Day 19: San Pedro de Atacama
Sweet sweet civilisation – never have I been so pleased to have been surrounded by people looking to rip me off. My bedroom wasn’t even very good – the bathroom window opened onto a busy corridor, the bedroom itself had no windows and the door didn’t even have a number on it. But the temperature was above zero and there was hot water, and that’s all that mattered.
A rude awakening in the morning however, when I headed to the courtyard to discover that the hotel didn’t provide breakfast. A group of us set off into turn in search of some, accompanied by the largest dog town council I’d seen the entire trip, proving without doubt that we were now once again in a sizeable conurbation.
Before too long we found brunch at a rock’n’roll bar, where I had possibly the nicest hot chocolate I’d ever had in my life. One member of our group came to join us after already having had a first breakfast of the day at the local French bakery. I had never approved of anything so much in my entire life.
We then walked the sandy streets some more to visit the many gift emporiums all selling the same things, following by possibly the nicest meal I’d had all trip, ordered from an affordably priced set menu at a humble little restaurant popular with the locals.
In the afternoon, we set off on an included excursion to the moon valley, which in my opinion was much more moon-like than the valley of the moon that we’d visited in La Paz, although that may be because many films set on the moon have been filmed there. It also provided views of the scientific instruments located in the Atacama
It was also incredibly windy, and incredibly thirst-inducing due to the dryness of the air. I don’t think that I have ever been so thirsty in my life, and my litre bottle of water was definitely insufficient. I was therefore, most grateful when our tour guide surprised us of a spread including Chilean delicacies such as tomatoes, tuna, popcorn… and wine and pisco sours. ¡Salud!
Day 20: San Pedro de Atacama to Santiago
And there ends the trip, pretty much. The following day, we caught a flight down to Santiago and travelled to the same hotel where I’d stayed the previous year. Lots of food and many drinks were had, and then the next day we all went our separate ways.
On the sad things about these trips is that people don’t leave all at once, we just all slowly drift away one by one, in order to catch different flights or journey on to different places. One of our number was moving on to Bariloche for a month of skiing, others were going on to Buenos Aires or Rio. Me – I was just going home, and to be honest, whilst I was sad to go, there were also some home comforts that I was looking forward to, and some things that I would no longer be taking for granted.
It was a strange feeling, walking around at Santiago airport without a guide or the rest of the group for company. At the duty free shop, I had a funny exchange with the cashier and made a mental note to tell the group, only to realise that I never would.
I boarded the flight for London and left South America, hopefully not forever but most likely for a few years at least. Many, after I’ve had more time to reflect, I’ll write an epilogue for this blog. For now, the journey ends here. Many thanks for joining me.
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