The Atacama – Jack

posted in: Chile, Posts - Jack | 2

We got into Chile sometime ago. It was a bit of a relief to leave Peru and enter a place where traffic laws were enforced and the water was drinkable. Arica was the first city we got to. Arica reminded me of Anchorage, Alaska but that’s probably just because it had a port and sidewalks. In Peru, if you own a car, they teach you nothing of driving and just show you how to honk the horn which is why crossing streets there was semi terrifying. But now we’re out of Peru and in Chile. The Chilean drivers hardly ever honk their horns or try to see how close they can get their cars to you without killing you. Chile isn’t that wonderful though. Everything is super expensive and northern, coastal Chile is just desert. I’ve had too much desert. Arica had a really cool museum that they built on top of an Indian burial site. You got to walk on top of glass and look at mummies of people who died ever so long ago. We camped at a beach a few miles north of Arica. I am not exactly sure if this is true but I’ve been told that during the night the entire beach turns into a party complete with shoe peeing, car jumping, and vomiting. We left Arica after a few days of eating olives and headed south, west into the Atacama and towards the tourist trap town of San Pedro de Atacama. It took a few days of driving through an unchanging desert landscape to reach San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is in the middle of nowhere. I don’t really know why it’s a tourist attraction because really the only thing to do there is look at the salt lakes and looking at water loses its novelty pretty dang fast. You could also rent a bike and ride a few hundred miles down the road but there’s not much point in that due to identical scenery everywhere. The town of San Pedro its self was nice but expensive. They had this place that was like a bar but they only served beer. The beer only bar was always full of the cool, dread sportin’, dirty clothes wearin’, traveler people. San Pedro also had hundreds of European backpacking people. THIS ONE GIRL ASKED JENNAH AND I TO A PARTY (heart)! Other than that, nothing really exciting happened there. We left from San Pedro and backtracked north a tad bit to try to go on a tour of a mine (Chile is big in the mining industry) but we were too late. We went to this mall that was massive and walked around a little bit. After the town and its mall, we headed south again towards the coast. Not much noteworthy has happened since then. The beaches where I’m at are super rocky and pretty. So far I give Chile three Stars out of five; with that being said, I give south western Peru four Stars out of five. I’m done writing for now.
Peace.
~Jack

2 Responses

  1. Grandma Kay

    Loved this writing of your trip So fascinating and can see from what you say how each country or town can be different Have fun
    Exploring rest of the way!

  2. Beautiful! I loved my time in San Pedro and the Atacama desert. I trlveaed from Arica towards Santiago and stopped at many places to just soak in the beauty of the landscape. My chilean friends told me I would love the South, but I loved the North, especially because it was so different from home. The South looks like the Black Forrest ;-)I loved the North for the uniqueness, for the colors, for the people and for the llamas! Awesome shooting!

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