Full disclosure: we're back home now, but I figured that I'd update the blog about our last week in Chile anyhow.

Sunday - At Tierra Atacama, excursions are a big part of the experience. Each day you can choose from 2 half-day excursions or one full-day excursion. Today we did two.

In the morning we took a short van ride to Valle de la Luna, a protected area with some amazing geology. Together with our guide Leo and fellow adventurer Richard, we overlooked the "Death Valley", an amazing area of dunes and ridges. Apparently it really was meant to be called "Mars Valley" but the spanish word for Mars (Marte) and Death (Muerte) were mixed up by some european cartographer at some point. Mars valley is a better name. Pictures are worth 1000 words here. After this vista, we took a walk through a salt canyon, which is a small canyon and cave system where the walls are completely comprised of salt, worn glass-smooth in many places.

At 4 that afternoon we started our 2nd excursion, a long drive south to the salt flats, where there are a bunch of flamingos. Along the way we stopped at a small town called Toconao. There was an old church with a roof made of cactus wood. Turns out cacti have wood inside of them! Buildings in this part of the world are all either adobe bricks or cut stone. We fed some llamas some dried seed pods, which they didn't like and they spit on us. Ella found an adorable puppy as well.

The salt flats were fairly unimpressive. They looked kind of like the salt flats in death valley, except there were flamingos.

Monday - We chose to book only a morning excursion today so that we could spend the afternoon relaxing at the hotel's indoor pool. The morning excursion was pretty great though - we took a short hike (again with our guide Leo from the previous morning) called the "Cornices Hike". The hike took us up above the rim of Death[Mars] Valley, and then over to a big sand dune. This dune had a very steep angle and about 250ft of vertical drop, and was absolutely perfect for glissading down. In fact, this is an area that people practice Sand-Boarding on. We just went in our socks (the sand was too hot for bare feet!), and it was an absolute blast. One of the highlights of the trip for sure. Ryan and Ella absolutely loved it, and tried to climb back up for more.

Tuesday - Today we did two excursions: In the morning I did a hike up the Puritama creek up to some hot springs. Stacy and the kids took a van ride and met me there. The hike was really nice, about 5km along a beautiful gorge, with some interesting old dwellings and corrals made of stone. The hot springs were great - not all that hot (maybe 90-95) but that's ok because it was pretty hot out anyways. Lots of fun waterfalls and pools to explore.

In the afternoon Ryan and I took a bike ride (Stacy and Ella vanned) to the Cejar Lagoon. This is a lagoon in which the water is so salty that in greatly increases the density of the water, and makes you much more buoyant. The bike ride was pretty uneventful but Ryan loved it - I don't know whether it was just because he was in need of some exercise or if he had fun chatting it up about Harry Potter with our guide, Francesca.  The salt lagoons were really awesome, floating in them was a blast. You just lean back and feel totally supported by the water, it's really fun. The downside is that the salt is a major skin irritant - especially for our poor skin which was so dry and chafed from the dry air and bike ride. Ryan was hurting pretty bad from it.

That night we met up at dinner with a Canadian family that was staying at the same resort. We had a great time chatting it up with them - it was a nice change of pace to have some new conversations. We stayed up way too late though, because the next day...

Wednesday- We had to get up at 4:30AM to start the long drive to the Tatio Geysers. This is a volcanic area high up in the mountains (above 14,000ft) east of San Pedro. The car ride made all of us but Stacy a bit queasy, and the altitude sealed the deal. All 3 of us puked up at the top, which made the trip somewhat miserable. We did get to see some interesting volcanic activity (similar to Lassen Natl. Park), and these neat animals called a Viscacha, which looks like a hare but is more closely related to the Chinchilla, and hops like a kangaroo. Pretty neat animals.

On the way back we saw some llamas, which I learned on this trip were domesticated from the Guanaco.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool, which seems to be the best part of any vacation for the kids...hmm....

Thursday - Time to go home! Oh wait, but first lets go horseback riding. Stacy and the kids took a short horseback riding trip while I stayed back and packed up the room (horses and I don't get along). Right as we're leaving to catch the shuttle to the Calama airport however, Stacy gets an email telling us our flight is canceled. Oh, great, what a nice way to start our journey. I have to hand it to Tierra Atacama's staff however, they stayed on the phone with LAN airlines figuring out how to get us on another flight that would make our connection in Santiago. The staff at this hotel was stellar. We ended up getting to Santiago about 3.5 hours later than we thought we would, but luckily we still had enough time to transfer to the international terminal and catch our American Airlines flight to Miami. The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we arrived back in Folsom mid-day on Friday.

Patagonia Pictures (Glacier Trips)

 

We took a tour in zodiacs to visit the Serrano and  Balmaceda Glaciers. We all agree that this was one of our most fun excursions. 

