I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog. I must update this blog.
Perhaps if I say it enough it will write itself.
Or perhaps not.
I currently have writer's fatigue. This is not the same as writer's block. I know what I want to write, but I just can't find the energy. And there are a couple of Israelis who have constantly hogged the computers since I arrived in Santiago.
The salt flat tour seems like aaaaggges ago now, but I believe that is where I left off so I need to fill in the blanks between then and now.
I rolled up in the (close to) border town of San Pedro without much of a plan. I'd heard it was a good base to explore the Atacama desert, a place full of travellers and somewhere to relax.
Martina and I followed Brighton couple Sam and Tash to their hostel and managed to get a room. The Soncheck Hostel was one of the best I'd stayed in so far - hot showers, good beds, friendly cats, no dogs or people with smelly feet.
We went out for dinner together on the first night, and soon saw the difference between most Bolivian food and what Chile could offer:
Salmon. Mmm.
The town itself was just a few dusty streets criss-crossing each other. With the small terracotta-coloured buildings it felt a bit Mexican. Not that I've been to Mexico, but you know what I mean.
The following day I lazed around doing very little apart from watching yet more Champions League football, eating empañadas and trying to sort out a couple of activities. The first of those was to do a bit of stargazing.
The Atacama desert is famous for a couple things: it is officially the driest desert on earth (ie, gets the least amount of rainfall per year) and is the best place in the world to look at the stars.
Several companies in town were organising trips out to the Valley of the Moon to see the sunset and the stars, but only one company gave expert tours of the night sky from a proper observatory - an outfit called Space.
My guidebook recommended them - saying that Alain, the 'eccentric' Frenchman who runs Space, was a character not to be missed.
So I booked myself on, and at 9pm we set off in a bus to Alain's observatory just outside San Pedro. When we got there we were greeted by the friendly face of a Canadian called Lass - one of Alain's guides.
Lass spent the first hour pointing out several constellations in the sky, giving us a brief history in astronomy and astrology, and making crap jokes. It was freezing cold but we'd all wrapped up warm, and everything he told us was fascinating, so I soon forgot the cold.
He had a brilliant light saber toy which made us all gurgle like 10 year-old kids. He would point out specific stars by suddenly shooting the laser out of his hand, the green beam arrowing up into the sky and picking out the specific star from the thousands above us.
Because we're in the southern hemisphere, there are different constellations to be seen down here compared to back home. Lass pointed out several, including a massive one of an emu that used part of the Milky Way as its head ('discovered' by some New Zealand astronomers).
The second part of the tour involved us taking a closer look at the stars and planets above. At this point Alain wandered over dressed in a long white laboratory coat, not looking disimilar to Doc from Back To The Future:
We walked over to a piece of lawn where Alain had constructed nine telescopes of different strength and size. Each one pointed to a constellation, a star or a planet and we spent some time walking between them and getting a closer look at the sky above us.
The highlight, for me, was getting a close look at Saturn. I didn't realise we could see several of the planets in our solar system through normal telescopes, and Saturn almost didn't look real:
With toes turning to ice blocks, we were taken into a small circular building where we sat around Lass and drank hot chocolate as he answered our questions. I wondered if, as an astronomer, he believed there was life on other planets.
He explained the way the Hubble space telescope had focused on a relatively tiny part of our galaxy for a prolonged period of time, and found that actually that tiny part contained millions more stars than had previously been thought.
This meant that the universe, and all the millions of galaxies and stars within it, was much, much bigger than we'd realised. With all those stars in all those galaxies, how likely was it that none of them contained any life? Not very, Lass thought.
But then how easy would it be to contact them?
Lass explained how the stars we see are thousands of light years away, and therefore any messages between us and them would arrive thousands of years after we sent them. So, in short, there isn't going to be any contact between earth and little green aliens anytime soon.
I loved the tour - something really unusual (for me) and the best way to see an amazing cluttered sky above the Chilean desert.
In the morning I decided to rent a bike and get out of town. There were several places to visit, but I'd heard a lot about the Valley de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) so that's what I plumped for.
The woman in the bike shop/internet cafe was understandably more concerned with her crying baby than giving me a proper send-off, but thrust a puncture repair kit and a map into my hand just before I set off.
I stocked up on food for what would be one of the most unappetising picnics ever (chocolate muffin and stale bread roll anyone?) and headed out of town on my bike.
The sun was beating down, the road was smooth tarmac, and there were hardly any cars on it:
It was about 10km to the entrance of the valley, where I paid an entrance fee and got a map. The woman behind the desk did look at me a bit strangely when she saw I had come by bike, and explained that there were several parts where I would have to walk.
Looking back, I'm not sure what she was talking about as I only had to dismount once all day.
Heading into the valley was a lot of fun. The ride was mostly flat, with the occasional big dip (followed by a leg-sapping climb). What I loved about it was there was no-one else there. And when I say no-one I mean zero people.
Towards the end of my four hours there I met two other tourists on their bikes, but apart from that I had the whole 20km-square valley to myself all day. Had I injured myself I could have got into serious trouble, but I didn't - and the peace was perfect.
