This brief visit back to Chile is ending too soon and not with a bang but a grunt of frustration. Already I am looking forward to the places we shall visit next year when I hope to be back around Christmas, the height of the austral summer.
On the subject of summer they don’t use Daylight Saving Time in South America which lots of North Americans say they would prefer. Well, here we are going into the austral Fall and the sun doesn’t rise until 7:30, at least it doesn’t rise enough to be able to see anything.
Eight o’clock in the morning and we can see the highway. Getting up in the dark is not my cup of tea but happily we are retired so, on non travel days I can stay in bed till ten which feels like eight…
Our plan was to arrive in the city of Calama, an hour away, when Lider (Walmart) opened, do some last minute shopping and be on our way before Calama knew we were there.
Calama is by reputation the most dangerous city in Chile. Imagine going into the dodgiest part of a city you don’t know very well and that was us. I was to stay aboard GANNET2 in the gated parking lot at the mall and Layne was going through the mall to Lider. There have been overlanders reporting break ins to vehicles despite the presence of parking lot guards in Calama. However we had to get through some really dopey traffic lights to get to the mall. Calama to a casual passerby looked like any other uninteresting city with terrible rush hour traffic.
Lo and behold Layne found inexpensive lined Crocs big enough to fit my wide feet and considering the altitude we will be traversing I’m keeping the inserts for now. Oh and she got some dog treats which are not easy to find at affordable prices outside Chile. Important stuff.
The plan was to cross the mountains at the Jama pass beyond San Pedro de Atacama and descend into Argentina to visit the tourist town of Salta. I was actually curious to see San Pedro, a hitch hikers center which in my imagination would look like Santa Fe and would feel like Moab in Utah. Wrong on both counts it felt like a dusty village lost in backwoods Mexico. And not in a good way.
Most overlanders pass through San Pedro on their way south from Bolivia but we stuck to the coast and skipped Bolivia on our way down, as it was more than usually riotous when we thought about going. As you can see from the map this little oasis is at the junction of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. We will follow the red line east to Argentina.
To get to San Pedro from Calama, a distance of a little more than an hours drive, we had to take Highway 25 through more shriveled up arid Atacama Desert.
You’ve seen plenty already do we fast forward to a vista point overlooking… more desert three miles from San Pedro de Atacama.
Rusty loved it and he went scampering off.
85 degrees with a lovely cool breeze.
And that lodge of green was the oasis of San Pedro, hiking, astronomy and outdoor capital of this lost quarter of Chile.
I think he’s a desert rat at heart. A big bowl of water and he was ready for more.
San Pedro de Atacama Layne said, is not our jam. Dusty, unkempt, full of hole in the wall eateries with similar boring menus and streets that look like they are out of a spaghetti western. Without the glamor.
Everybody loves San Pedro my wife said, we can’t disparage it.
Well, do you, dear reader wish you were here? I wish you were instead of me. I’m not excited about this place.
We will come back next year and not be u see s deadline or an illusion and we’ll sort the place out. We met a retired Chilean couple in a camper and they gave Layne the number of a dog sitter so we can make a day trip to the national park.
Anyway we decided we’d seen the town and might as well get going so we drove out of San Pedro to one of the only full service campgrounds that takes dogs here. Yes, dogs are mostly not welcome in San Pedro de Atacama, another strike. As we drove towards the place Layne read the iOverlander description in which more than one overlanders reported the employee’s two German Shepherds attacked and bit the pets of guests in the campground. Well, that’s want going to work.
Screw it I said. Let’s start out for Argentina. We’d filled up with gas as it is a 200 mile trek on pavement happily up to the top of the Andes, a new record for us at 15,900 feet and down to the Argentine town on the other side. We figured we’d sleep a few miles up the road before it gets too high for comfort and be on our way.
Then Layne read the warning in iOverlander about the wild camps up Highway 27 where travelers were rousted by the military who said it’s too dangerous to sleep up there. I guess there’s smuggling to Bolivia and perhaps like our own border regions you don’t want to meet people with smuggling on their minds.
So we got a few miles out of San Pedro on the road to Argentina and Layne vetoed the camping idea. No argument from me, we turned and went back to town to a parking lot where they charge $17 to camp overnight, dogs allowed and only a cold water shower to clean you.
Nothing really happened but yesterday was an unsatisfactory day all in all. Layne cooked up our raw meat to make it acceptable to Argentine customs and we were having a fruit salad after dinner to get rid of that contraband before the border.
This is a city street by the way:
I s as m glad Julia and Konstantin want to travel Bolivia with us because that is going to be a difficult country owing to strikes, blockades, lack of fuel and widespread poverty. Sounds enticing doesn’t it?
Then add the altitude, most of the country is on a plateau between 12 and 14 thousand feet and overnight lows always drop to freezing and you can see why it is going to be a challenge. And they are so messed up we couldn’t get a visa at the consulate because they are so disorganized…
While it is true that northern Chile is poorer than the center and the south it’s still an easy country to visit and I could spend weeks camping on the beach, star gazing in this amazing desert in the most remote wild camps had we not a date to meet our friends in eastern Bolivia.
They call this, below, the central plaza of San Pedro. Team Lost drove past it twice mistaking it for a parking lot as we looked for the center of town.
This view below is what we saw after we turned around on the road to Argentina. The first twenty five miles out of San Pedro de Atacama are said to be extra steep so we have that to look forward to as we leave this unprepossessing oasis:
We are not filling up with water here as we have plenty and I wonder if what comes out of the tap is drinkable. In the center and south of Chile it always is
Back packers own this town. It’s their jam.
Our campground, described by an overlander as “not romantic “
German travelers next to us. They parked and walked into town.
Preparing for border by cooking:
As you read this we will be drinking coca tea and looking for oxygen at 15,900 feet. How jolly.