 

It was powerful to show the kids the different glaciers, and talk about climate change . We explained that 35 years ago this glacier was touching the water. It reminded them of the documentary, Chasing the Ice.

Fun at the hotel between glacier excursions. It was really great that the hotel had so much free space for the kids to roam. We spent a lot of time supervising from the warmth inside while they ran around for hours. 

The Grey Glacier is very different. It is part of the southern ice field and is massive. 

On our way out of the park we stopped at this hotel in the middle of Lago Pehoe to have lunch. But, I begged Carl to pass after reading that the lunch was 'pig pulp'. No idea what that is, but I surely didn't care to find out. 

 

Kids with a guanaco in the background. 

I have been impressed with the picture quality from my phone. We finally did the Salto Grande hike (from the super windy day). The views were as wonderful as we expected. 

~Stacy

Patagonia Pictures (hiking and horseback riding)

There's been a lot less down time on this vacation than I expected!! Finally, here are some more pictures from last week in Patagonia.

 This is a lake!! It was the day that it was so windy that we ended up changing our hike for fear of kids blowing off the ridge, or getting pelted with the many small rocks that were flying in the over 100mph winds.

 Windy and cold- but still adorable. For the most part the kids have gotten along remarkably well for having spent so much non stop time together :) I've been super impressed with their behavior and adventurous spirits.

 

The boys playing with the wind. 

 

The horse ride was both cool and terrifying. My horse hated water, so she decided to try and decapitate me by going through the woods instead of through this river with the others.

 But, my horse wasn't nearly as bad as Carl's! He kept nipping at Carl's ankle, and wanted to run whenever we reached an open space.








We did get to see lots of great wildlife during our ride, including these herds of sheep, lots of wild horses, and a couple of bulls!

The kids can't wait to go riding again; I'm taking them tomorrow morning. But, Carl says he is done for life!!

~Stacy

Friday - Checked out of Rio Serrano very early this morning to get to the Lago Grey glacier trip. The hotel packed an early breakfast for us which was a joke - bread so stale you needed to soak it in your mouth before it would soften up enough to swallow.

Lago Grey glacier was amazing. I was thinking maybe we would skip it because we'd seen glaciers on the rio serrano river navigation trip, but I'm glad we didn't. This glacier is truly stunning - Stacy will post some pictures of it soon. The boat could use a bit of an engine upgrade, the 3 hour trip should probably have only been 1.5 hours. Ryan got pretty tired of the boat ride, but it was definitely worth doing.

On our way out of the park, we stopped to do the short walk to Salto Grande, the waterfall walk that was too windy when we'd attempted it on Tuesday. It was pleasant, very short. There was a small cafeteria near the trailhead, where we paid $60 for very pathetic sandwiches.

We got back to Puerto Natales with a full quarter tank of gas remaining, where we re-fueled. Gas here costs about 820 pesos/liter, which is about $5.10/gal. Interestingly, the grades are 93/95/97 octane.

The drive back to Punta Arenas is long, but was made shorter by quiet kids and Stacy reading aloud. We got back into town around 7:00pm, where we looked for accommodations. We ended up in a hostel near downtown. We were up in the very top of an old building - not a single surface was level or plumb. Since we had to wake up so early the next morning for our flight, our total time in this hostel was about 7 hours - for a cool $130.

Saturday - Woke up super early to get to the airport. Dropping of the rental car was simply a matter of parking it at the airport and dropping the keys through a hole in a desk inside. We were dismayed to see a much longer check in line than we would have liked, but ended up making the flight about 10minutes before they opened the doors for boarding. Ryan did a lot of homework on the flight, Ella slept on my lap the whole time.

We had a 4-hour layover in Santiago where we ate more crappy sandwiches, but had good wifi.

The 2-hour flight from Santiago north to Calama was uneventful, but very turbulent. I think it was the most turbulent flight I've ever been on, with lots of stomach churning drops and weaves. The kids did fine, but I was pretty green by the time we got off. I couldn't get off that plane fast enough.

In Calama, a guy from our hotel (Tierra Atacama) was there to greet us with a sign! That was a first for me. He drove us to the hotel (another hour-twenty). This hotel is really, really nice. We're in a 3-bedroom suite with a patio and view of the nearby volcano. It's really stunning. The service and food here are the best we've had in Chile.

I really feel like this trip will feel like 3 very separate experiences:
Santiago: Stressful and hectic city
Torres del Paine: Gorgeous vistas and glaciers, very remote.
Atacama: Luxurious and relaxing restort in the middle of gigantic, stark desert.

Patagonia & Happy Thanksgiving!

