San Pedro: Drier than an Armadillo's Bumhole
San Pedro: Drier than an Armadillo’s Bumhole
 |
| Valle de la Muerte |
So we left the Salt Plains in Uyuni and headed down the
steep hill in the bus. Although San Pedro is still at quite the high altitude
it was nothing compared to where we were, we probably dropped around 2000
metres. The whole experience of crossing the border had been a little weird.
Not only had there been the extortion of the amount for an exit stamp in our
passport, but we were on a bus filled with bleary eyed tourists, including a very
sweary French man who seemed in a foul mood. Just as we’d got to the border the
driver pulled into a layby and jabbered away at us all in Spanish. At which
point to my amusement a few very panicked voices from the back went ‘Can
someone translate please!’ So an Australian girl translated for the group of
Slavic girls at the back. As it turns out Chile has ecological safeguards in a
similar manner to Fiji and New Zealand, this means that a lot of food and
various plants and animal products are not allowed across the border. To our
further amusement the Driver joked about it being a very expensive way to have
an apple before confiscating one of the Slavic girl’s apple and proceeding to
um… devour the evidence. The French man swore quite a bit about not being in
the queue for the border as the driver disappeared to chat with his mates.
Finally we had our passports checked and I would also say our bags as well, but
Olivia’s was checked whereas my guard was rather lackadaisical and just looked
in the top of my bag and went ‘Just clothes?’ before walking off and waving me
dismissively. He was evidently disappointed that there were no apples for him
to eat.
 |
| Mt Licancabur in the distance |
After this we hurtled down the steep hill that led down to
San Pedro de Atacama, a town in the salt plain region of Atacama. To call it a
salt plain doesn’t quite do it justice as there was very little salt that I
could see. It was mostly just dust, so much dust that your nose became like a
reverse vacuum cleaner whenever you blew it. So we pulled up into the middle of
town and waddled down the pedestrian zone towards our accommodation. We double
checked the number and headed off past the main square and down the street. Our
host for the Airbnb hadn’t managed to inform us where the key was before we
lost internet connection, but we’re quite resourceful so decided we’d be able
to find it, knowing it was there somewhere. So we finally found the house that
appeared to be just a ramshackle of buildings with the number spray painted on
the wooden door of the fence. We looked around, at a loss as to where you could
possibly hide the key as there was just dust and a few stones around the place.
But our saviour appeared, poking his nose over the gate before gruffly asking
what we wanted. So off I went in my best Spanish, informing him that we were
supposed to be staying there and the man we were staying with had left us a key
somewhere. He looked at us perplexedly
before replying with something in such quick Spanish that I had no idea what he
said. I apologised and asked if he could speak a little slower as I didn’t
understand, but this had no effect. Eventually he let us in to the complex
after stating that it was his property. I was a little confused, but it was the
right number so followed him in. He disappeared into a side room before coming
out with a key and showing us to our room.
 |
| A Road in the Desert |
Our room looked a little bit like someone had just dumped a
bed in a garage and decided it was the right place to call it a hotel. Olivia
gave me a side eye, I felt a twinge of panic in my gut. It was the same feeling
that you have when you make a curry, decide it’s not hot enough and add a
little bit more chilli, then you taste it and it burns your face off. Or
perhaps when you order food in a Belgian bar and what ends up coming out as
‘Cassoulet’ is a tin of baked beans with a sausage in it. Or even when you
decide to try snails only to later discover you are allergic to them. All
hypothetical scenarios of course… but all ending in the same oh no! What have I
done! At this point the man was demanding $30 for the room. I swiftly peeled
off six of my layers as otherwise I would have melted. Stuffed them in my bag
and told him that I thought it was the wrong place so I needed to go find some
internet and double check that we had the right place. Now we have stayed in
some odd places in our travels but I think that was the worst that we had seen,
apart from maybe the kitchen in Kotor…
 |
| The Neighbours dog who became Olivia's friend |
So we headed back towards the main square where thankfully
the government gave free wifi and I checked my emails, confused as to how we
had the right address but the room was oh so wrong. On an interesting side
note, San Pedro’s main square is home to a large quantity of very happy stray
dogs who wander around the place wagging their tails and grinning at you until,
if you are Olivia, you give them a bit of your food. Because of the large
population of dogs roaming the place San Pedro has gained the nickname of San
Perro, Perro meaning dog, and it’s a rather apt name. So anyway we found out
that we in fact had the right address, the problem was that we needed to take a
side gate down an alley to behind the Old man’s property, our host later
informed us he is a rather grumpy man. So off we went and quickly found the key
and the place was really good. Dropping our bags off and downing some water we
then decided we would head out and change some money we had from Brazil and
Bolivia into Chilean Pesos, we tried one that was closed before heading towards
a different money changer. Upon doing this we found that there was a restaurant
over the road that did Rotisserie Chicken and chips that was filled with
locals. We ordered two quarter chickens and chips and sat down, to find that
oddly all of their condiments are in mustard bottles, even though only one of
them was mustard. So there we were in the sunny heat of Chile happily stuffing
our faces with fantastic chicken, chips, mayo and hot sauce before ambling back
contently towards our accommodation (making sure we covered our faces as we
walked past the grumpy man’s house). It was evident that this was going to be a
good place to stay.
