The Atacama Desert

Atacama is the driest desert on earth. It's about a 2 hour flight north of Santiago. We've spent the last 3 days touring the highlights. It's a big place -- we logged over 700 miles on our rental car with our guide. Speaking of our guide, what an interesting character. He's a shayman and from what he described to us, does some crazy drugs but didnt seem to be on them while we were with him (we don't think)


We arrived around 10am and headed straight for our first excursion to the Salar de Tara which was our first stop in the Flamencos National Reserve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Flamencos_National_Reserve):

Tara is at about 12k feet above sea level. Just on the boarder with Bolivia and Argentina. We drove 100km through the mountains (reaching 14k feet) and then 30k on a dirt road to first get to these rock formations.


The Salar itself behind us.



More incredible rock formations around the Salar tara.




Our little hotel room in the desert.


Kenny at sunset overlooking Moon Valley.





Day 2:


Now at 13.5k feet, we went to the high altiplanic lakes. This is Laguna Miscati. It's sister, Laguna Mineques was still frozen over from the winter.








After the lagoons we traveled the 90kms back towards San Pedro to check out the Salar de Atacama. This Salar is home to the largest lithium reserves in the world...


...and also a lot of Flamingos that feast on the salt water crabs which give them their pink color.


By far, our favorite part of the trip was the Moon Valley. A portion of the desert that gets it's name from it's resemblance to the moon's surface. We climbed through several caves and to the top of a huge dune...





...which we ran down shoeless. A lot like snow skiing. It was awesome.


Day 3:


We woke up super early to make the 100km trek up to the highest altitude we visited during the trip. At about 14k feet, we watched the sunrise over the Geysers del Tatio. The geysers are most active between 7 and 9am so we had to leave our hotel at 5:30 to make it there for sunrise. It was about 15 degrees fahrenheit when we arrived so standing in the steam from the geysers was really nice.














After the geysers we headed to the hot springs but decided not to take a camera. Then it was off to the airport for our trip back to Santiago and then on to Barcelona.

Oust digital camera is still not working so we also have some pics on a disposable that we bought in Atacama that we'll get developed here in Barcelona and post when we have them. I also have some videos of each sight in Atacama I'll upload and post separately.

More from Barcelona tomorrow.

-WLC

Hello from Barcelona

18 hours later and we are in Barcelona!

Headed to the beach now but promise to blog tonight about our adventures in the Atacama desert.

A rental car in Chile

Sorry these are a litte late. Kenny alluded to our adventures in our rental car in Chile below. Here are a few videos that show the fun. Updates from our three days in the Atacama Desert coming soon. Off to Barcelona via Madrid this afternoon.





-WLC

Kenny's new perro in San Pedro de Atacama

I think she misses Stella so much she is actually contemplating petting
this dog.

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The Chilean Wine Country

After a jam packed three days we are back at the airport headed to the Atacama desert. Due to our flight issues the other day we left the airport at 4:45 (2 hours before our flight) and arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, no more missing flights for us.

The last you heard from us we had spent our first afternoon in the Colchagua wine valley. We had a great full day there. We ended up doing a tasting at Vina Montes, an awesome lunch and wine tour at Vina Viu Manenet, and another tasting at Montgras. The Colchagua valley is really known for it's red wines, the biggest production being Carmenere. The whole place is great. We ended our day by stopping at the museum and then heading over to the casino (we ended up winning about $60, helped pay for the wine we bought).

Vina Montes. The building was gorgeous, super modern and they told us, very feng shui.




The view from Montes up to the hills. It was the first vineyard to grow grapes up the side of the mountain, apparently the other vineyards thought they were "loco."



The barrel room. They play a recording of chanting monks, believing that it makes the wine better.



We had an amazing lunch at Viu Manent. Pumpkin is in season right now :) so I had an incredible Pumpkin soup and then an awesome steak. We went bug on lunch (thankfully because once again only 2 restaurants town were open for dinner).



Horse carriage tour through Viu Manent.



Tasting Sauvignon Blanc out of the steel tank.







The gorgeous tasting room, love the wall of bottles.



A common Chilean fireplace, they are really incredible, it's basically a slow burning heater.



Vina Montgras



Looking down in to the tasting room



We ended up doing our tasting in front of the fire, perfect way to end the afternoon.


