No, yea – really…. go on yeAAAA? That’s how the conversation started, which if I admit is a breath of fresh air from the usual; how long are you travelling, where have you been/going, have you seen…. blah blah blah etc.
I’ve covered nearly 40,000km so far, I’ve met some people who know about where I lived in London some even have heard of Clonmel (I know I was shocked too!) but when you meet some one with an Essex accent you can tell where they are from straight away – and for me, thanks to the parents we have lived in a few ‘choice’ places in that county so I know it very well and from this point its just a case of how many similarities will occur – I wasn’t expecting to find out that Miss Essex went to the rival school of mine and then follows up with starting her nights out with the girls in my old man’s boozer and then they went on to frequent pretty much all my old stomping grounds – its good or quite sad to hear they are all still there?!?! The conversation unravels with more disturbing facts and similar stories of Essexness over the next number hours whilst sitting on the beach taking in the view.
Its agreed that its wine o’clock and time to get going, now at this point I’m very worried what wine is to Essex – I accidentally ordered a bottle of Asti Spumante a number of years ago in Italy thinking ‘how bad can it actually be’ well thank the Greek goods that the choice is not Asti, Lambrini or Pink Pinot but straight forward red wine – phew! Chile has some great wine – in fact it has beautiful wine and I can’t get enough of it so when you have a taste for it like mine and a budget for it like a traveller you make the easy decision – Size Vs Quantity = 2lts of Cab Sav for a little over $3.00 – hoo haaa make it two!
What happened over the next couple of hours with some more people from the hostel was just pure drunken debauchery, we gained entry to a club which was celebrating its bday – free food and drink till 01:00 – its 11:30 ish – yip lets have some of that, in fact in the words of Miss Essex “lets go rape the bar” and so my love of Pisco grows ever more!
Now reading about drunk stories are not the best way to understand them but a couple of items I might elaborate on if pressed over a pint or two some day; “esta en el fuego!” double completos, hostel address on your arm, Mr Israel asleep and I’m not ready to go just yet.
Safe to say a Pisco hangover is a horrible hangover to have – it kinda makes you think your ok but really your just plain useless so an 18hr bus to San Pedro is not what I am looking forward to, thankfully I got the night bus so I have about 10 hours to kill along with the hangover and at some point I might actually get my shit together. Miss Essex should have been on an earlier bus but with her complete lack of Spanish and a smile she has managed to change it to the same one as me – at the time it seems like a great idea – I mean how much worse could it get after having 2lts of wine and probably 2lts of Pisco too?
‘Yea mmmmm its a bit dusty here’ were the first words when we stepped off the bus. Now to say that would be an understatement – they place is in the middle of nowhere its the size of a postage stamp and the buildings are all made from mud Lego, of course a road sign or name is totally out of the question, the directions for the hostel which for once I’ve been forward prepared to take down on a piece of paper are as follows, with my translation along side;
Hostel dir; Leave the bus station and head towards XYZ road
RPD dir; get off the bus and look around for 5 mins at a cross roads which has no name on any road
HD; walk until you meet XYZ road and XYZ road – turn left
RPD; after you’ve humped your bag around for 15 mins you find a fork in the road I hope its the right one and turn left
HD; walk north through the cemetery
RPD; which bollocking way is north and im fucked if I’m going to walk through a cemetery
HD; At ZYX road turn left and we are just past the football pitch
RPD; is that a bar – fuck this lets call in and ask them!
At this point in my narration I should pause and tell you all about San Pedro de Atacama it would help paint the picture or so they say! SP is in the north east ish part of Chile its on the boarder with Bolivia which you can get to via the Salt Flats which in itself is massive and is no wonder that all the food in Chile is over seasoned with the stuff! So you can take a 2/3/4/5 day trip onto the salt flats and take lots of pictures which throws the perspective out – on my way back south I’ll make the trip so you can see what I mean then. SP is also an area which is great for astronomy as you can get up to 2500/3000 mtrs above sea level with no light pollution, they also have amazing deserts, mountains, lakes with flamingos in them and really to be honest this place shouldn’t be anywhere near as beautiful as it is! I say that because its a dusty little town in middle of nowhere, where tourists and travellers are charged a fortune just to see natural beauty which should be free!
Anyway I digress a little, when you walk down their version of a High Street you are grabbed from every angle to get you to sign up for a tour and after a day and a half of doing nothing Miss Essex and I decide we should really do something touristy and ‘tick the box’ – I mean why else have we come here!
Been honest the trip was decided over a glass or two of wine and which pictures looked the nicest – of course I opted for the one where a girl was in a bikini standing in a lake, “I want to top up the tan and sit in the water for the day” I said and that settles it, “I’ll get the tickets you get some more vino”.
OK so its a 06:00 start, but they are going to give us breakfast with a view – so that’s grand. At approx 05:55 I peal my face off the pillow and throw on some shorts and that tee-shirt, camera packed and I’m all good to go. Miss Essex is set and we are waiting for the knock on the front gate, when it comes Miss Essex opens up to meet the guide who promptly asks her where she is going and a classic reply was “off to your version of the beach which is in the desert”
“And you – why are you wearing shorts?” he asks pointing at me!
“What is it going to be cold or something?” actually now that I’m looking at him dressed head to toe in North Face ‘I’m going to walk the Antartic’ edition jacket and pants….. I think I’m going and put some more clothes on and leave the swimmers behind!
We climb up to 2,800 meters stop the van beside a frozen lake and get the breakfast out – its fucking freezing, actually no its absolutely fucking fucking freezing – I can see snow, the lake is covered in ice which is so thick you can walk on it and the wind is blowing its bollox off! Now I don’t want to be the person who put sand in the sun cream but why on gods earth have I paid to eat sweet bread and shite coffee on top of a very cold mountain? Pictures taken and fingers ready to drop off we all pile back in to the waggon and set off.
He takes a left turn onto a road which is not a road and then we bump our way along a sort of desert place, we stop off at various points to see some strange shaped rocks which also looks like an face of an Indian (which looking back actually does!) then we go along a ‘road’ which is never ending and just vast the pictures gives you no scale what so ever. Then we stop at the start of a canyon more pictures of incredible scale and then its time for lunch, a lovely lake in the middle of nowhere which has 3 flamingos and not a bikini dressed woman in sight – I hope lunch makes up for this fact I mumble to myself!
Now don’t get me all the wrong way round, I do like my tourist stuff the landscape here is just amazing the size is incredible but doing this the tourist thing – no that’s not me. To start with I’m with a bunch of monkeys that ask the most stupidest questions – one of them is even carrying an altitude meter so he knows the precise height we have climbed (2818meters) the other gobshite is taking a picture of every bit of land he looks at and asks my favourite question of the day at the start when we were on the road up to the top of the mountain. We passed a volcano shaped mountain and the chap next to the driver points at it and asks him “how would you climb up that?” The urge to answer with “fucked if he knows fella – does he look like a mountaineer, he’s just steering the bus!?” but I didn’t need too the driver just looks at him, shrugged his shoulders, gives him a look like a Deputy Dog and carries on driving.
So San Ped done, it was a cool trip but three days is enough to spend in an over inflated tourist town, its time to ‘Fox Trot Oscar’ out of here and anyway I want to see the beach again – this desert lark is far too dry for my liking.
Where’s that map and what’s close to here……………. 9hrs to Iquique – that will do!
the bean hunter 