Tuesday 10th May:
A great night's sleep in this wonderful hotel, the Alto Atacama, I think it may be the best one of the whole trip. Comfortably large room, large bed, crisp linen, great shower, beautiful views, good food and wonderful staff, and top Pisco Sours as well, what more is necessary.
A relaxed start, and Lily gets stuck into Travel Art, our agent in Chile in order to establish our itinerary, it comes eventually, but not after Lily staying in the phone saying, I'm staying on the phone until you send the email, and I receive it, bless her, wonderful.
And so we are being collected at 3pm for a trip to the Valley of the Moon, but beforehand we take the hotel shuttle into San Pedro de Atacama, the town about three kilometres away. We ask the driver, with some difficulty to collect us in "una hora", or one hour in English. The town is definitely backpacker land, and there is no one else that looks like us, I.e. old and grey. The town is comprised of hostels, bars and restaurants, and a thousand tour agencies all competing with one another to take people into the desert.
After a pleasant coffee in the town square we wander back to our meeting point for the shuttle at 12.30pm. At 12.45pm we realise that he is not coming and has not understood the time we thought we had agreed. A taxi wants too much money so we start walking, which doesn't go down too well with Lorna. I am pretty sure about the directions, and we are strolling along, not quite sure what to do for the best, when the shuttle comes into view. I lay down in front of him and it's nearly 13.10pm, so even if he thought we meant 1pm, he would have been fifteen minutes late. Lorna is very unhappy, and lets him know, and also lets Pascal, the hotel Operations Manager know as well when we eventually get back. It's a misunderstanding I say.......
The afternoon gets off to an even worse start after Margarite, our Russian, English speaking guide in Chile takes us to the first stop of the tour. You need a torch, and the right clothing and footwear she explains, which goes down like a lead balloon with Lorna, and the shit really hits the fan when she explains that the walk into the salt cave is not suitable for "old" people. By the time we get back to the car, having foreshortened the cave walk, Lorna is hissing, and poor Margarite can't say right for saying wrong. In the end she says she said, "not suitable for ALL people", and I accept that that is what she could have said with her Russian pronounced English.
Lorna calls off a walk on sand and rock to the top of a large sand dune, saying that we have received no information about this tour, and although not the responsibility of the local agent, yes the tour had been sub-contracted by Travel Art, they should at least have provided torches.....
I scale the dune with Margarite and learn a little more about her. Unfortunately it's a cloudy day, and the stunning scenery is not at it's best, missing the light and shade that would accentuate it. Margarite is a geological and hydrological engineer from Rostov on the Don in Southern Russia, and gave up a desk job to travel, and is clearly fascinated by the geology of the Atacama.
Margarite asks me if I've been with Lorna all my life, no just the last 44 years I reply. She is amazed that people can stay together that long, her father disappeared when she was four, after five years of marriage. We chat quite a lot about this on our walk up the dune and also back in the car with Lorna, I hadn't realised we would be called on as marriage guidance counsellors on this trip. Margarite has a boyfriend, he's Chilean, but she isn't keen on marriage for obvious reasons, at 25 years old we wonder what she will do with her life after her travels.
We agree with Lorna that we will finish the tour, which is intended to end watching the sun set and the colours of the desert change as the sun goes down. Well the chances of a sunset with all the heavy cloud this afternoon seem slim to non-existent. We visit a couple more salty places and then drive up to the sunset view point. We'll probably the most fantastic sunset I've ever seen, starting in the west, even though we haven't seen the sun all afternoon, and then to everyone's amazement the volcanoes of the Andes in the east start to glow with an orange band, before lighting up completely in an orange aura, absolutely stunning. And then the sunset continues in the west as yellow turns to orange, turns to red, turns to violet, turns to purple......the afternoon is saved and we go back to the hotel happy bunnies. I had taken my tripod, and stood there snapping away.
A great night's sleep in this wonderful hotel, the Alto Atacama, I think it may be the best one of the whole trip. Comfortably large room, large bed, crisp linen, great shower, beautiful views, good food and wonderful staff, and top Pisco Sours as well, what more is necessary.
A relaxed start, and Lily gets stuck into Travel Art, our agent in Chile in order to establish our itinerary, it comes eventually, but not after Lily staying in the phone saying, I'm staying on the phone until you send the email, and I receive it, bless her, wonderful.
And so we are being collected at 3pm for a trip to the Valley of the Moon, but beforehand we take the hotel shuttle into San Pedro de Atacama, the town about three kilometres away. We ask the driver, with some difficulty to collect us in "una hora", or one hour in English. The town is definitely backpacker land, and there is no one else that looks like us, I.e. old and grey. The town is comprised of hostels, bars and restaurants, and a thousand tour agencies all competing with one another to take people into the desert.
After a pleasant coffee in the town square we wander back to our meeting point for the shuttle at 12.30pm. At 12.45pm we realise that he is not coming and has not understood the time we thought we had agreed. A taxi wants too much money so we start walking, which doesn't go down too well with Lorna. I am pretty sure about the directions, and we are strolling along, not quite sure what to do for the best, when the shuttle comes into view. I lay down in front of him and it's nearly 13.10pm, so even if he thought we meant 1pm, he would have been fifteen minutes late. Lorna is very unhappy, and lets him know, and also lets Pascal, the hotel Operations Manager know as well when we eventually get back. It's a misunderstanding I say.......
The afternoon gets off to an even worse start after Margarite, our Russian, English speaking guide in Chile takes us to the first stop of the tour. You need a torch, and the right clothing and footwear she explains, which goes down like a lead balloon with Lorna, and the shit really hits the fan when she explains that the walk into the salt cave is not suitable for "old" people. By the time we get back to the car, having foreshortened the cave walk, Lorna is hissing, and poor Margarite can't say right for saying wrong. In the end she says she said, "not suitable for ALL people", and I accept that that is what she could have said with her Russian pronounced English.
Lorna calls off a walk on sand and rock to the top of a large sand dune, saying that we have received no information about this tour, and although not the responsibility of the local agent, yes the tour had been sub-contracted by Travel Art, they should at least have provided torches.....
I scale the dune with Margarite and learn a little more about her. Unfortunately it's a cloudy day, and the stunning scenery is not at it's best, missing the light and shade that would accentuate it. Margarite is a geological and hydrological engineer from Rostov on the Don in Southern Russia, and gave up a desk job to travel, and is clearly fascinated by the geology of the Atacama.
Margarite asks me if I've been with Lorna all my life, no just the last 44 years I reply. She is amazed that people can stay together that long, her father disappeared when she was four, after five years of marriage. We chat quite a lot about this on our walk up the dune and also back in the car with Lorna, I hadn't realised we would be called on as marriage guidance counsellors on this trip. Margarite has a boyfriend, he's Chilean, but she isn't keen on marriage for obvious reasons, at 25 years old we wonder what she will do with her life after her travels.
We agree with Lorna that we will finish the tour, which is intended to end watching the sun set and the colours of the desert change as the sun goes down. Well the chances of a sunset with all the heavy cloud this afternoon seem slim to non-existent. We visit a couple more salty places and then drive up to the sunset view point. We'll probably the most fantastic sunset I've ever seen, starting in the west, even though we haven't seen the sun all afternoon, and then to everyone's amazement the volcanoes of the Andes in the east start to glow with an orange band, before lighting up completely in an orange aura, absolutely stunning. And then the sunset continues in the west as yellow turns to orange, turns to red, turns to violet, turns to purple......the afternoon is saved and we go back to the hotel happy bunnies. I had taken my tripod, and stood there snapping away.
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