 |
| Our Chicken and Chips |
San Pedro itself is a very busy place with lots of tourists
either coming or going towards the Salt Plains. We didn’t do huge amounts there
as a lot of things we had done as similar activity in La Paz or Uyuni. We met a
few of our host’s friends and neighbours, most were teachers like our host and
there was much revelry in town because it was the week where they celebrate
Chilean independence. A lot of our days were spent having a lie in and then
ambling to the aforementioned chicken shop for a bit of lunch/breakfast before
just sitting and watching the world, and the dogs, go by in the sunshine in the
main square. There was however one very sad day when the chicken shop was
closed so we ended up going to a different one, which offered a very similar
menu. However much to our disappointment we found that they must have boiled
their chickens to cook them quickly before displaying them in a rotisserie
cooker leading to a very soggy and disappointing chicken which left both of us
feeling rather sad.
 |
| Lemon Pie and Cherry and Cream Cake |
Other highlights of San Pedro included their empanadas, now
empanadas in Chile are not the same as the ones we had in Argentina. Here they
are a very different shape and also much bigger. They are also more pizza
flavoured, so if you imagine a square calzone. We ate some really nice
Neapolitan ones (ham, cheese, tomato and basil) and a vegetarian one (cheese,
tomato and basil) a one with an odd name (it had cheese, tomato and a sausage
in it) which was quite nice and by far the favourite one was the chicken with
cheese and pepper. We also stocked up on cake that we had not eaten since
Teresopolis, so long ago... We had a few different varieties, the first we
tried was really nice and consisted of sponge cut into three layers and
containing cherry jam and cream in the middle, before being covered in cream.
Alongside this one we tried the local version of lemon meringue pie, which was
a bit like a lemon custard covered in Italian meringue. We also tried a
raspberry pie, simply consisting of a sort of thick raspberry jam in a pie
case. By far our favourite was the mango pie, similar to the lemon meringue but
with a mango custard in the bottom which was delightfully heavenly. I should
point out that with all these options it was more that we share the food
between us so that we can try more, rather than one each. Also for those
concerned about our vitamin levels we had fruit for breakfast and often had
vegetables for dinner, this purely describes our lunches for a few days.
 |
| A tree in the desert |
Anyway, so food in San Pedro is amazingly good, if you go
then you need to try the Rotisserie chicken on the left hand street when you
are looking away from the market, it is the better one all other chicken shops
there suck (or at least we are presuming that from the one bad experience). But
we also did a few other things around all the eating and general relaxing that
we did. The first thing that we did in town was to explore the Artisan’s
village which is a collection of shops near the bus station. It was quite
interesting to see what they offered and some of the spray painted walls with
their impressive artwork. But there
weren’t many shops open as a lot of people were celebrating or preparing for
the holidays (I like the idea of a week long holiday of festivities, it’s
currently Wednesday as I write this in Arica and everything is closed, clearly
the final day of festivities is the hangover cure day as yesterday seemed like
the big party day). We did pop down to the Artisan’s village when they were
having the big party day there but it seemed a little underwhelming with just a
few shops open again and a single man on stage blasting music to try and draw a
crowd. It could however just have been that we were there at the wrong time,
but who knows.
