I love it when CIEE pays for trips because then I don’t have to :) San Pedro is a small tourist town in the North of Chile inside of the Atacama Desert which is said to be the driest desert in the world in terms of yearly precipitation (http://www.extremescience.com/DriestPlace.htm).
Atacama is a brown expanse of dirt and sand that is surrounded by oddly shaped mountain ranges that have been ripped apart and sculped by the wind.
I wish I had written down the names of the places that we visited, but most of them were either saint's names or indigenous, and now they are all escaping me. What I can tell you is that we stayed in the tiny tourist town of San Pedro de Atacama in a resort compound called Don Tomas which that had an amazing breakfast buffet --not that food is a priority of course--which included kiwis the size of apples, scrambled eggs, yogurt, cereal, and real coffee!!! So I would have been a happy girl if nothing else went right.
But everything else was great as well. We had a crazy tour guide with us the whole time, Claudio, who insisted on stopping for “Japanese breaks” (yes we are in Latin America and no they are not at all politically correct) every 15 minutes, which means we would jump of the bus and “click, click, click,” then jump back on the bus and go to the next place.
Lots of sand dunes, salt formations, and cacti, but I did get to see flamingos in the wild which was pretty fricken cool if I do say so myself.
This is the typical desert home, this one is nicely situated just off the reservoir.
Flamingos!! They get their pink color from the beta carotene they get from the micro-organisms they eat that grow in the water that comes through the salt flats...betcha didn't know that huh?
Half of the CIEE Santiago program. Good people.
Life revolves around the Alpaca in those parts. We went to a family's house were they raise their own lamas and then spin the wool to make clothes, blankets, wall hangings...the woman uses cactus needles to knit!!
We had to get up at 4am to see these geysers, which were...OK...because they stop gassing after the sun rises. It was 7° when we got up there, so the hot springs we hit afterward(even though it was essentially just a giant mudpuddle) were amazing.
Goodbye San Pedro
No comments:
Post a Comment