It's going to be a...CHILE summer!!: ...To Another

I spent the final week of my stay in Chile in the Atacama Desert with some friends from the program. I went from one extreme to another in every way possible. Lakes, ski lodges, swanky apartments with central heating, hot prepared meals to budget traveling, hostels, and sand dunes in the driest desert on the face of the planet (there’s your Fun Fact for the day!). My credit cards had stopped working about two months into my stay here (apparently you have to call and tell them that you are still out of the country every few weeks so they don’t shut them off). Anyhow, this meant that I had a fixed amount of cash and had to make it stretch through my last week. All of us were in the same boat. We stayed at a hostel that was run entirely on solar power. The water was solar-heated, there was recycling of every type, and a giant compost pile for organic waste. Very energy-efficient and therefore very cost-efficient. Conveniently, there was also a small kitchen available for travelers to use. In order to save money, we cooked in for every meal and had strict rations. Unfortunately, this meant that we survived off of lentils and egg sandwiches for an entire week. We almost cried for joy one morning when we walked into the kitchen to find that some generous traveler had left behind a surplus package of cookies. They were mediocre…and were consumed in a matter of seconds.

Again, I am running out of writing steam. Instead, I will outline the week’s events with pictures and some explanatory captions when needed.

The Calama Airport in the middle of the desert. Slightly daunting.

Lagos Antiplánicos:

It was FREEZING.

A herd of vicuñas (relative of the llama). They're hard to spot but I suppose that's the point.

Yep...apparently there are flamingos in the middle of the desert...who knew?

This cactus is (scientifically) named "El asiento de la suegra" or "The Mother-In-Law's Seat"

The second day there, we rented mountain bikes ($6!). I was under the impression that it would be a nice leisurely way to see the sights. How wrong I was. Turns out, I signed up for THE most physically exhausting day of my life. We started off biking on the highway out of town. It was a little hilly…nothing to complain about just yet. We had asked a local where we could bike to. He had given us some vague directions that included veering off the highway, shooting between some canyons, and “stumbling” upon a highway on the other side. After an hour or so, we found what looked to be a path forking off from the road, we starting fighting the uphill battles over sand dunes and through the canyons. The only thing more physically exhausting than trekking up sand dunes with backpacks is pushing/dragging/fighting a bike at the same time. MISERABLE. Furthermore, we had each already blown through over half (about a liter) of our water supplies. Oops.

On the bright side (pun?), the views were stunning. And there was literally no one within miles of us…that is, until we happened upon a man sitting in his car in the middle of nowhere. He had been stuck in the desert for 7 hours. He was a photographer and wanted to capture the sunrise. We spent the next hour and a half scooping out sand from underneath his car, lugging rocks over to shove under the tires for traction, and then pushing the car back down the incline. We finally got his car back down. Our good deed for the day. The man was extremely grateful and gave us some water. As if we weren’t exhausted already. We decided it was time for lunch. After that, I suggested we turn back the way we came due to our limited water supply. I was overruled and we pressed on hoping that we would be dumped back out on the highway. Two hours later, I heard the most beautiful sound that I have ever heard…a car engine. We found a road! Did we take this road back to the town? Nope. To my horror, my companions decided to seek out a spot we had heard about from the owner of the hostel to watch the sunset. This location happened to be 14 kilometers in the opposite direction. Oy vey. The next day, I could barely walk because I was so sore but the panoramic sunset was unbeatable.