The road to Calama goes down Volcano alley. You turn round a corner and there's another one with its distinctive conical shape. The area has apparently been quite active recently and you could see wisp of smoke around the top of some and a grey streak snaking from top to bottom. The delays meant that we didn't get to Calama until 1900, a long day travelling. More roads under construction meant a bumpy ride too.
Calama isn't the most picturesque of towns and the online posts warned of bag snatching around the bus station. There were plenty of people around at that time of night and I had booked a hotel quite close so not far to go. I don' know what more to say about Calama really apart from I found a supermarket for the first time since Washington! All the other places seem to have small family shops with no prices showing. So I picked up my first bottle of wine for a couple of weeks and went back to the hotel and watched telly. Morning and back to the bus station and got the bus to San Pedro De Atacama, an oasis in the desert and a gateway for the tourists. Got there early afternoon and walked through the main tourist area to get to my hotel. It is festooned with travel agents to ensure the income is extracted. I had a dilemma as while I had travelled thousands of miles to see the sights, I did not want to do wall to wall tours and not enjoy it. The agent wanted me to do a tour that afternoon, a full day tour the next, followed by a morning tour the third day and the bus journey back to Calama in the afternoon. It turned out that I was too late to book on the first afternoon tour and the third day morning tour was very early so I settled on the full day tour to see the flamingo reserve.
My first impression of my hotel was that it was a little remote and no telly to watch CNN. I picked up some cans of Heineken and settled down on the warm veranda with my book and the chilean equivalent of Pringles. After a good night sleep I woke on queue in time for breakfast and my tour pick up. First a man came asking for Maria and the receptionist sent him on his way saying that there was no one here of that name. Shortly after a minibus arrived and I got up and listened intently to the names. Not mine, another British couple got on and it sped off. The receptionist had gone to do some shopping and upon return was surprised and concerned that I was still sat there. I gave here the agent's booking slip and she phoned and had a protracted conversation. I listened to the Spanish and Maria seemed to be mentioned a lot. She eventually handed me the phone and in his broken English explained that the tour company had misread Mark for Maria. Sigh. He offered me the same tour the next day but I had accommodation booked. So he offered to try and get me another tour if he could get them in time. I asked him to try as a visit to Atacama without seeing anything wasn't ideal. He phoned me back to say he had managed to get a minibus that had just set off to return to pick me up. I hadn't got a clue where this one was going, Blackpool Illuminations perhaps?! It turned up and I got on and the first thing the tour guide said was where is your coat and something about volcanoes.
I needn't have worried as the tour was great and the weather was like a good English summer's day. And to my delight we saw two lots of flamingos, a lake, some little lama things and lots of rock formations. I enjoyed the company of English, French, Italians, Spanish and a Korean who got mild altitude sickness.
We were dropped back in town and I repeated my peaceful couple of hours alone on the warm evening veranda watching the dragonflies hovering and the swallows darting feet above the field catching flies.
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