 |
| San Pedro de Atacama Church |
As part of this day of just exploring the town we had a look
around the town’s church, funnily enough it’s the church of Saint Peter or San
Pedro in the Spanish. This church is very interesting as it is made out of a
similar material to a lot of the walls in the main square of the town, a sort
of red dust and mud mixed with hay to form walls. It’s not as beautiful as
other churches we’ve seen on our travels but the texture of its exterior is
interesting and its roof is really bizarre. The roof itself is made out of
cactus wood which is a very odd wood with a very open grain and large holes
within it. I’ve put a photo below to demonstrate what I mean by this, but it is
a truly intriguing style of wood and the locals use it (technically illegally
as it is generally from a protected species of cactus) to make various bowls
and boxes for storing things, the holes however make soup storage rather
impractical.
 |
| The Cactus Wood Roof |
On a different day, after wolfing down some empanadas (I
believe Olivia gave a little of hers to a dog) we trekked out of the town
towards the Pukar de Quito, a large archaeological site that housed an ancient
Incan town. We walked out of town following the route of the river, more stream
like than river like, until we reached the gates to the archaeological site. We
had three walking routes here but only decided to do two due to the oppressive
heat and fact that we’d drank all of our water and their hydration point didn’t
exist or was the closed bar. So we climbed up the hill and looked at the ruins
of all the Incan houses that had once been there, it was amazing that people
used to live in such a barren and dry place but quite spectacular to see. It
would have been nice if there was a little more explanation of what the houses
used to be, but it was fairly cheap to go in anyway and killed a few hours.
 |
| The gate at the cave in Pukara de Quito |
From here we headed
down to the other track that led to a cave inhabited by the Incas. It had a
very interesting entryway complete with an arch and a head. Sadly though the
cave itself you had to ‘enter at your own risk’ and was self-guided, so we
poked our head in a little and then felt it was a bit narrow and low for my frame
and the walls were made of an odd crumbly sand material, so we decided not to
go too far into it before we headed back and relaxed at home.
 |
| Olivia at the Pukara de Quito |
Our host left us on the Sunday and we had two days where we
were given their bikes to use, so we decided on our final day that we would
explore some of the view points over the Moon and Mars Valley. Having seen a
moon valley in La Paz our primary focus was the Mars Valley or the Valle de la
Muerte. Now those Spaniard enthusiasts amongst you will recognise that Muerte
is in fact not really the word for mars, but death. This is true and is
apparently due to some bad translating, but also could have been a warning as
to what our cycling is like. Olivia and I haven’t ridden a bike for around a
decade. So we tentatively headed out along the desert road before going off
road to head up to the viewpoints. Whether it was the lack of recent bike
riding experience, the altitude, the largely chicken and chips based diet or
the dryness of the area around us, it was incredibly hard work. But finally we
crested the hill and were met with the most fantastic view of rolling red hills
with sand covered slopes where many people go to sand board, and we sat panting
for breath and downing some water as we looked at the magnificent scenes around
us. It was hard work, but completely worth it. We do plan to go sand boarding
but this is likely to be in Ica in Peru as this is the main activity there, so
do not fear, we’re not missing out. From here we headed back towards our accommodation
to shower before we took the overnight bus to Arica, our next destination.
 |
| Valle de la Muerte |
For an interesting extra fact about Armadillos, in Bolivia
they had plenty of stuffed ones that they strapped money on to in the belief
that in a year they would get more money, It would appear that they took the
idea of the Holiday Armadillo too literally (Look here if you are confused).
Maybe that’s how San Pedro got so dusty; The Magic Armadillo got dusty and made
twice as much sand and so on and so forth.
 |
| The Incan City in the Desert |
Until next time!
Olivia and Andrew
See some other posts
- Overview
- European Ecstasy
- Adventures in Asia
- Pacific Paradise
- Southern South American Splendour
- Central Celestial Scenes
Have a look at our Instagram for more and up to date photos
Comments
Post a Comment