The One With The Extra Week In The Driest Desert In The World

"...and I, I took the road less traveled by..."

Yep – I decided to make a by-the-seat-of-my-pants decision, and in lieu of my stay in Santiago, stay for an extra 4 days in San Pedro de Atacama. After I ventured up into the Andes for the first time to the El Geyser del Tatio, spent some time chatting with the second group of travelers I’ve had the pleasure of encountering on this continent (a Paolino, Brit, porteno, Germans, etc.), I realized I was going to need waaaay more time than I anticipated here.

Tatio was incredible – the 4 AM wake-up was not – I was almost angry at these 2 Aussies in  our tour group for saying that, well, they’d seen the geyser at Yellowstone, so this was nothing *insert Aussie scoff here*. Okay, it was as cold as I’ve been since that skating trip to China-but-almost-Siberia in February of 2010, but it’s so hard to care when you’re surrounded by nature that fabulous and breathtaking. We stopped off for lunch and souvenirs at a little mountain town, I enjoyed a hot cup of Nescafe (I drank plenty of this during my tenure in City Year so I actually like the taste) and a freshly made empanada with queso de cabra. I was trying to be very purposeful about my breathing – being that far up in elevation with asthma ain’t cute, let me tell you – when all of a sudden I couldn’t swallow my bite of empanada. I tried not to panic, but the voice in my head had definitely lost it, saying things like, “MARY did you know when you’re up in elevation swallowing becomes more difficult as well?! Oh, you can’t breathe?! SHIT we can’t breathe!”, and for about 5 seconds I thought it was all over. (It wasn’t, I’m fine, and sitting in a café in town now writing this.) We got back to San Pedro around 1:30, I took a nap and drank my body weight in water to treat it to the oxygen it deserved, and when I woke up a few hours later, it was because of what sounded like someone trying to round up a group of feral cats. Meandering outside, I came to find it was Catalina’s neighbor from the finca across the way on his daily llama drive. LLAMAS! I watched like a woman saying goodbye to her long distance lover as he drives away in a taxi – don’t worry I resisted the urge to run after them – until I couldn’t see them anymore, and for the rest of the daylight hours, enjoyed coffee and produce with Seinfeld in Cata’s backyard.

The next few days were filled with a more traditional vacation feel – lounging around, reading “Wild”, eating in a different café every night for dinner, trying Pisco Sours made with different herbs, and hanging around with Klaus and his friends. Oh, that was the other thing – I didn’t feel quite as bad about not making it to Santiago because Klaus offered me a free place to stay in San Pedro. It’s hard to say no to beautiful Chilean green-eyed men, I learned.

Las Piedras Rojas, red volcanic rocks that get their shapes from ice wedging. B-e-a-utiful!

Plus, it gave me time to take another excursion to the mountains to marvel at the wonders of Mother Nature. This trip was kind of all-encompassing – desayuno, Las Piedras Rojas, Lagunas Altiplanicas (llaman Miniques y Miscanti), almuerzo, y Salar del Carmen (2^nd largest salt flat in the world, next to Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni). I was exhausted when I got home around 6 PM (we’d left at sunrise, around 7:45 AM), but ho-ly crap was it a beautiful day. Being the only native English-speaker on the tour was a whole other experience – even though the tour guide offered to translate everything from Spanish for me and for me alone (cue Penelope Cruz from Vicky Cristina Barcelona asking Cristina, “You know no Spanish?...You studied Chinese? Why? You think that sounds pretty?”), it was both a great opportunity for me to try to understand more Spanish (I did better than I thought) and the kick in the pants I needed to convince myself to take a few Spanish language classes once I move to Massachusetts. At each stop, after the guide’s explanation, I’d wander off across the incredible landscape by myself, taking it all in, having what I imagine feels like a religious experience, imagining myself the only woman in this entire place. It’s easy to see how one can find almost immediate and lasting peace in places like these.

“When I had no roof, I made

Audacity my roof.” 

- Robert Pinsky