people that I recognized. It was Maria & Davi, the Spanish / Irish couple from the Inca Trail! I told them about my adventures and mishaps since last seeing them in Copacabana. They were headed off to Santiago next, a loooong bus ride away.
I went & joined M & M and we watched the the setting sun turn the red rocks and hills of sand different colors, like natures canvas of changing paints. It was beautiful. After the sun slipped behind the distant mountains we trekked back down the hill of sand, collecting more sand in our shoes.
Earlier, after sandboarding I chatted briefly with our guide. He told me that Chile was a diverse group of people. The people in the south, he said, are gregarious & friendly. The people in the north (where we were) were angry. Angry? Why are they angry? I asked. It turned out, he told me, that they were unhappy with all the tourists, especially the indigenous people. I remembered my guide book mentioning this. The indigenous people are really sensitive to the influx of tourists to their native lands.
I also talked with one of the Israeli guys on my journey who mentioned he was headed to Bolivia next. I told him I had a bunch of Bolivianos if he was interested in doing an exchange for Chilean Pesos. Fortunately he was, and that evening I was able to get rid of the last of my Bolivianos once and for all.