The first stop was to see a 'sun canyon'. I got off the bike and ventured into a small rocky canyon, following a path which took me through some dark tunnels - some of which involved crouching or crawling:
At the end of the tunnels was a great sun spot of rocky peaks, where I took a timer shot on my camera:
Back on the bike, I cycled on and on further into the valley. It's called the Valley of the Moon because of its resemblance to the moon's surface, and some of the scenery was out of this world.
It's the way I tell 'em.
There was one particular mountain 'thing' that caught the eye. The map called it The Amphitheatre, but I reckon The Pringle would be a better name:
I then stopped for a breather at The Three Marias - a triumverate of rocks that are thought to be over a million years old:
My one piece of risky business was to stray off the road in order to visit a salt mine. The picture on the map looked pretty, so I decided to cycle down an incredibly bumpy track to get there.
At the end of this track, bum sore and hands vibrating, I came across a deserted mining village with a big hole in the ground:
I wasn't about to scale down the sheer rock face to find out whether the pretty picture was true to life or not.
I sat by the salt mine for a bit and looked out over the vast expanse of desert. Try and picture the last time you had total isolation in such a vast, open area. I'm not sure I've ever had such a large part of the planet completely to myself.
With my five-hour hire period coming to an end I thought I should head back. The ride felt rewarding, but the final 30 minutes was torturous as my thighs and calves began pleading for mercy.
I made it back to town with 10 minutes to spare and dropped off the bike, legs shaking in pain. I then had a couple of hours to sort myself out before my bus south to Santiago.
There were a few places to visit in the north of Chile, but nowhere that really jumped out at me - so I decided to take a mammoth 23hr journey to the capital.
Luckily the bus company that runs between the two places is a good'un: Tur-Bus. I had booked myself downstairs in a cama seat and took my place just before the 7.30pm departure.
And the journey itself? Long (but didn't feel as much as 23 hours), comfy, with plenty of stops to stretch legs and buy food.
I had several people sitting next to me on the way (as people got off and on), and the first one - the overnight bit - was spent next to a guy with an irritatingly loud nasal snore.
Each time I vaulted over him to get into the aisle - for the toilet or a pit stop - I gave him a little nudge (or was that a kick?) to wake him up. He was soon back to his snoring ways though.
Here's some pics from the journey:
I arrived in Santiago at 6.30pm the following day and got on the metro - my first metro/underground since leaving London, I think. I arrived at a cracking little hostel called the Princesa Insolente and began what would be a great few days in Santiago.
More of which in the next post.
Perhaps if I say it enough it will write itself.
Or perhaps not.
I currently have writer's fatigue. This is not the same as writer's block. I know what I want to write, but I just can't find the energy. And there are a couple of Israelis who have constantly hogged the computers since I arrived in Santiago.
The salt flat tour seems like aaaaggges ago now, but I believe that is where I left off so I need to fill in the blanks between then and now.
I rolled up in the (close to) border town of San Pedro without much of a plan. I'd heard it was a good base to explore the Atacama desert, a place full of travellers and somewhere to relax.
Martina and I followed Brighton couple Sam and Tash to their hostel and managed to get a room. The Soncheck Hostel was one of the best I'd stayed in so far - hot showers, good beds, friendly cats, no dogs or people with smelly feet.
We went out for dinner together on the first night, and soon saw the difference between most Bolivian food and what Chile could offer:
Salmon. Mmm.
The town itself was just a few dusty streets criss-crossing each other. With the small terracotta-coloured buildings it felt a bit Mexican. Not that I've been to Mexico, but you know what I mean.
The following day I lazed around doing very little apart from watching yet more Champions League football, eating empañadas and trying to sort out a couple of activities. The first of those was to do a bit of stargazing.
The Atacama desert is famous for a couple things: it is officially the driest desert on earth (ie, gets the least amount of rainfall per year) and is the best place in the world to look at the stars.
Several companies in town were organising trips out to the Valley of the Moon to see the sunset and the stars, but only one company gave expert tours of the night sky from a proper observatory - an outfit called Space.
My guidebook recommended them - saying that Alain, the 'eccentric' Frenchman who runs Space, was a character not to be missed.
So I booked myself on, and at 9pm we set off in a bus to Alain's observatory just outside San Pedro. When we got there we were greeted by the friendly face of a Canadian called Lass - one of Alain's guides.
Lass spent the first hour pointing out several constellations in the sky, giving us a brief history in astronomy and astrology, and making crap jokes. It was freezing cold but we'd all wrapped up warm, and everything he told us was fascinating, so I soon forgot the cold.
He had a brilliant light saber toy which made us all gurgle like 10 year-old kids. He would point out specific stars by suddenly shooting the laser out of his hand, the green beam arrowing up into the sky and picking out the specific star from the thousands above us.
Because we're in the southern hemisphere, there are different constellations to be seen down here compared to back home. Lass pointed out several, including a massive one of an emu that used part of the Milky Way as its head ('discovered' by some New Zealand astronomers).
