The joys of sandboarding

It's a strange fact when you are travelling that you don't see many American backpackers. British, French, German, Australian, some Japanese, but the richest nation on earth doesn't seem to produce its fair share of travellers.

I have to confess I hadn't given this matter too much thought before, but then a young American woman on the minibus for our sandboarding trip (more below) mentioned that her parents were ready to have her committed to a mental institution when she told them she was quitting her boring finance job to go and explore South America. Apparently gap years and OEs are unheard of in a country where getting your boss to give you two weeks' summer holiday in one stretch is pushing it.
And I thought Donald Trump was reason enough not to live in the US.

Anyway, sandboarding: now there's something I hadn't put on the itinerary. But an organised trip was available from San Pedro, and Sam was keen, so he and I headed out to some dunes in an area rather ominously called Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley), about 15 minutes outside town. You turn off the main drag onto a track cut between high, dramatic red rock/earth formations, and come out in an area of dunes surrounded on one side by rock walls, and with more folded red rock shapes below you. And beyond them, those fabulous snow capped mountains. The views are stunning.

Sandboarding, as you may have guessed, is just like snowboarding, but on sand. The equipment is exactly the same - boots, board and helmet. Once knitted out you trudge up the ridge of a sand dune carrying your board, and then attempt to slide to the bottom without falling over too often. I don't know if anyone has invented a tow lift for 20-metre-high sand dunes, but if so, it isn't being used in San Pedro de Atacama. And walking up sand is hard going. 
Sandboarding is also hard, I found. But then I've never done any sort of boarding (skate, surf, snow etc) and as my Pilates instructor can attest, balance isn't my strong point. Still we had a great time, Sam and I. The joy of sandboarding, as opposed to any of the other boardings mentioned above, is that the landing is very soft. Sand is also nice and warm. I may still have grains in my ears when I get back to New Zealand from numerous plantings and rolls, but it didn't hurt a bit.

That's one way of doing it, Mandow. Or you could stand up and look cool, like Sam did.

The tour (part 2): the pictures

It's a hideous cliché, but also a truth widely acknowledged by everyone except perhaps print journalists, that a picture paints a thousand words. So I could tell you about the rest of the AMAZING, initially I'll-fated (especially for the dog) day - about exquisite desert lakes with reflections of snow-capped volcanos, about vicunas, and flamingos on a huge salt flat, and some amazing red rocks. Or I could post a small selection of photos. If the Wifi allows. Fingers crossed...

The organised tour

You book a tour and (as instructed) rush up at 6.30am in the dark and desert cold and stand outside the hostel waiting. And one and a half chilly hours later all that has happened is it's got a bit lighter and a small woolly black dog (one of many that roam cheerfully around San Pedro de Atacama) has been quietly and messily sent to his next life by a passing van. And then your bus arrives and you head out of town, through the backstreets.

But then you mysteriously turn around and head back again - twice - so that at 9.30am you once again pass the end of the street you left three hours before. And you stop guiltily for mediocre scrambled eggs in a village that was probably nice before it became the stopping place for tourist buses like yours. (Though it has got a nice church, which you photograph like a good tourist).

And an enthusiastic guide tells you heaps of fascinating stuff about the geology of the desert, except it's almost incomprehensible in English and all the Chilean tourists are asleep, so no one's listening to the Spanish.

But you do see some vicunas, like small, tough llamas that can survive in desert conditions - super-hot during the day in summer and super-cold (like minus 30) at night in winter.

And then suddenly you climb up and up and up and you have to stop being a vile disgruntled gringo wondering about the insanity of taking an organised tour. Because what you see from then on is just so AMAZING!

Must go. Geoff's itching to go and get dinner. More in the next post...

Into the desert

Going north from Santiago by air, Chile looks like it's made of dusty, worn, maroon-ish velvet, puckered and rucked up to make fabric hills. It's as barren as anything you've ever seen, except from time to time there are places that look like (and could possibly be) giant salt flats, and the odd electric blue lake the sort of colour you might expect from a land filled with copper, as this part of Chile is. Of course the colour may have nothing to do with the copper, but it does look cool. 
On one side of of the puckered cloth is the sea, on the other side are snow-capped mountains. It's dramatic in an utterly un-NZ/European fashion.

And then you arrive in Calama, a nondescript mining town stuck in the middle of the desert, but with those snow-capped mountains behind. That's impressionante too. And you get in a bus and drive for a hour or so across greyish, reddish desert until you get to San Pedro de Atacama, a kind-of picturesque adobe brick tourist mecca, which is the base for visiting some amazing country around. Of which more soon.