Cake? Albeit a tad salty...
The town of San Pedro de Atacama is a tourist town albeit with adobe brick buildings and dusty unmade streets. You come here not for the town itself, but to take tours from here to see things. So that's what we did.
First visit was the El Tatio geysers. One of the biggest geyser fields in the world apparently. Not geysers that shoot skywards, but ones that just bubble away, sometimes stopping as they block up and then reappear in a different spot. The crust that you walk on is supposedly quite thin and walkways are clearly indicated. There have been casualties in recent years according to our guide. The water that bubbles up is said to be at 85°C, so not quite enough for a good cup of tea.
Of course the Atacama is quite hot. It's a desert after all. And to see steam you really need it to be cold which isn't going to happen mid-afternoon in the desert. So you need to see it just before sunrise as that's the coldest part of the day. Which meant setting the alarm for 0430...
Of course the geysers weren't located next to a main road or vice versa. So there was a long bumpy road on gravel and corrugated rock to get there, but there was also a lagoon full of strutting flamingoes on the way back. 'Flamand rose' in French, which Paul thought was a way of describing a gay Belgian.
Our other trip was on New Year's Eve and in the future we will probably say to ourselves, 'Do you remember what we were doing...?' Well we were floating in a salt lagoon in the middle of the desert.
San Pedro was party town in the evening. Effigies bring burned to get rid of the worst of the past year sort of thing. And we felt our age in the hostel...
We have been very preoccupied with things recently and that has probably impacted on our blogging. Francoise's mum was taken ill again just before Christmas and spent Christmas in hospital. She was released into palliative care on Boxing Day and passed away on the 3rd January. Francoise has been assisting with the funeral arrangements from afar. It has not been easy. Life is a journey and one day it comes to an end. R.I.P.
