Calamaty

A scant four hours after going to bed, following our Latin dinner, the alarm rang and it was off to the airport to catch our flight to Atacama.  The Atacama Desert is the driest in the world, covering a huge swathe of northern Chile on its high-altitude plateau.  It is definitely a highlight of our trip, including star gazing in the incredibly clear skies (lots of countries have observatories here), visiting the salt desert, floating in the Chilean equivalent of the Dead Sea...this really is an amazing region.

We flew into Calama, the main airport.  There are two things to do in Calama; one is to arrive by plane, and the other is to leave as quickly as you can.  The Lonely Planet guide to Chile describes the place in ways that should not appear on a family-orientated blog, but let's just say that they are completely accurate.

Things started well when we got to walk down steps off the plane!  I thought that was made illegal in the 1980s, but they rolled the staircase up to the door and down we got onto the runway tarmac.  I didn't kneel and kiss it, not wanting to offend local Roman Catholic sensibilities.

We then witnessed an epic battle trying to rent a car, where the local rental firm (who have a little desk right next to baggage claim) were adamant you couldn't rent one for four days.  You had to agree to rent for three and then they would charge you for the fourth when you were late returning it on the third.  Silvi and Ignacio played good-cop-bad-cop to get their confirmed four day booking, with Silvi as the bad one.  Pretty scary.  And although you can book and pay for GPS they don't and never have offered it.  Apparently it doesn't work in Calama.

Finally we drove away, didn't manage to get a scheduled tour of a mine (they "forgot" to change the website when they changed the tour details...18 months ago), and found ourselves eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in a shopping mall.  I guess we should have had low expectations with that one, but none of what we were served had been cooked within the last day.  And they'd run out of ketchup.  Silvi and Ignacio were happy to draw comparisons between Santiago and Chile's more remote provinces, but the gap is a real and difficult one for a government desperate to modernise.  Thankfully we finally managed to escape Calama's pull and set out into the vast expanse of the Atacama plains.

5am - not pretty.

6am - still not pretty.

Putting those MBAs to work (Silvi is actually doing everything).

All, or most, happy on the plane.

Disembarkation at the other end.

There's no duty free.

What did I expect?  Well...something warm, at least.

A KFC empanada.  Or empty-ada, as it should more accurately have been called.

Hannah is rightfully suspicious of her salad.