(Remember that you can click on any of the photos to enlarge them)
This trip was to drive the northern half of the Chilean coast from Santiago, through the Atacama desert, to Arica to see the oldest mummies on the planet ever found -and back.
For those of you who are not aware, the Atacama desert is the driest desert on the planet, with an average rainfall of just .1 inches per year.
Below is an general itinerary of the mainland part of the trip. The Easter Island portion will be in a separate post…
The way out
The interesting thing about the coast of Chile is that the desert is up on the top of a cliff side (kind of like California) and the coastal towns are extremely small. But, the most outstanding thing about the coast is the abundance of sea life
The desert drive was fascinating with numerous petroglyphs and other desert attractions…
Finally we made it to the mummies. These are the oldest mummies know to man.
While in Arica, we took a boat trip to see the incredible sea life.
The way back
On the way back, we decided to take few detours to some interesting places. On such place in the travel book I had was a hotel that had naturally hot water running through the rooms. For those of you who are not aware, Chile has a very active volcanic system.
When we got to the hotel, this is what we found…
Gathering pool for water. Yes, the water was hot. But, it was very algae filled.
This is one of the hotel rooms. Totally abandoned. But, the water did run through it!
This a distant view of the place.On the way to our next stop, we saw a variety of interesting things…
Cool desert glyphs
There were literally hundreds of these
And some pretty cool wildlife. These are vicuna (kinda like llamas).The next stop? The worlds highest geysers. The problem - sea level to 14k feet (4320m) in a few hours of driving on dirt paths. But, that wasn’t the real problem. It was altitude sickness. Everyone in the car got sick, except for me. So, by the time we got there, I was the only one capable of having fun. I was running through the place, taking pictures as fast as I could - while everyone demanded we leave as soon as possible. So, we only stayed about an hour, at the most.
The good part? The scenery to and from the place was unbelievably beautiful. And the photos don’t do it justice.
Long shot of where we were going
Cool birds in the marshes along the way.
And wild chinchillas.
Almost there...
Typical scene.
An another typical scene.
And another...
These guys are just hanging out.
Hanging out all over. But, they really blended into the background. Made photography difficult.
The moon in the background was just beautiful.Next up, back toward the coast with some more really cool sea life.
Final stop on the Chile mainland - skiing. Getting there was rough. The roads were extremely dangerous. Hundreds of foot drops with no guard rails and not paved. We had to turn back on the first attempt to reach a ski area, because it was so slippery. We were afraid we were going to slide off the edge a few times.
But, we finally made it to a ski area on the second attempt.