At the museum, apparently it's the best in Chile because of all if the artifacts it has.




We headed to Vina del Mar and Valparaiso the next morning and using google maps we decided to ignore one of it's directions, which led us int a dirt road (we assumed it was wrong) so we invented our own way to wrap back around to the highway and here's a glimpse of our route. We learned that in Chile, Always follow google maps, because you'll never know what you'll encounter on your own.

Loving Chile

After missing our flight and spending the day in the Buenos Aires airport we finally made it to the W Santiago around midnight. We got up early (or what we thought was early) and headed out to see Santiago. It wasn't until we got down into the subway that noticed we were an hour behind, we had thought it was 9 and was actually 10. Of course after losing 12 hours in the airport and now we had lost another hour because it was daylight savings in Chile last night ... What are the odds. So we immediately headed to the top of San Cristobal hill, which was fabulous. We got really lucky that it had rained last Thursday, which cleared away a lot of the smog, and the views were amazing.

After that we checked out the central market and Plaza de Armas. The market was a little slow because it was a Sunday morning, we're hoping to check it out later in the week when we're back in Santiago.

We are currently in the Colchagua Valley, the Napa Valley of Chile. On our way in to town we stopped at the Casa Silva Vineyard, it was gorgeous. The Vineyard has a Polo Field and they told us that during the polo season you can eat lunch and watch a polo game. We're here during winter so it's pretty empty. There us only one restaurant open in the whole town tonight. Will booked us a room at a coo, hacienda that was turned into a hotel. We thought we were the only guests staying there but met another couple at a wine tasting tonight that was also staying there so we aren't alone.

Right now we are sitting at a bar (part of the only open restaurant) drinking Pisco Sours with some Argentinians we met at our wine tasting, who were also looking for something to do tonight. Should be fun! We have a big day of wine tasting tomorrow so you might not hear from us till Tuesday when we get to Vina Del Mar.

The view from San Cristobal hill overlooking the Andes. If we had planned better (and had more room in our luggage) we would have driven an hour and gone skiing, next time :)



The view of the Virgen de la Immaculada Concepcion.


The view from San Cristobal hill overlooking Santiago.


Our first wine tasting at Casa Silva. We ended up buying a bottle of the 2006 Carmenere which is the highest rated Carmenere in the world. We'll be drinking that on a special occasion, or at the airport if we can't get it home.


Our Carmenere purchase.


Our hotel, TerraVina, is on it's own vineyard.



Off to finish my Pisco sour and have dinner with the Argentinians and the other couple staying at our hotel (he's English living in Madrid, and his girlfriend is Venezuelan living in Santiago).

Adios

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Not a ton to report from BA. Sight seeing is limited but we did have some great meals mostly thanks to recs from our friend Conrad. Particularly the empanadas at Cumana and dinner at Casa Cruz. Also had the requisite meal at La Cabrera although we were honestly a little disappointed -- steaks at almost any Dallas steakhouse are better (albeit 3-4x the cost).

Kenny's swollen right ankle (top of picture) due to some Sand Fleas she picked up at Machu Picchu. Great souvenir. Thanks for the steroid cream, mom.


Recoleta Cemetary. Best sight seeing in BA. Really quite incredible to see the size of these graves.


Recloeta or the Chanel Store?


Evita's tomb at Recoleta. Delay in BA airport gave us time to watch the movie. Interesting fact: the balcony that Evita used to give speeches from at Casa Rosada has been strictly off limits to anyone since she died until Madona convinced the President to let her film the movie from the spot.


Magnum of champagne at club Isabel after a great dinner at Casa Cruz. We met up with a friend from UT, Caroyln (on left) and her sister Julia (on right) for dinner and drinks. They were also visiting BA for the week so was fun to have people to meet for dinner.


A dog rode the BA metro with us one day. Funniest thing. He'd lay down and sleep between each stop, then when the doors open he'd get up and look around as if he were deciding which stop to exit at. He never got off while we were one.





Dinner at La Cabrera. Kenny with her wine and me with our steak.

When we finally get out of the airport we're off to Santiago. A day of sightseeing there tomorrow then we head 4 hrs south to the Colchaga Valley to visit a few vineyards and drink some vino.

-WLC