Atacama: The Geysers

So it's one thing to excitedly talk about going to the geysers at 4 AM. It's quite another thing to do it on one hour of sleep due to insomnia and when it takes two hours of bumpy roads to get there. And I don't have any leg room in the van or a space to put my head. Needless to say I spent those two hours in a foul mood. It mixed with the lack of sleep and roughness of the road to make me horribly sick for the last hour. Not off to a good start.

By eight or so I start feeling a little better and can beginning getting pictures of things. Since we are going to "the geysers" these things are pretty obs geysers. Here's a few pics.

Oh hey, looks like an abandoned project got in there. The government tried to build a geothermal plant here, but decided it wasn't worth the cost.

The small vents are pretty fun, though the egg smell isn't helping my naseau. In reverse-homeopathic fashion I decide that if a little egg smell hurts me, a big egg smell must cure me. That means bigger geysers.

We have to stay on special paths here. The ground is fragile and can easily cave underneath. That's a surefire way to get yourself seriously hurt. At least five people have died in these vents. One is named "The French Geyser" after the nationality of the first man who burned to death here. Our guide finds this unusually amusing.



The last stop in the geysers is a hot spring. Everybody but me bathes here. I'm not too keen on the idea (and I don't have any other clothes), so I head off to check out the landscape.



As we head back our guide decides to make a stop at a local village. It's a tourist town in every sense of the word; only six or seven people live here. The rest are transients.

We head in for the sole purpose of getting shish-kabobs. They're five dollars apiece, way higher than we'd pay in any sort of sane situation. On the other hand, they're the only place in San Pedro you can eat llama.

Llama is surprisingly tender.

We land back in San Pedro. I'm still a little queasy, so I pass on a hike. Instead I try to find a restaurant serving local cuisine. This takes me far out of the hostel and across the town. I was wrong about it being dead all of the time, because I was living on the very outskits. The center is bustling with life, and at times I can see more people than in a UChicago sosc class. A real sosc, not Mind.

Incidentally, the first thing I've gotta do when I get back in Chicago is... settle in to my new apartment. But the second thing is... probably helping Orin renovate stuff. Third thing is... okay, *somewhere* down the line I have to find a local market that sells entrails. Cow tongues are amazing.

I end the day watching the stars. We can make out the band of the Milky Way and the Southern Cross. Tomorrow is our last day in the desert, and probably the day I'm most excited about. Hopefully I won't have the same issues I did today. Guess I'll find out tomorrow.