15: "To the north, to the desert: Part 4"

Lucy and I got up and went to a café. I got coffee and pancakes with manjar, which is the Chilean dulce de leche. In Chile the coffee is almost always Nescafé. Nobody seems to no why. I said maybe it’s got something to do with Pinochet.

We went and bought some groceries then stopped at a tour agency and booked a 6,000 peso sunset visit to the Valle de la Luna. The town of San Pedro is a few small blocks of tour agencies, restaurants, cafes, hostels, and souvenir shops. The population’s supposed to be a few thousand, but you see tourists – from Europe and North America and South America and Asia and Australia – before you see Chileans.

We went to the archeology museum, which is devoted to the Atacaman culture that lived here before the Europeans came. It’s a nice museum in the shape of a wheel – with a central hub and spokes that extend out.

Because the desert’s so dry a lot of things survived that would’ve rotted in other climates – tapestries, pipes, baskets.

We walked out of town and sat down near a creek. There was a lot of trash - bottles and wrappers - but we found a clean spot. We made sandwiches with avocado – of which there are dozens of varieties in Chile – and cheese and tomato, and ate oranges for dessert.

We came back to town and called Brad – who’s also a Fulbrighter in Chile and whom we bumped into the day before in San Pedro – and he said he’d come with on the sunset visit.

I ran back to the museum and its outdoor market and bought an ocarina and a decorative tray. Shamans used the tray to gather ground-up cebil seeds and snort them into their noses and hallucinate. The vendor asked me if I knew coca and he gave me a few leaves from his pouch.

I put them in my cheek and we got into the van for the sunset visit.

There were a dozen of us in the van. The driver and the guide were Chilean.

We floored it out of the city and stopped off the highway at the edge of a valley. The mountains near San Pedro are made of soft rock. With sandy wind and thousands of years, they get shaped into ragged and strange ways.

We had ten minutes, the guide said.

We got out and took pictures and he explained some things.

We got back into the van and went to the Valle de la Muerte, where there’s a couple tall rock walls that come so close together a wind tunnel was formed. The European who named this valley originally called it Valle de Martes, which means Mars Valley. There was some confusion and it became Valle de la Muerte, Death Valley.

We squinted and covered our faces and hiked around there, keeping the sand out of our eyes.

We got back into the van and drove to the Valley de la Luna.

We got out and looked at some rocks that looked like people praying. There’s a border around them so you can’t get too close. A few years ago a lady walked up to one of them and put her arms around the neck of the rock to take a picture. The head fell off.

The rocks are at the top of a plain. There’s no plants or shrubs or trees. Just red rocks and white salt that looks like snow. Clean, smooth sand dunes are in the distance.

We got back into the van and drove to a cave. We walked through the cave then climbed out and walked on the side of a hill then came back down and got back into the van.

We drove to the famous spot at the Valle de la Luna. We had thirty minutes ‘til sunset. We had to get back into the van by 7:00PM.

We hiked up a sand dune to the lookout spot. There were dozens of groups up there, taking pictures, looking, walking around, turning about. One guy was dressed up as Superman and, as Brad pointed out, took it very seriously.

We watched the sunset and zipped up our coats as the shadows came down on the sand and the mountains. We took pictures. We got back into the van.

The driver had taped a piece of paper to one of the dome lights saying they appreciate tips. He turned on the light and the piece of paper was lit up and glowing as we drove back to town.

We said bye to Brad. Lucy and I left a tip for the guide and the driver and got dinner and went to bed.

* * *
The next day we went sand-boarding.

We rented the boards and some bikes and packed a picnic and rode out of town to dunes near the Valle de la Muerte.

There were a few other people there, sand-boarding.

We stood at the base of the dune and watched.

It wasn’t going well. They could go a bit, then fall. Then get up and try to get going again but fall down again.

One guy hiked way up high on the dune and waxed his board a long time. He looked like he knew what he was doing.

He got up, jumped into position, got going, then lost his balance and fell into the sand. He got up, then fell again. It took him a few minutes to get to the bottom. He tried to get going one more time, but there wasn’t any momentum left.

We took off our shoes and hiked the dune. We waxed our boards then tried it. We fell down. We got up. We fell down again.

We ate the same picnic as the day before, then walked down the other side of the dune and found a flat spot and threw the Frisbee. There were big volcanoes and big clouds and the desert and blue sky off in the distance.

We rode back to town and booked a 15,000 peso sunrise visit to the geysers. We bought a bus ticket for the next day – Friday afternoon – to head south to La Serena, where Lucy’s working and living.

We ate dinner and went to bed.

* * *
The next day we had to get up at 4 for the sunrise visit. Lucy’s alarm didn’t go off but she woke up anyway and we got up and went to the front entrance of the hostel to wait for the van.

We got picked up and the driver said it’s a two-hour drive to the mountains so go back to sleep and relax. We would be going up to 4,300 meters elevation.

Lucy and I went back to sleep.

We got up to the mountains and the geyser fields. The moon was out and the sky was just blue. It was below freezing.

We got out of the van and the driver said don´t run around and don´t smoke. Everybody went to the bathrooms.

We got to the geysers and the sun rose up over the bare fields and we looked at the steam vents and the bubbling water and the weird colorful bacteria that grow around them. It’s the third biggest geyser field in the world, behind Yellowstone in the U.S. and another park in New Zealand.

The geysers only work early in the morning, before it gets too warm. We walked around and took pictures and then huddled around a plastic table and ate biscuits and drank coca tea for breakfast.

We got in the van and drove to other geysers and a thermal pool.

We took off our clothes and hustled into the pool and kneeled down and scooted around in the water. It was lukewarm and hot. Some spots burned you and others made you shiver.

I was wearing the boxer shorts with the big ink stain from that night in Salta.

We got out and toweled off. I laid my boxers on rocks to dry while we looked at more geysers. When we headed back I grabbed my underwear. The big stain was gone. I wondered if the water was special.

We got in the van and were driven around the high plateau and stopped to look at animals. There were rabbits and llamas and alpacas and vicuñas and some ducks by a pond. We’d shout stop when we saw something and the driver would stop and we’d slide open the windows and stick out our digital cameras and take pictures and then look at the animals.

We got out a couple times to take pictures of the ducks or the llamas and walk around and look at the big empty plateau and the volcanoes in the distance. We stopped at an Atacaman village where they sell food and there are their houses and a tiny chapel they built. The driver said don’t take pictures of the Atacamans. They think it’ll steal their souls.

I went into the house where they were selling fried bread and tea. The driver said the tea is an aphrodisiac. He made a joke about two guys in our group drinking it. An Atacaman girl was working and had headphones in her ears, listening to an iPod. I wondered if that would steal her soul, too.

We drove back to town. Lucy and I waited around a couple hours then got on our overnight bus to La Serena. I started reading A Scanner Darkly as we left San Pedro. I was hoping I could finish it before morning.