Part 2 is here!
We arrived in Pucón the next day just after lunch, after taking the overnight bus, which included a picturesque border crossing with amazing views of a volcano whose name I can't remember as the sun was rising. With a couple of hours to kill until we could formally check in to our place, we walked to the center of town for some lunch and to grab some groceries. At each stop, we tried to take care of that immediately so we wouldn’t have to spend so much money eating lunch (all the places we stayed had free breakfast) and could spend more money doing things or upgrading to nicer seats on the buses, etc. Our room in Pucón was very, cozy, shall we say. One thing we have learned is to be more discriminating when reading lodging reviews. If it’s a 25 year old, they might have a very different frame of reference for what constitutes a nice place compared to someone our age, particularly when it comes to things like location and amenities. So, that said, the place stayed was advertised as a boutique hotel, what it really was was a hippie chic hostel with a freezing cold bathroom and a skylight that leaked when it rained. The staff was extremely nice, and the breakfast was delicious which greatly tempered our frustration with the size and temperature.
After being mostly frustrated with poor transportation in Puerto Varas, we were relieved to hear the parks near Pucón were much more reasonably accessible, with a bus leaving from one of the terminals near our hostel (we’re calling it that from now on). For a cheap fare, we caught the 8:00 bus full of non-Chileans to Huerquehue national park. There was plenty of frustration to go around however- the drive up was about an hour after stops, then we had to register and listen to a speech, in Spanish, from the ranger, yes the ranger, not one of the rangers, THE ranger. By the time we did all that, it was nearly 10:00, and we had to be back to the bus before 5:00 to get back to town, which left seven hours of hiking time. The hike we intended to do, up to a mirador where eight neighboring volcanoes were visible was supposed to take three hours or so up, and a little less than that down. However, as we had learned, the times for hikes as well as the trail marked distances had been woefully off the mark, so neither of us felt comfortable risking it and possibly missing the last bus at 5:00. We were bummed but opted for the Tres Lagos hike anyhow. After walking around the first lake shore, we were disappointed to be confronted with yet another road walk for about a mile through private land before getting back into the park boundary and onto the trail. Once to the trail, it climbed straight up for about two hours, worth it for a beautiful lake, not so worth it for so so lakes, which is what we got. They were pretty but really rather average. We had lunch at Lago Verde and watched tiny trout smolts darting all over the place, which was actually pretty cool. After seeing the third lake, we made our way straight downhill (tough on the knees), where we had to wait about 75 minutes for the bus, which proceeded to fill to standing room only after picking up passengers on the way back to town.
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| First decent view |
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| Nice fall colors and even some trout in the lake |
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| Lugged my heavy camera up, mostly used my iPhone |
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| I always love seeing sheep! |
The next day the rain set in, inches of rain, with no intention of letting up anytime soon. The original plan was to photograph waterfalls in the rain, but it was raining so hard, photography would have been impossible. Rather than face another night of leaky skylight, we decided to take the night bus, leaving around 10:00 pm, driving all night, and arriving in Santiago early the next morning, where we had a hotel for the night before flying to Calama. Another helpful feature of bus travel in South America is that you can cancel up to 4 hours ahead of departure and get 85-90% of your money back, and given how affordable the bus system is, you’re talking one or two dollars at worst. One thing I have learned over the course of several years of traveling is to heavily scrutinize reviews on trip advisor and other websites. I used to automatically write off companies with anything less than 4.5/5, but when you start traveling places where no one gets above 3.5, you have to dig deeper. I will read the most positive, most negative (which are usually completely absurd and likely mostly untrue), and then a few in the middle. I look at what people didn’t like. If someone doesn’t like the meal served on a bus but everything else was good, to me that’s essentially a five star, as I wouldn’t expect bus food to be good anyway. Another example of ridiculous reviews muddling a company’s reputation would be someone giving a bus company three stars because the movies shown on the bus were too violent (I seriously read one like that). Seriously?? Just go to sleep or close your eyes or buck up- anything. Ironically enough, one of our buses had a DVD reel of Jean Claude Van Damme movies including one that begins with him waking up in an ice bath with a kidney missing, haha. Anyhow, we took four or five different bus companies throughout our travels, and they were all fine. Some were nicer, but really, they were all one million times better than Greyhound here in the states. For our bus to Santiago, we elected to purchase sleeper seats known as salon cama seats which reclined to 170 degrees including ottoman like footrests. I can never sleep on airplanes, even a red eye, but I was able to fall asleep for a few of the ten hours it took to go from Pucón to Santiago. We arrived at 7:00 am, and after taking a cab to our hotel, we paid $35 to check in before 9:00, and by 10:00, I had showered and settled in for a three-hour nap. We pretty much lazed around, knowing we had an early flight to Calama the next morning. We watched an incredibly awkward movie with Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep, and Steve Carrell, but it was in English, so we didn’t care. We watched some truly terrible movies that day.
