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The town's church was built in the 17th century during Spanish colonial rule, replacing a church built a hundred years earlier. A few days acclimatising in San Pedro and building our endurance would prepare us to explore at 4500 metres towards the end of the week. At that altitude the oxygen level goes down to just 55% of normal, so star jumps and cartwheels aren't recommended.
For years I’d longed to visit the original Explora hotel in Patagonia, seemingly on the edge of world before Antarctica. I expected to go on this trip before discovering the distances involved. Too much travelling in just eleven days with kids, so we decided to stay in the top half of Chile.
I wasn’t as drawn to Explora Atacama when I saw it on the internet. It looked architecturally modern and a bit austere. More raw and a less boutique than the other luxury lodge in San Pedro, Awasi, but the design is clever. Explora felt like an authentic research and discovery centre made luxe with perfectly comfortable rooms and superb beds, pools, large stables, an observatory and a truly excellent restaurant and bar. Seriously good guides, with a passion for the desert ecology and geology fired our interest and kept the boys fully engaged.
Our initial meeting in the map room was to understand the local region and plan our activities.
I know that all countries have different customs, but there was an awful lot of pampas grass around and a bowl in the lobby for everyone to throw their keys into. Just saying.
Our first trip out gave us a feel for the desert. The boys loved learning about the plant life and desert animals; rarely seen mountain lions, foxes, flamingos, and rabbits with huge long furry tails.
Four of the seven types of camelid are found here - llamas, vicunas, alpacas, and guanacos. The vicunas have the softest wool but they're protected in Chile so cannot be farmed. Loro Piana who have made this wool central to their clothing brand rely on farmland in Peru for supply. The boys found pottery fragments from 2000 year old civilisations and collected Rica Rica plants to make tea.
We saw cave art of llamas from pre Inca civilisations. These petroglyphs date back around 4000 years.
They can date these petroglyphs because the sun changes the colour of the rocks over time and they can judge the tonal variation on the incised artworks.
Next day we ventured into the wilderness to find the sand dunes. I'd been to the huge dunes in Sossusvlei Namibia and knew the boys would love this.
Not being antisocial, but there’s something special about having a few thousand square miles to ourselves. That sense of isolation in nature is deeply awesome.
Running, sliding, rolling, cascading down a 500ft sand dune. The boys favourite day all year, they said!
Jack's taken the lead in the downhill. He’s joined a running club in London and is taking after his mum who successfully ran marathons at amateur level.
Possibly the most fun you can have with your clothes on, except you do end up with an inch of sand in your shoes and just about everywhere else.
The Atacama salt flats are the third largest in the world at 1200 square miles. A little further north are the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest at 4000 square miles of emptiness These salt flats were not so flat.
I imagined they’d be like the ones you break land speed records on. But you wouldn’t want to test out your Ferrari here as the salt bubbles up from underneath, part of the drainage from the surrounding mountains leaving a rough, textured, uneven surface as ephemeral surface water evaporates. You’d need a very sturdy 4x4 to cross it. The sink hole lake Laguna Cejar has salt concentrations up to 28% giving similar floating effects to the Dead Sea.
Here we had more flamingos on the lakes too. Three of the six species of flamingo like the harsh climate of the Atacama desert.
Explora Hotel has large stabling with fine looking full size horses, not the shorter legged Chilean horses more suited to the Andean mountains.
The boys love horses and we'd managed to sneak in three sessions on this trip.
The last time we took the horses out we stayed local to San Pedro and Gaby took the lead.
I held back with our guide discussing South American history and politics for two hours, with me offering a little of ours in return. Happily the boys were very comfortable with their horses. I learnt a lot more about Chile in that time.
The pools were located on the edge of the resort and accessed along the sleeper-decking walkways through the vegetation. James and Jack liked the warmer whirlpool nestled in the bushes and were just as happy in the four long pools which were much cooler. This was a quiet space with a bar, sauna steam room and no competition for beds.
Not for the faint hearted this is a spectacular area of trails, caves and gorges.
You do need to dismount at times to carry your bikes over and through, but at each next turn you’re hit with another striking vista that's just, Wow!
The altitude and thin atmosphere with beating sun makes the hotel very conscious about sunburn. 50 factor SPF is placed at various stations in litre bottles.
Altitude and sunstroke would also be an issue exacerbated by alcohol. Needless to say the boys weren't allowed any beer during the day! ☹
I followed Gaby into this squeeze too fast with phone in one hand and slightly shredded my knuckles on one side!
Rainbow valley has dramatically varied rock formations in striking colours due to more than 250 minerals that the earth contains.
Early morning at 4500 metres is cold. We passed a lake on the way up where the ducks were just being released as the sun thawed the melting ice around their legs, which had frozen them in situ. I wondered if that was where the term 'sitting duck' came from as apparently the desert foxes don't have to work too hard at breakfast time.
El Taito is the highest geyser field in the world and third largest. We were warned not to get too close or test the temperature. Apparently it's been a few years since the last person stumbled into a boiling hot sink hole while trying to arrange a selfie. His body wasn't recovered until sometime after.
The geysers spout at their own rhythm. This one was every two minutes for exactly eighteen seconds.
Not what we expected at 3500 metres altitude in the middle of nowhere, but beautifully warm crystal clear springs for swimming and relaxation.
Being at such high altitude with so little pollution makes everything much sharper. Even looking at the moon in the afternoon you get a real sense of its 3D contours. Various countries have built astronomy stations on the mountains here including a very large Japanese one we passed which has its own private road up to the peak. Explora also has its own smaller observatory where they give in depth lectures on the stars, planets and galaxies.
Here the Milky Way is revealed amongst the millions of stars just by looking up.
Tectonic activity has produced the Andes Mountain range that separates Chile from Argentina, and the ongoing instability means Chile has recorded a third of the largest twenty earthquakes in history including one in 1960 which holds the record at 9.6 on the Richter scale.
The Mapuche were the indigenous tribe which held back the conquest of the entire region until they were finally subjugated in the 19th century. Their culture still has strong influence in this essentially Spanish colony, which finally achieved independence in 1818 following the collapse of Spanish power after the Napoleonic wars in Europe.
In 2010, the Chilean mining disaster had 33 workers trapped a kilometre underground for 69 days. My brother-in-law Lee Sheward spent three months there in 2014 as Second Unit Director filming the story, ‘The 33’, with Antonia Banderas.
Would we recommend Chile for an adventure trip? Most definitely.
True Tarte Tatins take time (alliteration not intended 😊), the preparation of this version is super quick. I used up a spare roll of puff pastry; apples and nuts are always on hand here.
Try these delicious treats at home. You won't be disappointed.
Here's a bit of fun for Christmas which the kids will love having a go with. You'll need the cookie cutters, but they come in all shapes, sizes and designs nowadays.