After living in La Serena from July to November and experiencing way too many cool, cloudy days we decided to take a trip to a coastal town in northern Chile called Iquique in hopes of finding sun, warmth and warmer ocean temps. It's actually just a few hours from the Peruvian border. This town has very unique geography. It's about 200,000 people and sits on a plain next to the ocean. Behind the town about 2-3 kilometers are mountains essentially made of sand. Above Iquique is the Atacama desert...the driest desert on the planet. (This photo will give you some idea of the geography.)
I also had great hopes for the skatepark that I'd read about and seen pictures of on the internet. Well the skatepark turned out to be terrible...badly designed, badly shaped and badly poured. Oh well...
So after a few days of enjoying warm, sunny days by the beach we decided to rent a car and drive to a national park that we believed to be 2-3 hours northwest into the desert. We had already taken one trip by bus into the desert to a natural spring pool in a small oasis town called Pica. On this same trip we also visited a nitrite mining ghost town that was quite interesting. Using buses is much cheaper but takes much longer than renting a car. We ended up waiting at a bus stop on the highway by the ghost town for more than an hour before continuing on to Pica. And we barely made the last bus out of Pica to get back to Iquique.
These photos of Humberstone don't even begin to show all that was there. This place had a town square, a theater, a swimming pool, housing for the miners and everything else a small town could need.
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| This was the swimming pool. (?) |
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| Cherith looking beautiful while we wait for the next bus. |
Now back to our trip to Bolivia... We were very excited to have a rental car. We made our plans with the maps we had. The car rental place didn't have maps of the region (?). So we headed into the desert in our rented Hyundai Elantra. The Elantra is a larger sedan by Chilean standards and we were excited to have it. And at this point I want to say that the hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of highways that we saw in our 9 months in Chile are comparable to those in the US. The difference being that most of them are two lane. Even the major north-south highway in Chile is primarily two lane.
Our first stop was at the “Gigante de Atacama”. The “Giant” is the largest prehistoric anthropomorphic figure in the world with a height of 119 metres (390 ft.) and represents a deity for the local inhabitants from 1000 to 1400 CE. (See photo) And no, there wasn't a problem with crowds.
As we continued to head up into the Andes mountains gradually gaining altitude I realized that words like stark and barren do not even begin to describe this geography. First, the Andes mountains have no trees. Yes, you read that correctly...no trees. At least from Santiago to the north the Andes have no trees. And in this part of the Atacama there really wasn't any form of vegetation at all. It actually reminded me of pictures of the surface of Mars. As we reached higher into the mountains we did start to see some plants and cactus. The higher altitudes do get some snow and rain. Eventually I passed a sign that said 4,350 meters. So I said to myself to just multiple by three and thought we were just over 12,000 ft. Well...no, we were over 14,000 ft. And we started at sea level.
At our first site of Llamas we pulled over to see them closer and take pictures. It seems that water springs up in certain places in these mountains which allows grasses and plants to grow. The llamas feed off of this vegetation. And whether these were wild or somebody's livestock we weren't sure.
After 3 hours and 45 minutes we reach Colchane at the Bolivian border which looked like a pretty big dot on the map we had. Well it wasn't. It was a village of about 150 people...I'm guessing. No place to buy gas which we needed in able to drive thru the national park and make it back to Iquique. Bummer. So we started by asking at the Municipal building. We get told that some people sell gas out of their houses or venders will sell it to you by the border. So we drive thru the mud brick houses looking for someone to ask and pretty much didn't see a soul. We drove up to the border check point, which was a bunch of official looking buildings to see if we could find someone to ask. At one point I'm convinced that I've drove across to the Bolivian side because when I tried to come back I was faced with a set of gates that wouldn't open and there was no one to talk to. In a state of panic, I walk into the office to ask what to do and a very helpful Bolivian border official tells me I had not actually crossed over and to just drive back out the way I came violating all of the traffic signs. Okay...I'm glad that's over.
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| This is to give you idea of what Colchane looked like. The national park we wanted to see is behind those colossal mountains. |
Safely back on the Chilean side of the border checkpoint I ask a man who is sweeping the curbs where I might find some gas. He says “I have gas, how much do you need?” Excellent. So I follow him back to the group of houses we had drove through earlier. He goes into his house, comes back out and says he only has diesel. Again...bummer.
Next we proceed to the hotel/restaurant we had driven by earlier to see what there is to eat and deliberate on our options. It turns out to be a nicely decorated restaurant which caters to tour groups. We ask for a menu and basically get told the “menu del dia”. This means, here's what's for lunch today. The lunch was actually quite good...a traditional chicken soup and a pork chop sort of thing with some quinoa. After eating we talk to the manager about our prospects for still driving through the park and getting back to Iquique with the gas we have...using our two wheel drive Elantra. We end up deciding against it. The prospect of running out of gas late in the day in the middle of the Atacama desert did not sound fun.
Outside the town we did stop at the big heard of Llamas we saw on the way in for some great pictures. And I actually ended up really enjoying the drive back. Just to be driving a nice car down from the Andes mountains on a good highway with almost no other traffic was fun. And we had our Ipod plugged into the stereo. We ended up making it back for dinner at the beach and great sunset. The end.