Carl gave you most of the details, now I get to fill in with pictures :)

Thank goodness it's so amazingly beautiful around here! That was the only thing that made Monday's drive enjoyable. We saw some really cool animals, tons of guanacos, 2 rheas (like ostrich, and that was extremely lucky because they were hours apart and are rare here), andean condors, tons of sheep, and several black chested buzzard eagles.

We have seen a several cool adventure vehicles. Carl was extremely envious of this one.

As we crossed over a small hill we found hundreds of cows in the road! There were several guachos (Chilean Cowboys) with their dogs, trying to herd them. We literally turned the car off for about 10 minutes while cows of all sizes streamed around us. Small cows would take off and the dogs would chase after it. It was fascinating to watch!

It was worth it, this is the room from our hotel room!! The Rio Sorrano is a decent hotel. The staff really warmed us to us after being here for several days (most of the guests are here for one night in large tour groups). They were especially wonderful with the kids. The food was better than we have had elsewhere in Chile, but still not great. 

I will add lots more Sunday when we have better internet (we hope...)

Monday - Checked out of our surprisingly nice hostel in Puerto Natales, getting gas on the way out of town. Then started our nearly eternal drive from  Puerto Natales to the national park of Torres del Paine.

Now, this drive in theory should only take about 2.5 hours. However, we managed to stretch it to about 7 hours. The roads in the park roughly form a giant circle. You enter via the southeast part of the circle, and our destination is at the western edge of the circle. Naturally, we drove the southern route. About 20km from our destination, the road closed. Crap. We'd already gone about 70km. A guy posted at the road closure looked at us with pity as he confirmed we needed to backtrack 70km, and then drive about 150km around the top of the circle nearly back to where we were. All while watching the gas needle drop.

As we backtracked, we figured we'd make a little 10km detour to get gas in Cerro Castillo. But no - they had no gas until morning. Turns out gasoline is very hard to come by here. We headed into the park, and the silver lining was that this is just about the most beautiful place to drive, with stunning views of the mountains, as well as wildlife (Condors, Eagles, Lesser Rheas, and Guanacos).

We arrived at our hotel at dinnertime, very glad to have arrived with just under 3/4 tank. Thankfully our trusty Optra XL sips gas.

Tuesday - Our plan for this day was to go on a short hike that is reported to have some of the most stunning views in the world. We drive there (using precious gasoline!), only to have two locals beg us to turn around. The winds here were topping 100mph, and they both said it would be absolutely treacherous for children. One said they'd seen a kid literally picked off his feet by the wind. So much for our hike. We ended up doing a less windy boardwalk hike near the Explora hotel and a small waterfall. Turns out Tuesday was exceptionally windy, even by the standards of this extremely windy place.

Wednesday - I have not ridden a horse for 22 years. Against my better judgement, I signed us all up for a horseback riding excursion. We each got our own horse, even the kids, but theirs were led by the guides - a "gaucho" named Miguel, and an english speaking Chilean guide named Jorge.

I swear that horse could sense my hatred of the beasts. It did not like me, it kept trying to nip at my ankles. I wanted it to walk like the rest of the horses, but it did not want to. We eventually reached an uneasy truce, however, as I let it trot and gallop a little bit, hanging on for dear life. Stacy's horse wasn't much better, as it tried to decapitate her on every low-hanging branch it could find. The trip was gorgeous though, and Ella had a complete blast.

Thursday - Today we signed up for a full day excursion to navigate the Rio Serrano river by Zodiak. We got bundled up in some super heavy duty antarctic suits to protect us from the wind and weather. Turns out today's weather was actually great, with very little wind, and we were a bit hot in all our layers. We got to two different glaciers, took a little hike, and ended the trip with some great bbq lamb. Happy Thanksgiving!

Some Random Pictures & Memories of Santiago

If you ask the kids what we ate and drank in Chile they will probably tell you that they drank a lot of juice and ate a lot of dessert. Carl has finally worn me down after years and I am learning to enjoy some wines.  A classic Chilean drink is the Pisco Sour, it's pretty good, but often too sweet. 

This was the pool at the Holiday Inn in the Santiago Airport.

As we were packing up to leave our AWESOME apartment in Lastarria (living room below), we watched a protest about education from our balcony. 

The kids are taking their parkour homework seriously ;)

Supposedly one of the world's best ice cream shops, we may agree!

View from the pool level of our first hotel, the Bellas Artes Aparts.

I thought it was really cool that there is a large course in Santiago where major streets are shut down every Sunday for people to come out and run and bike. There are attendants helping with road closures and even refueling stations. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the history included in our Tours for Tips Tour. This is the Palacio de la Moneda, where the presidential offices are. It was where the coup took place 9/11/73.