The second part of the tour involved us taking a closer look at the stars and planets above. At this point Alain wandered over dressed in a long white laboratory coat, not looking disimilar to Doc from Back To The Future:
We walked over to a piece of lawn where Alain had constructed nine telescopes of different strength and size. Each one pointed to a constellation, a star or a planet and we spent some time walking between them and getting a closer look at the sky above us.
The highlight, for me, was getting a close look at Saturn. I didn't realise we could see several of the planets in our solar system through normal telescopes, and Saturn almost didn't look real:
With toes turning to ice blocks, we were taken into a small circular building where we sat around Lass and drank hot chocolate as he answered our questions. I wondered if, as an astronomer, he believed there was life on other planets.
He explained the way the Hubble space telescope had focused on a relatively tiny part of our galaxy for a prolonged period of time, and found that actually that tiny part contained millions more stars than had previously been thought.
This meant that the universe, and all the millions of galaxies and stars within it, was much, much bigger than we'd realised. With all those stars in all those galaxies, how likely was it that none of them contained any life? Not very, Lass thought.
But then how easy would it be to contact them?
Lass explained how the stars we see are thousands of light years away, and therefore any messages between us and them would arrive thousands of years after we sent them. So, in short, there isn't going to be any contact between earth and little green aliens anytime soon.
I loved the tour - something really unusual (for me) and the best way to see an amazing cluttered sky above the Chilean desert.
In the morning I decided to rent a bike and get out of town. There were several places to visit, but I'd heard a lot about the Valley de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) so that's what I plumped for.
The woman in the bike shop/internet cafe was understandably more concerned with her crying baby than giving me a proper send-off, but thrust a puncture repair kit and a map into my hand just before I set off.
I stocked up on food for what would be one of the most unappetising picnics ever (chocolate muffin and stale bread roll anyone?) and headed out of town on my bike.
The sun was beating down, the road was smooth tarmac, and there were hardly any cars on it:
It was about 10km to the entrance of the valley, where I paid an entrance fee and got a map. The woman behind the desk did look at me a bit strangely when she saw I had come by bike, and explained that there were several parts where I would have to walk.
Looking back, I'm not sure what she was talking about as I only had to dismount once all day.
Heading into the valley was a lot of fun. The ride was mostly flat, with the occasional big dip (followed by a leg-sapping climb). What I loved about it was there was no-one else there. And when I say no-one I mean zero people.
Towards the end of my four hours there I met two other tourists on their bikes, but apart from that I had the whole 20km-square valley to myself all day. Had I injured myself I could have got into serious trouble, but I didn't - and the peace was perfect.
The first stop was to see a 'sun canyon'. I got off the bike and ventured into a small rocky canyon, following a path which took me through some dark tunnels - some of which involved crouching or crawling:
At the end of the tunnels was a great sun spot of rocky peaks, where I took a timer shot on my camera:
Back on the bike, I cycled on and on further into the valley. It's called the Valley of the Moon because of its resemblance to the moon's surface, and some of the scenery was out of this world.
It's the way I tell 'em.
There was one particular mountain 'thing' that caught the eye. The map called it The Amphitheatre, but I reckon The Pringle would be a better name:
I then stopped for a breather at The Three Marias - a triumverate of rocks that are thought to be over a million years old:
My one piece of risky business was to stray off the road in order to visit a salt mine. The picture on the map looked pretty, so I decided to cycle down an incredibly bumpy track to get there.
At the end of this track, bum sore and hands vibrating, I came across a deserted mining village with a big hole in the ground:
I wasn't about to scale down the sheer rock face to find out whether the pretty picture was true to life or not.
I sat by the salt mine for a bit and looked out over the vast expanse of desert. Try and picture the last time you had total isolation in such a vast, open area. I'm not sure I've ever had such a large part of the planet completely to myself.
With my five-hour hire period coming to an end I thought I should head back. The ride felt rewarding, but the final 30 minutes was torturous as my thighs and calves began pleading for mercy.
I made it back to town with 10 minutes to spare and dropped off the bike, legs shaking in pain. I then had a couple of hours to sort myself out before my bus south to Santiago.
There were a few places to visit in the north of Chile, but nowhere that really jumped out at me - so I decided to take a mammoth 23hr journey to the capital.
Luckily the bus company that runs between the two places is a good'un: Tur-Bus. I had booked myself downstairs in a cama seat and took my place just before the 7.30pm departure.
And the journey itself? Long (but didn't feel as much as 23 hours), comfy, with plenty of stops to stretch legs and buy food.
I had several people sitting next to me on the way (as people got off and on), and the first one - the overnight bit - was spent next to a guy with an irritatingly loud nasal snore.
Each time I vaulted over him to get into the aisle - for the toilet or a pit stop - I gave him a little nudge (or was that a kick?) to wake him up. He was soon back to his snoring ways though.
Here's some pics from the journey:
I arrived in Santiago at 6.30pm the following day and got on the metro - my first metro/underground since leaving London, I think. I arrived at a cracking little hostel called the Princesa Insolente and began what would be a great few days in Santiago.
More of which in the next post.