We caught a 7:55 AM flight the next morning and arrived in Calama just before 11:00, where we picked up our rental car and headed for the desert or more accurately, Mars. We arrived at our hotel and found that it was actually a standalone house with a loft bedroom and a spacious living and dining room. Our host, Phillipe, originally from France, had married a Chilean woman and made the move to San Pedro. He was incredibly welcoming and accommodating, and best of all, he had a German Shepherd named Nutella who came to welcome us and continued to try and sneak in the house to see us over the next three days. After taking a short nap, we decided to drive to an area called Valle de la Muerte to catch the sunset. We paid our entrance fee and drove three miles along a sandy road to a parking area just as the formal road ended. There was a sandboarding tour group there as well, and we took a few minutes to watch people ride (okay mostly fall) down the dunes toward the parking area. We walked about a mile up the foot trail and climbed to an overlook. The weather was hot but pleasant, but we immediately noted the change in altitude as we reached over 9000’. We walked along the overlook vista for half an hour and then decided to grab our spot for sunset as tour groups began to show up in their sprinter vans, arriving from the opposite end of the road, thereby driving all the way to the top of the overlook we had just slogged up! Lots of selfie sticks and people doing jump poses, hardly looking at one of the most magnificent sunsets we witnessed on the whole trip. Oh well. With a deadline to exit the park before dark fell, we hustled down to the car and out. The next morning we slept in and enjoyed the fresh baguette and chocolate croissants delivered to us by Phillipe. Mid-morning we headed to Los Flamingos National Reserve where we saw hundreds of Andean Flamingos who are unfortunately endangered with only 40,000 remaining in the world. These magnificent birds live high in the Andes, often above 10,000’ and subsist on sculpin type food sources. One of their biggest threats, stop me if you’ve heard this before, is habitat destruction, their homes encroached upon by mining companies whose byproducts poison their food source. Aside from learning about all the terrible things mankind has done to push this species to the brink, it was so enjoyable to watch them move about the lagoons and fly gracefully through the sky, gliding in for a landing, breaking the glassy surface of these high desert alpine lakes.
After enjoying the flamingos, we elected to drive to Lagos Miñiques and Miscanti, which sit at almost exactly 14,000'. Along the drive, we passed through a couple of villages which were varying degrees of primitive and enjoyed viewing the wildflowers that dotted the landscape as we continued to climb. Once we turned onto the road to take us to the lakes, we spotted a small herd of vicuñas grazing- our first but certainly not last sighting of the trip! The lakes were not too crowded except for a couple of tour groups with 10-15 people. There isn’t much hiking to do other than walking along the lake, but at 14,000’ that was about all we could handle anyway.
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| Sunset over Valle de la Muerte |
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| Andean flamingo |
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| Andean flamingo |
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| Flamingos feeding in glassy water |
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| More flamingos |
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| Laguna Miñiques |
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| Golden hour |
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| Sunset |
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| Laguna Miscanti |
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| Vicuñas grazing |
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| This little guy came running full speed at us before diverting across the road |
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| Driving east toward the Chile-Argentina border |
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| Babies! |
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| I know it doesn't look real, but it is- Laguna Tuyajto |
San Pedro de Atacama is known around the world as the darkest sky on the planet, so of course I was thrilled to find out we’d be down that way just after the new moon- a perfect opportunity to shoot the night sky! After a long day, we slept late in anticipation of staying out late to photograph the milky way, so mid-afternoon we headed out to scout some locations for the night’s adventure. We ended up driving nearly all the way to Argentina. Everything was just so beautiful! We left Mars and arrived in Iceland! We saw hundreds more vicuñas along the way and some of the most beautiful lakes in colors you could hardly dream up from the depths of your imagination. One particularly striking lake, which I had hoped to use as the foreground for my milky way shots had been closed after some touron (get it?) drove all over the sensitive landscape in a 4WD truck. Although I was bummed, I was also glad the park did what was right- protect the landscape. I wish the National Park Service would do something similar with places that have weathered far too much human caused destruction.
After driving around all day, we eventually returned to the road leading up to Laguna Miscanti where we waited for the sun to set and the stars to appear, and oh did they! I have never seen so many- the Milky Way was striking against the pitch black sky. We had been photographing for about an hour and were packing up and contemplating another location when one of two vehicles we saw all night turned up the road. Once the bright car lights and headlamps hit our faces, we knew it wasn't just a regular car. Out jumped three cabañeros screaming instructions and questions in Spanish. They were asking for identification, driver's license, and what we were doing. Once they checked our IDs and found out we had been doing photography and were now leaving, they told us to drive safely as the roads are very curvy. Despite it being scary at first, we never felt threatened, but it was definitely a more militant style police presence than we are used to. After that experience, we decided not to go for another location even though the core of the Milky Way had yet to make an appearance.
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| Before we got run out of the park |
After begrudgingly leaving our comfortable accommodations, we headed back to Calama to check into our hotel in preparation for our flight out the next morning. We were less than ten minutes from the airport when a rock hit our windshield causing a pretty substantial chip. No coverage plans cover windshields in Chile and the collision protection I purchased separately also did not cover such damage, so we thought we were looking at about $1200 based on what we were reading online. Luckily for us, the rental company attendant took pity on us and marked it down as a small chip that only cost us $400 (I say only, it was still a huge bummer, but what's done is done, and we were happy to not be an extra $800 poorer). Frustrated by our bad luck, we headed into the center of Calama and saw a Domino's pizza, and yes, we got it, and yes it was terrible and amazing all at the same time.
The next morning, we headed back to Santiago for the final time this trip, now preparing for the last leg of our journey in Peru.
