After a 48 hour journey from Pucon travelling roughly 17 degrees of latitude north we were mighty relieved to arrive in San Pedro de Atacama in Northern Chile. James and Brid are in town and pick us up from the bus, its great to hook up with them again and after setting up camp in the local camp ground or "halting site" as Jim and Brid have dubbed it. Its Good Friday and all sorts of Chileans have arrived with arm fulls of booze and we settle in for a long night!
The next day we rent mountain bikes and explore the local fort on the hill, cycle through the Quebrada del Diablo (devil´s gorge) and back again wilting under the high altitude sun, we retreat back to the campsite for a late lunch and shade. That evening James and I head off on the bikes through the Valle de la Muerte (valley of death, pretty scary names!) and catch up with the girls at a view point overlooking the Valle de la Luna (valley of the Moon) to view an amazing sunset and enjoy some outrageous sandwiches.
We then organise ourselves to a place called Quebrada del Nacimiento a few miles outside a small town called Socaire, this was reccomended to us by a Chilean climber in Bariloche. Getting there with no car involves a late night bus bringing us deep in the desert darkness for a couple of hours, getting out in a small frontier town, hiking half an hour up the hill and pitching a tent. The next morning we hitch the remaining distance along a dirt road into the nothingness to the climbing gorge situated at 3500m above sea level. We´re giddy with excitement and altitude when we get there and the climbing looks amazing but by the time we pitch the tents and climb two easy routes we´re all suffering with sore heads from the height!
The next week is spent cooking, eating, sunset admiring, star gazing and panting our way up wonderful volcanic rock in the gorge. We had read that you could climb one of the local volcanoes in a "challenging day from the gorge", this will be great fun we thought naively! So we got up at some unreasonable hour and hiked off across the desert with a rucksak full of water and a sun hat in great hope, 5 hours later having reached over 4500m, incurred a bad headache and having got less than half way up the hill we gave up! Back to the safety of our little gorge, shade, games of chess and pasta tuna dinners we thought!
The bus leaves Socaire three times a week we were told at 6am so after 5 nights in the gorge we hike down to town on Saturday and camp on the outskirts, after a small reconnaissance in town we discover that the bus leaves at 4.30pm on Sundays. We lie in bed the next day (Sunday) and potter down to town after eating the last of our supplies and sit and wait in this little town dwarfed by the massive expanse of sand and rock that smother the cluster of houses. We wait some more, James plays cards "snap" with the local children while Brid supervises a games of draughts. Its Sunday and as the afternoon passes the local drunks have now passed the chatty stage and are wondering what were doing there and why were not from Barcelona! we pack our bags and try to move on but by this stage he's fallen asleep on the pavement. We talk to more friendly locals who tell us there's no bus till tomorrow at 6am, with no food left I begin to get worried and knock on doors and manage to buy sufficient grub for one more beautiful sunset and cold starry night.
We catch the bus the next morning, luckily for us as daylight saving has kicked in while we were away, however spring falls back here so were an hour early rather than late.
Back to San Pedro for showers (of the hygienic rather than inclement type!) and we manage to catch the last night of the circus where juggling, spinning plates, aerial acts are interspersed with a hilarious clown called Luppi.
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