The Geysers and Flamingoes in San Pedro de Atacama

San Pedro de Atacama is a green oasis in the vast and arid northern sector of Chile, you can see the town miles away as you drive the rail-straight route from the airport at Calama. Calama is a mining town, the world´s biggest open-pit copper mine is here, and our guide told us that getting a job in the mine is like hitting the jackpot. You get the best wages, free health care and prescriptions, your family is taken care of and you practically have to kill somebody to get fired. In fact the few times the union has struck, it has been hours not days, before being resolved. Job openings occur only upon employee deaths.

But we passed out of the grimy miner´s town and 2 hours later were in a wonderful place, San Pedro, a town of 2400 or so with adobe houses, and a lovely town square with shady trees. The restaurants are all on one main drag, barely wide enough for a car to pass. Most of them feature an inner square with a firepit, open to the air. Cool music plays, sort of jazzy ambience, mixed with some soul, and everything was good and cheap. The main thing people do here is leave town--to see the geysers, which if you start at 4 am and drive 2.5 hours over stoney terrible roads, present themselves in full steaming glory between 7 and 9 am.

We also walked out to see flamingoes in a salt lake bed and hiked a mountain pass at 13,000 feet, revived by coca tea in a little low slung tea house-restaurant on the road back. Chile is full of wonderful places and awesome panoramas, fantastic!