John writes:
We had a comfortable night in the Hotel Gali, Taltal which is one of the more basic hotels we have stayed in but was clean, comfortable and served breakfast even if nothing else.
It wasn’t Fawlty Towers standard but for some reason seemed to like another British comedian and has used his logo too!
Taltal is the closest main town to the Paranal Observatory, the second largest observatory in the world, and is situated here because of the exceptionally clear light at night time. It is run by the European Southern Observatory and includes the VLT (Very Large Telescope!) comprising of four separate 8.2m telescopes which can combine into a single instrument. The hotel had some of the Observatory photographs display which had incredible detail of the moon, other planets and the Milky Way.
The town was carefully maintained despite being in the desert with almost zero precipitation but benefits from the camanchaca fog which often sits between 200m and 1000m causes the ‘Fog Oasis’ near the town. This was the only vegetation we were to see for the next 500kms!
Today was a big driving day – 650kms to reach our destination at La Serena and all through the Atacama Desert. Despite it’s totally barren nature we still had spectacular scenery and lots of variety.
We took an interesting side diversion to Mina San Jose copper-gold mine, which caught the world attention in when 32 Chileans and 1 Bolivian were trapped underground after a collapse on the 5th August 2010. The miners were located alive after 17 days but they weren’t rescued until a further 52 days later on 13th October.
Coincidentally I had been in Antofagasta that day and watched it live on Chilean TV. The mine is no longer working but open to the public for tours Thursday to Sunday so sadly we missed the tour but did go up to the site.
Today’s drive was the longest to date and the roads the best so we made great time. We even had dual carriageway for 50% of the time but gain with little traffic. To date we have had a mix of big cars including – Mitsubishi Montero, Range Rover, Porsche Cayenne, Nissan Patrol and until our blow up 2 days ago the 5.7 litre Toyota Sequoia.
However since yesterday evening we have had our tortoise to all these hares – a 1.6 litre Nissan Versa which provided the fastest average speed of all! A grey car in a grey place and definitely a dent in our street cred but this tortoise has saved the day and is winning the race!
We arrived to La Serena, a coastal resort, to be greeted by almost the first sunshine of the day so off to make the most of it.
Tomorrow the trusty tortoise will be taking us a further 500kms to our last night in Chile at Santiago airport.
Desperately disappointed at not being able to drive to Finca Ambrosia over the Andes but maybe another time. Every cloud has its silver lining and this one is dinner tomorrow evening at one of my favourite restaurants – La Mar, Santiago!
Our America’s Challenge Drive 