Feliz Navidad! Apologies for lack of posts in recent days - there´s been somewhat limited internet connections in Northern Chile - outside of towns anyway.
The story thus far... We survived the 18-19hr bus journey from Santiago which actually wasn´t that bad as the seats were pretty comfy. We arrived at Calama on the 18th and set off straight from there after filling up with at least 40litres of water - so a wobbly, slow, sloshing start as we made our way out of town with daylight quickly closing on us. We camped up just off the highway, in what can only be described as a dust bowl - this was a taste of the Atacama desert - with a dead dog nearby to add authenticity! We both felt somewhat out of our "comfort zones" and felt a little uneasy.
After a not too good a night we set off to a place called Chiu Chiu on a good road that gradually climbed this lulled us into a sense of false security because at the next "village" Toconce, the good road quickly ended and from there it was about 40km over 2 days of dragging our overloaded steeds up to 4400 metres. It sounds hellish (and admittedly at times it was) but the scenery can only be described as spectacular. On the 21st we finally reached the top of the pass that led into the basin where the Taito geysers were. You´re supposed to view them at dawn (which attracts many tour buses). However we had the place to ourselves - plus a large herd of Llamas, which was a great delight as it was our first sighting. So we celebrated with the last of the mince pies that I´d dragged over from home!
After the geysers, the road conditions improved but it carried on going up and down, eventually we stumbled accross a refugio in the middle of nowhere - it had limited facilities but it was a stone building out of the cold night wind. The next day, after a lot more up and downs, finally the road pointed downwards and we dropped 2000 metres it felt like we were decending forever! This took us down to San Pedro.
We actually got here on the 22nd - we spent a day doing as little as possible apart from the evening where we rode out to the Valle de la Luna for the obligatory sunset over the amazing landscape.
We spent the last 2days cycling out to the Atacama salt plain - not as white as you might expect from a salt plain but intriguing none the less. Yesterday we saw flamingoes plus other wading birds in a reserve where somewhat sulphurous water had risen to the surface and formed a lagoona. Various crustacians thrived here thus, so do the birds. I´d seen flamingoes in zoos before and have to admit not been that excited by them - but seeing them in the wild was simply wonderful especially when they swoop low overhead.
This evening, we´re going to catch an overnight bus up to the far North to Arica and try our luck with cycling to the Lauca National Park. Will try and keep posted about that.
So far, this trip has been incredible - but we have found that Chile is a relatively untamed country and is (obviously) huge. A month unfortunately not enough to fit everything in. We wanted to go across the border up to the Uyuni Salt plain in Bolivia but we heard the road conditions are even worse there and this could take us way too long with a distinct possibility of not being able to get back as buses were unreliable and the ´(in)famous´ Uyuni-Calama train service had been abandoned.
