One day of rest and relaxation (ie. cool packs, bandages and Ibuprofen) in Pucon was enough time to sort out my knee problems, so there was nothing stopping me from heading north again to make it to La Serena and further up the coast after that.
La Serena
Being the capital of the Coquimbo region and the second oldest city in Chile after Santiago, it is also a common entry point to the Elqui Valley, which is known for both being the most important wine region in northern Chile and one of the best places on the planet for astronomical research.
With about 320 days of sunshine a year, mostly cloud-free nights and high elevation, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the region was declared “the world’s first International Dark Sky Sanctuary” and is spotted by many space observatories.
It also proves as a great base for a stargazing tour – whenever anyone tells me that I get a chance to see the Milky Way. my response is usually ‘SIGN ME UP’!
The city itself doesn’t have much to offer, so I only stayed for 2 nights. Long enough for my credit card to switch ownership, unbeknownst to me.
Well, that’s the first time in all my travels that I “lost” something important, so all in all not too bad. While checking my online banking I saw that the new short-term owner apparently really likes McDonald’s and certain pubs in and around La Serena. Glad you had some beers on me, unknown thief.
Iquique
With my credit card freshly stolen, I ventured on to Iquique – a city in the far north of Chile and home to the world’s biggest urban sand dune: Cerro Dragón, or “Dragon Hill”.
‘What can you do there, Philipp?’
Easy, lads and lassies: You can go sandboarding with a nice view on the world’s biggest urban sand dune. And you can lose your phone in the dunes while doing that.
Only two days after unvoluntarily handing off my credit card to a new owner and thinking ‘Oh well, at least I didn’t lose my phone. Now THAT would be a real PITA, with all banking duties and logins depending on apps nowadays..’
Long story short:
Sandboarding requires a different skill in snowboarding as the one I currently posses: carving. If you can’t carve, you get stuck. If you get stuck, you might land on your butt once or twice; and that might cause your phone to decide to leave the sanctity of your pockets.
With the sunset imminent, I wasn’t able to keep looking for it for very long and had to return the next morning before sunrise.
Luckily I had ‘find my device’ active and could narrow down the search radius to about 5 meters. In addition with the bluetooth connection on my laptop, I managed to keep narrowing it down over the course of two hours and was able to ‘unsand’ it after almost giving up hope 15 times.
Other than that, sandboarding is pretty nice.
San Pedro de Atacama
The last stop in Chile before crossing the salt flats on my journey to Bolivia and also the central hub for an insane amount of activities and breathtaking locations.
Valle De La Luna
“Moon Valley” doesn’t wait long to show you where it got it’s name. In this otherworldly location rock and sand formations formed over hundreds of years make you forget that you’re just 15 kilometres away from civilisation.
Geysers Del Tatio
4320m above sea level, this place is the largest geyser field in the southern hemisphere and the third largest in the world. The whole area of 10m² is basically a volcanic crater and the sub-surface magma is the heat source for the more than 60 geysers and 300 hot springs that are located here.
Laguna Cejar
My last stop in San Pedro – Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra.
These two lagoons are located in the middle of nowhere, the former being a protected natural habitat for flamingos and the latter being a perfect opportunity for a nice swim and a float in salt water with a salinity just below the dead sea – 250mg of salt per liter.
Next stop:
Salar de Uyuni – Bolivia