Up and on to the Atacama Desert

We are off to the Atacama today, sadly leaving Santiago  and the Orly hotel.  We were up early ' breakfasted and in the taxi by 10am.

The lovely Orly Hotel

Well we arrive at the domestic aeropurto to seeming chaos, hundreds of people milling around, no people for information.  It was quite stressful for all of five minutes until we found the right queue.  Well I have never been through bag drop and airport security so quickly, it was amazing.

The plane was new and clean, the LAN stewards were lovely.  Well that goes for the majority of the Chileanes that we have met.  A coffee and snack later we arrived at Calama in the Atacama.

We had already arranged a minibus transfer which was waiting, and off we went towards San Pedro de Atacama.  The journey took about an hour and a half through what I can only describe as moon valley and Mars landscape.  It was such a shock, so flat, dry and barren.

Anyway we arrived. In San Pedro, culture shock or what.  It is a small town in the middle of the desert, the streets are made of compressed mud and the houses of adobe.   It looks like something out of  a spaghetti western. I keep thinking that bandits are going to come riding in and shoot the place up.

The dropped us off at a door in an adobe wall, we knocked and found yourself at the Paschal Adino hotel.  What a lovely place. Only 10 rooms, lovely and quiet and the hosts are lovely.

What can you say.. A little oasis

We wandered about the town a bit dazed, it was searingly hot. So we picked up some tour info, some water, got our baring and headed back to the hotel for some shade.

We had booked ourselves on a star gazing tour this evening, but it was cloudy, yes cloudy ,in the driest place on earth.  In summer here it can quiet cloudy for a week or so, sometimes there is a little rain on the volcano's, bus it rarely rains in  town.

Instead we went out for dinner at a patio restaurant and I had the best chicken Caesar salad and a beer.