3rd Nov. 2016
As a rule, we are not geezers who do early mornings. However, exceptions must be made as another ‘must do’ trip from San Pedro is to see the geysers at El Tatio. We are thrilled that Laura, Léa & Alma want us to be part of their group on the tour and so Laura makes the booking for us on the way back from Piedras Rojas yesterday. Even better, because we will be in a small (12 seat) minibus, it is a 5am pickup rather than the usual 4am. (We’re also a bit in awe of these girls as each of them speaks 3 or 4 languages and easily flits from English to Spanish to French – and to German, in Laura’s case – with ease).
The downside of this particular trip is that the action of the geysers is driven by some combination of cold air and sunlight – and so they are only active for a couple of hours after dawn. So it is 4:30 in the morning and the alarm is going off. “Switch the light on”, I say to Janet but we find that there is no power in the room. Once again the flashlight function in my phone is a godsend as we put on as many layers of clothes as we can – whilst it is a comfortable temperature in San Pedro, we are going to be going much higher and have been told that it is very cold waiting for dawn to break.
As we wait for our pick up, we can see that it is not just our hostel that is without electricity – none of the buildings have lights on and there we can only see a couple of working streetlights. It turns out that one of the inter-city buses has collided with a power pylon and brought down the transmission lines! The benefit of the lack of light and our early start is that there is little light pollution and skies are jammed full of stars with the band of the Milky Way clearly visible. (We had wanted to a guided astronomy trip and/or a visit to the nearby ALMA observatory – but the former was booked up and the latter can only be visited by booking ahead on a Saturday or Sunday by when we will have moved on).
The El Tatio geysers are around 90km outside of town and as the minibus bounces along the dirt road, we all try and grab a little bit more sleep. The sky lightens and then the sun rises half an hour before we get to the geysers and we wonder if the later start was the wrong trade off to make – after all, the difference between getting up at 4:30 or 3:30 is immaterial and we do want to see the best show of the geysers. Of course, the car park is full of tourist buses when we arrive and we join another queue to buy tickets and sign waiver forms that we’ll follow the guide’s instructions & that we know the risks – we are talking about boiling water here, and apparently there have been some accidents (by folk doing stupid things).
It is light but still cold (below freezing, judging by the pools of ice) by the time that we get to the geysers at around 7:30 and our initial reaction is “well, is that it?” Whilst there are dozens of columns of steam rising up from the ground, there are no great spouts of water leaping 10s of feet into the air. We are free to wander around but are told to stay outside of the areas marked out by red painted stones or that are walled off. On closer inspection, we see that some of the geysers are actually pulsing out jets of (boiling) water perhaps about 6 feet in the air.
Felipe, our driver and guide, explains that the colder the air temperature, the more vigorous the geysers are. In the winter, it can get down to -20C pre-dawn and whilst this does give a better display, people sometimes don’t want to get out of the bus. In the summer, it is so warm that there is no activity and then the tours go to a different part of the geyser field where there is more consistent activity. We take the hint that we have a fair compromise and start to concentrate on taking some worthwhile photographs of jets of steam and mostly obscured rock pools of bubbling water. Ah, the hardship!
Sure enough, by 9am the columns of steam become fewer in number and wispier and less distinct in nature. There is a brief pause by the thermal baths – which are busy enough – but none of our group wants an early morning dip and we settle instead for a few more photos of the rock pools and remaining geysers. Apparently, this is one of five major geyser fields in the world. We have seen the geysers in New Zealand and those in Iceland and Yellowstone Park in the US are on our ‘must visit’ list. We aren’t so sure about those in Kamchatka in Russia (which we only know about from the game of Risk).
On our way back, Felipe gives us more of a commentary and there are several photo stops for scenery and for wildlife both of which we continue to find fascinating. There is even a bonus of some flamingos grazing (?) relatively close to the shore in one of the lakes. After a final stop in the village of Machuca (another church and cemetery!), we’re back in San Pedro in time for lunch – homemade empanadas in a little café by the bus station where we also get our bus tickets for tomorrow. Whilst the electricity is now back on in town our plan for an afternoon siesta though is thwarted when the folk in the hostel decide it is time for some DIY and out come the electric drills and power saws. Oh well, it might have been a good idea but all of these tours are making us further behind with the blog and so there is always more to do.
In the evening, after a final wander round San Pedro – mostly confirming that there isn’t that much to see in town itself, we meet up for a final dinner – and Pisco Sours – with Léa and Alma. We met them a little over a week ago by one of those chance occurrences that just seem to happen whilst you are travelling. We’ve been on pretty much the same itinerary during this time and have enjoyed their company as we have swapped stories of places we have been and places we want to go. They have another day in San Pedro before heading to a beach south of Santiago. We’re also heading to the beach (and looking forward to being out of the desert) but it will be 2 or 3 weeks before we get to Santiago. So, having connected on Facebook, we say goodbye and hope that it is more a case of ‘au revoir’.