After spending 3 beautiful days in Santiago, we took a 2-hour early morning flight to the high plateau in northeastern Chile, to the town of Calama. In Santiago, 5 new travelers joined us - a couple from Sweden, 1 each from Spain, South Africa and Belgium. We now have 16, the maximum, in our group. This is why I like traveling with Tucan. They limit the group to 16, which is big but not too big. When I traveled in Russia, there were only 2 of us. Sixteen allows you to get to know each other.
Two vans picked us up at the Calama airport. One from luggage, the other for the passengers. It is a 1 1/2 hour drive to the town of San Pedro, through landscape that looks somewhat like Arizona. We checked in to the Ron Paul Hotel and took a quick orientation tour of the town. I've never heard of San Pedro before but I was surprised how busy the town is. It's mostly a one unpaved street town but the street was busy. You can tell many tourists come here because you see all the shops are here to cater to the tourists. Apparently, the world knows about this town except Americans. Nearby are many recreational and sight-seeing places.
The most famous of these places is the Valle de la Luna, or Valley of the Moon. A popular area for hiking and mountain-biking is the Catarpe Park. After a hearty lunch we went to the bike shop to pick up our rental bikes. Our tour leader told us it will be an easy bike ride. After about 1 km we realized that this was not going to be easy. Soon we came to a stream that we have to cross. Though not deep, it was partly filled with small rocks, which can easily tip your balance. Then we were riding through all kinds of terrain - sand, slopes, narrow passages, etc. Many of us started feeling uncomfortable and stressed. However, we continued, though many of us fell at least once. Fortunately, no one got seriously hurt. We all came back very tired.
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| Church in the Catarpe Park |
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| Mountain Biking through the "Devil's Throat" |
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