A Rough Start in Northern Chile
The moon in the night sky of the Atacama Desert
After such a beautiful night bathing in natural hot springs under the glorious full moon, I woke up on our last day in Bolivia feeling pretty unwell.
And I wasn’t the only one - another woman at our hotel was writing on the floor in tears when I made it down to reception after everyone else had eaten breakfast. I did my best to make the most of our final stops on Bolivia’s southwest circuit, but the truth is I was looking forward being back in bed.
Only the small matter of an international border crossing between me and that reality. As per our previous experience of crossing a land border into Chile back in 2019, it was a long process. First, we waited in a long queue and paid a fee we legally weren’t required to in order to exit Bolivia. Then we waited in another queue whilst our entire backpacks were hand-searched before we could enter Chile. All the while I was getting more and more doubled over in pain.
Down in the Desert
When we finally made it to our destination - the desert town of San Pedro de Atacama - I can’t say we felt drawn to the place. We’ve been to deserts on this trip already, and we’ve withstood extreme heat, but the air in San Pedro made my throat close up every time I stepped outside.
I thought it was my illness, so we set out to make a plan for our weekend in town in order to be able to relax the rest of the day. That first involved changing our Bolivian currency to Chilean Pesos and getting some more cash from an ATM. We tried every ATM in town, but still ended up spending 20% of our daily budget in ATM fees on that first day. Ouch.
There were 2 main activities we had our eye on during our time in the desert. We wanted to hire bikes and head out to Valle de la Luna - an enchanting landscape of rock formations and a 30km round trip on bikes. Setting out in the desert heat is no joke, so we decided to be flexible and do this when I was feeling better. The second activity we could book for our last night in town. The observatories in Northern Chile are some of the best places in the world for stargazing, and as we knew the full moon had only just appeared, we booked this for our final night to give us more time with the dark sky.
At £25 per person, the tour wasn’t cheap. In fact, everything in the town was expensive. We paid more than we’d paid for any meal in four months and, in one case, were served inedible food. Our money-saving supermarket shop was about the same price as our Aldi shop at home. It’s to be expected, of course - the town is a tourism hub and in the middle of nowhere. It’s costly to get supplies there, and there is a captive audience. But you don’t have these rational thoughts when you’re ill. I’d had enough of hobbling around the town in pain, gasping for breath. I spent the rest of the day in bed.
And most of the next day. Waking up on the third morning, I was pretty sick. Even though I finally felt a little better for it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to ride a bike into the desert… and I was devastated Graeme had to miss out because of me. Being ill anywhere sucks, but I found those days particularly tough because of the things we were missing out on. Will we ever get the chance to see Valle de la Luna again? Who knows. Done with the bad vibes of the place and ready to start our time in Chile afresh, we booked a night bus south for the following evening. At that point I felt the sooner we were out of there, the better.
I managed to get myself out of bed that evening for the observatory tour, and it was the redeeming point of our time in San Pedro.
We had been super lucky to see some incredible night skies over the few weeks preceding our time in San Pedro, from constellations on Isla del Sol to the full moon on the Bolivian Salt Flats.
Each time we said we wish we knew more about what we were looking at… so we were excited for the chance to learn. That night we visited an observatory and enjoyed a talk from an expert who told us about the night sky and how to spot certain constellations. The very first one he pointed out was Scorpio, both mine and Graeme’s sun sign, which is pretty cool. We looked through telescopes and saw a close up of planets and the moon like we’d never seen before. We were kind of nerdy about the whole thing, jumping in excitement at the rings of Saturn and moons of Jupiter!
I said a couple of posts ago that I would learn more about Astro photography before attempting another shot… well, I didn’t do that, but we did get a professional photographer to take our picture this time instead.
It was a much needed high point after the struggles of the previous few days, and a nice way to end an otherwise forgettable time in the Chilean desert.
Heading South to the Elqui Valley
The journey from San Pedro de Atacama to La Serena (via Calama) was our longest bus journey in terms of distance to date, taking us over 1,000km south.
Looking back, perhaps it wasn’t wise to commit to such a long journey when I’d been in bed for three days. I slept through most of the journey but, waking up with only 2 hours to go, I began to feel really unwell. Once again, we pulled into our second Chilean town feeling pretty low, with nothing but another day in bed planned for me.
Despite the distance we had travelled, we were still very much in Northern Chile. La Serena is a coastal town and gateway to the Elqui Valley - home of Pisco production in Chile.
After another day in bed, I woke up feeling much more human. In any case, I was thoroughly over feeling sorry for myself, so was determined to make the most of our remaining time in northern Chile. We spent a day walking around the city and enjoying some time on the beach, and then finally got our Chilean bike riding experience the next day, as we set out to explore the Elqui Valley.
There’s some debate about whether Pisco originated in Chile or Peru (we won’t get involved in that!) but the home of the drink in Chile is the village of Pisco Elqui and the surrounding towns.
From our base in La Serena we got the morning bus an hour into the valley. We rented bikes from a town called Vicuña and rode around 20km through green vineyards, stopping along the way for tours of local distilleries and some pisco tasting, of course! We even found a great little brewery complete with a beer garden and tasting flight - the perfect place for lunch.
It was nice to end our time in Northern Chile on a high before heading towards Santiago - our fifth capital city in as many months.
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