We flew from Panama to Santiago, Chile on Tuesday with an overnight at the Airport Holiday Inn followed by a late morning flight to Calama on Wednesday, which still felt very early given the 2 hour time change.
We arrived at Explora in the Atacama desert around 3, checked in, unpacked and went up to pick our first Exploration. We met Paulino, who will be our guide for most of our time here - including the travesia to Bolivia.
Our first hike was called Hauyra - which means wind in Quechua - and it was definitely windy. We didn't do the hike completely as planned because the exit had been washed away in the last rain, so we ended up doing a loop. After walking along the edge of the cliff over looking Mars Valley we went down into the sand dunes. Paulino asked if we wanted to try it barefoot - I tried it, Filip didn't- it was really fun - reminded me a lot of Jockey's Ridge at the outer banks and it reminded both of us the volcano hike we did in Iceland. Walking on Sand Dunes at 8,500 feet was pretty surreal.
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| On the sand dunes (barefoot) |
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| Mars Valley along the ridge |
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| Mars Valley from the start/end of the hike |
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| The wind tunnel |
Our second hike (called
Domeyko) was guided by Carmelo and Victor and was in the Domeyko Mountain Range and included a couple of technical drops. The hike was just over 3 miles long starting at around 9600 feet above sea level and ending around 8,900.
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Scaling the dry waterfall
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| We finished scaling the waterfalls |
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Notice the moon in the sky
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Our third hike was called
Matanacilla and ended in the Rainbow valley and led by Kresna. Kresna surprised at the end by asking if we had enough energy to walk just a bit more- "over there", we all said sure and we walked into a beautiful canyon - the true highlight of the hike. We saw lots of cacti, amazing colors and a few donkeys - oh and we flew the kite.
The drive to our hike on Friday was a little long so we took break part way there to see Chilean and Bolivian flamingos at a lake before continuing on the trailhead.
The beginning of our hike, called
Incahuasi was great with crisp cool air- although a very high elevation (13,763 ft). About a third of the way through we started rock scrambles -all downhill into the Jorquencal gorge. We passed by an old mining village and walked through (literally through) a pampas forest. The hike succeeded in making (at least one of us, if not both) feel our age, it was pretty humbling. The very last bit was a steep rock scramble down to the reward at the end- a hot spring where our driver had a small picnic set up to enjoy.
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| Our view (behind us) from the start |
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| Posing on a bolder |
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A few of the remains from the mining village
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Walking through the gorge
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| View into the gorge of the pampas grass (they were ~8 feet high, and sharp) |
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| Warm spring at the end - the soft sand felt great on our tired toes |
Saturday morning we had a horseback ride (in part because it started at 9am instead of 7) called
Dunas de la Chula. We started at Explora went through the town, across the San Pedro River and then into the sand dunes in front of the Salt Mountain Range. It was beautiful and nice to rest our knee and ankle joints. I rode Delicia and Filip rode Nispero. Tamara, our guide, had a blast taking pictures
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| Micki on Delicia and Filip on Nispero |
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| In front of the Salt Mountain Range |
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| Tamara took this one laying in the sand |
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Walking through the desert was great because there was no vegetation for the horses to eat
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Sunday was a busy day with biking in the morning followed by hike among the cacti. Celesté was our guide for the full day. As our bikes are in storage, we don't have a lot of opportunity to ride bikes, so it had been a while. The bike route was called
Ckuta in the Salt Mountain range and mostly through sand and gravel. It was about ~15 miles long with e-assist.
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| Starting point of our bike ride |
Punta del Inca was only a couple of miles long but pretty technical with lots of rocks to climb over along the stream. We had amazing weather and great views.
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| Practicing our cactus poses again |
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Along the Valley of the Cacti
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| Our feet got a little wet crossing the streams |
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| Even though we saw many people, we had many parts to ourselves |
Our final hike in Chile was the was the
Volcán Blanco on Monday in the antiplano starting above 14,000 feet. It was a long drive to the start so we stopped at a few wetlands to watch the flamingos and the Tatio Geysers, the highest Geysers in Chile. We saw many vicuña, including some babies and some viscacha hiding in the rocks. Surprisingly we were able to get pretty close to the vicuña. At the end of our hike, Alberto our driver, had prepared a lunch for us in front of the wetlands with plenty of vicuña to entertain us- and we flew the kite.
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| Getting ready to start the hike at 13,800 feet |
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| We saw many vicuña - weirdly they were not very scared of us |
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| The lunch spread Alberto set up for us |
Once again we were pleased with the Explora brand and would do this again- the only danger is that we tend to overshedule ourselves.
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