A couple of weeks ago we made a trip up to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a town named after Pedro de Valdivia, Chile’s favorite conquistador and spreader of all things Spanish to one of the last untouched corners of the Americas. This is the same Pedro whose family name is honored by the capital of the river district in the south and our previous big trip to Valdivia (see “Trailer for next week…”).
San Pedro lies about 22 hours by bus north of Santiago. That’s a long trip. So instead of spending two whole days watching the cheapest (and worst) movies the bus company could rent the rights to, we took advantage of an airline offer and flew up to the desert in about 2 hours. Anyway, we made it up there and stepped off the plane into the middle of a cloudless day in one of the driest places in the world.
We spent four full days in the area and were fortunate to have two “resident” guides to show us around. These guides came in the form of two fellow Fulbrighters working in anthropology and literature. If you want a more poetic perspective on the Atacama check out Summer’s (said literature Fulbrighter) blog at http://culturalmavens.wordpress.com/.
Our first day was spent wandering around town, visiting the local museum and checking out some nearby Pukaras (defensive forts built by pre-European Atacameños; see photo). We found ourselves in San Pedro in the shoulder season so crowds were not bad, but the massive number of hostels and restaurants gave us a picture of how reliant the town is on tourism and how over-run it must become during the peak travel season. In a way it reminded us of a Chilean-version of Moab Utah, a slightly hippy vibe, with plenty of outdoor enthusiasts and surrounded by beautiful desert scenery.
The greatest advantage of having friends familiar with the area was that we didn’t have to rely on the crap-shoot that is the tour industry in San Pedro. Instead of hoping to get a sober and knowledgeable driver/guide to take us to each tourist trap, we were able to rent a 4x4 truck and navigate the back roads getting away from the crowds. For today I’ll just leave you with a picture of one of those very off-the-beaten-trail places that we checked out. This is also one of a handful
of images we are contemplating selling to Nissan for its advertising. I’ll get back to the more interesting parts of our trip next time. If you want to cheat and look ahead, the slideshow is up as well. Until then…
(under "Pages"). In these I am trying to go beyond the typical travel blog and exercise my non-science writing muscles with general musings about the country we are visiting for a year of our lives.
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