A later start to the morning today, made all the better from a good night’s sleep. Another delicious breakfast and then over to the reception area to meet up for our eBiking exploration to San Isidro.
Some very solid options at the breakfast buffet this morning
This eBike tour will be somewhat more extensive than the last one we did to Ckuta – the terrain is rougher, and we won’t have a support vehicle. It initially looked as though there would be one other person joining us, but she’d actually cancelled – except reception hadn’t passed word along.
No matter, it took only five minutes to resolve and then we were off and on our way. (And have I mentioned yet today how much we like Explora’s small group tours?)
The journey took us through the town of San Pedro de Atacama to the Catarpe valley. On the way we stopped briefly to admire an indigenous-built fort:
This was initially designed for wars between tribes, but was later used to defend against the Spanish.
From here we went through the Catarpe Valley to visit the San Isidro church:
The church was built in 1913 by Lucas Cenzano and is still maintained by his descendants
We then had two options – one was to go across some hilly, rocky terrain to loop into Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat). The second was to backtrack and run the Devil’s Throat twice – once on the way in, and again on the way out. We elected to skip the rockier section – the joys of having a smaller group!
We briefly backtracked, and then cut across to the Devil’s Throat and its remarkable rock formations:
Threading through these narrow stone walls was one of the most enjoyable bike rides I’ve had in a very long time – though there are two dropoffs where one has to lift the bike from one ledge to the next:
Bike tire for scale – we had to lift each bike up roughly 1 metre (3 feet) in turn
Our guide Marjorie prudently suggested that each of these be done as two-person lifts. In her words: “In Chile, if we have an accident we say that we ‘bought the terrain’. I already bought this terrain once, and I don’t want to buy it again!”
We also went about halfway to the top of the Devil’s Throat viewpoint.
This was a challenging eBike after all, so we decided not to push ourselves by going all the way to the top – though I’m sure it’s a stunning view.
We once more threaded our way back through the gorge, and then returned back to the Explora Lodge. While I’m sure that the other route would have been a great challenge, I’m glad that we got to ride through the Devil’s Throat twice – it’s a great combination of scenic and fun-to-ride, so it deserved an encore:
Marjorie offered to stop for ice cream at Heladería Babalú on the way back, but I hadn’t brought my wallet or cash with me. Besides, we’re planning to head to town tomorrow to mail some postcards – so we’ll go then. But something to keep in mind if you’re doing this tour.
Final verdict – a great ride, if somewhat more difficult than the Ctuka route we did earlier. Don’t be afraid to use turbo mode and low gear if you want to save your muscles, but the real challenge here comes from managing the twisty route and the rocky terrain.
Back to the room, where my wife and our daughter had only recently returned from their horseback ride. This time they went to Selenita which is labelled an easy ride by Explora but is definitely not as easy as Dunas.
This ride requires about a 25 min van ride out towards Moon Valley and Explora trailers out their horses. My wife and daughter were thrilled to discover they had a private ride as the third person for their tour cancelled earlier that morning. Given the alternating terrain of soft sand, steep climbs and rocky paths there was no place for any surreptious cantering but the views were spectacular.
This is one of Explora’s newest horseback rides. They are always looking for new options to get their guests away from crowds and into unique wilderness areas. Apparently they’ve been looking at doing a high mountain horseback ride but it requires a lot more time in the trailer and the horses have to adjust to the altitude the same way people do – very gradually – so that’s on the backburner for now. Although my wife was told that they are working at breeding in some traits to their horses that will help then adjust better to the higher altitude and dry air.
A surprise picnic for two.
We ate one muffin and had some juice and did not do this justice at all. Thankfully it was packed away and sent off with the crew who had transported the horses so it didn’t go to waste.
Off to lunch – I elected to be boring and order a pizza, while my wife decided to try the pullman tradicional, a kind of mixed stew:
The sausage in particular was very tasty! I’ll be sure to order this if it ever appears on the menu again.
A little more time for reading, writing and homework, but with another brief photographic detour after our daughter discovered a secret area on the second floor of the lodge:
The perfect place to relax and watch the sunset.
4:15 pm rolls around, and it’s time to head to our afternoon exploration – a visit to the Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra, in which we can experience a super-buoyant float due to the salt and mineral-heavy waters.
This is one of Explora’s ‘overland’ journeys, which meant it’s predominantly done by vehicle. There were 10 people on this tour – the busiest of any of the tours we’d taken to date (usual max is 8) – and it took roughly 30 minutes for us to make it out to Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra:
There are quite a few changing rooms, showers, and bathrooms – which are kept clean and in good repair. We stopped here to change into our bathing suits and Explora-provided robes:
We then visited Laguna Cejar:
Which had a handful of flamingos:
And then on to Laguna Piedra – no photos of us floating, but it was extremely buoyant, and we had no trouble floating on our backs. I tried floating straight up and down, and the water was well below my shoulders.
We were lucky to arrive in a gap between other groups, and essentially had the lagoon to ourselves for the first 15 minutes.
We had 30 minutes here in total, which was a good amount of time. The water was quite cold – even late in the day – but it wasn’t too bad when floating at the surface.
Back to the change rooms again – it’s best to shower off after a dip in the lagoon as it’s very salty, and can be quite hard on your hair and skin otherwise (to say nothing of leaving you with an extra-crunchy bathing suit).
Explora also had a lovely surprise waiting for us back at the van after our visit:
And then it was all-aboard for the 30 minute return trip.
The perfect end to a busy day – or it would be, but we have another exploration planned for tonight: the Observatory.
However, Explora had other plans in mind – they have a special barbeque with traditional dances scheduled for this evening. But given that we’re not due to depart for that until 8 pm – and our next tour is at 9:30 pm – we elected to just stick around and order off the bar menu instead.
We had our usual favourites, in addition to trying the ham and cheese sandwich:
It was pretty good. I expect it’ll prove a solid option for future lunches when we don’t want something massive to eat.
9:30 rolled around, and it was time to head to the Observatory – though we did end up waiting around for an extra 5 minutes for some other guests. (We did eventually all meet up, as it seems some of them were late returning from the barbeque -which we had expected would be an issue.)
We started by discussing the indigenous view of the stars, which was more based on the voids in the sky than on the stars themselves:
And then we headed off to the Observatory itself.
It’s a tough night to visit, as the sky is flooded with light from the supermoon – but still more than worthwhile.
Our guide started by asking if we could identify the closest star in the sky, to which our son quickly responded with two answers (“the sun” followed by “Proxima Centauri”). Both correct!
Guests were cautioned to keep their iPhone screens as dim as possible, and asked to turn off all flash photography. We went up into the observatory itself and took turns observing a range of celestial objects, including both small and large star clusers, Saturn, and a corner of the moon.
It was difficult to photograph, though I did manage to capture a blurry representation of Saturn:
We needed to be careful to touch a grounding patch before touching the telescope, and to use the provided handles – it can take ages to recalibrate the telescope if put out of alignment.
The kids enjoyed looking through the telescope – I’d say I enjoyed the large star cluster the most, while the kids really liked looking at Saturn. I’d love to try this again some time during a new moon – guess we’ve got no choice but to book a return trip!
The hour passed far too quickly, and we soon were headed back to our rooms. (You know it’s been a long day when the bartender tells you how tired you look!) So one last round of drinks, and then off to bed – we have definitely earned a lazy day tomorrow.