The music from the San Pedro de Atacama 45th anniversary festival did not go until 4 am – it was closer to 4:30 am.
Thankfully, I slept until 3:30 am then fell asleep again after the music ended until 8:15 am. It’s not ideal, but it’s hard to fault the people of San Pedro for wanting to celebrate their beautiful town.
One last breakfast with some old favourites – fried eggs and French toast – then back to the room to shuffle everything into our late check-out room. I’d like to say it’s quick and easy, but there’s been quite a bit of sprawl over the past week and we’re all feeling the aftereffects of yesterday’s extra-long Punta del Inca hike.
Off to the pool once more. Reception again claims that the steam rooms are down for maintenance, while the actual maintenance woman is happy to fire up the steamer. Reception’s unwillingness to do certain parts of their job has been a minor annoyance, but one that’s recurred throughout our time at Explora Atacama.
But they’ve made up for a lot by giving us late check-out. We savour the pool as long as possible – again wondering why we seem to be the only ones using it – and then head back to the room to shower and finish packing.
We leave the bags outside the room and I head to Reception to settle up – we owe around US$80 for laundry, and we tip roughly the recommended amount. (Handy of Explora to include a recommended amount on their FAQ.)
Off to their restaurant for our final lunch. The kids each order a burger, and my wife and I both sample from the buffet:
We then had the Pullmay Traditional:
Absolutely delicious, particularly with a piece or two of toast.
New dessert menu today:
From which the kids and I ordered the tiramisu:
Then back to the bar area for a bit for another brief round of reading, writing and homework – and to get copies of the puma and Andean cat trail cam videos from Tammy:
These were taken by the camera we passed during our Tambores hike.
There’s time enough for one last Rica Rica pisco sour:
And then our driver is ready to take us on our private transfer to the Calama airport:
While driving, I attempt to select seats for tomorrow’s flight back to Toronto – late the night before, we had gotten the good news that our low-ball bid to upgrade to Signature class had been accepted! But for some reason we can’t seem to select seats. So there’s nothing to do but trust that Air Canada won’t seat our nine-year-old on the opposite corner of the plane from us.
We reach the Calama airport roughly an hour after we set out, and more than two hours in advance of our flight to Santiago. We bought an extra bag in advance, so the check-in process is simpler than last time. We even manage to use LATAM’s touch-screen bag-checking system on our own! Mostly!
(Irritatingly, you have to change the language to English each time – but I soon recognized the various screens and was able to check the bags in en Español.)
Then on to security. This was an interesting one, as you had to carry the trays roughly 20 feet from a loading desk over to the conveyer belt. Conversely, it’s helpful having an ‘island’ in which one can re-load ones electronics without feeling like you’re holding up the show. Thankfully, we were soon waiting by the very busy gate.
Off for a forage – we found some halfway decent baked goods, sandwiches and empanadas at the Maxi K:
This should be enough to tide everyone over until we reach the Sheraton Santiago late tonight.
We paid a modest extra fee to book LATAM+, and had hoped for early boarding as a result – we’re still in group 3 but again have no issue with finding overhead space.
Farewell, Atacama!
The flight goes smoothly. They do a single round of beverage service and dole out some kettle corn, and then it’s time to prepare for landing. I also finish reading the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy. That is one fantastic series – highly, highly recommended, particularly for fans of Alfred Lansing’s Endurance.
Hola, Santiago!
Transfers are always something of a highwire act for us – we have too many bags to easily take a regular taxi, so we tend to be reliant on whatever arrangements we have made in advance. Thankfully, Cristian has again arranged for someone to pick us up at a most cost of 45,000 Chilean Pesos or roughly US$45 – a bargain compared to the US$80 that the Sheraton charged us previously.
And sure enough, our driver texts us as we arrive to provide us with the meeting point. Our bags take a bit longer than expected, but no issues there – he meets us right where he promised, and we are soon loaded up and on our way to the Sheraton.
30 minutes later, and we are offloaded and checked in. We have gotten the adjacent rooms that we requested, and have been offered extra amenities including a bottle of sparkling wine. Not bad at all!
Up to the rooms to drop bags, then back down to the lobby bar for dinner. We order three pizzas and a chicken sandwich, which is roughly twice as much food as we should have ordered:
Lesson learned for lunch tomorrow.
I spare a moment to admire the Sheraton’s fine pool, with fountains running:
These are definitely super-cool special effects and not the result of taking this photograph with a filthy lens
Then back up to the room where we discover that they’ve given us red wine intead of sparkling – back down to Reception where they put in a request for room service to make the switch. Which they do, roughly 20 minutes later – though they drop off a bottle of white wine instead. Ah, well – close enough. They then reappear with a bottle of sparkling and insist we keep all three bottles plus two plates of chocolates as an apology for the mix-up:
For future reference – this is our preferred form of apology
I completely forgot to take photos of the room. Thankfully, we stayed at the same hotel earlier this year – so this is a fair representation of what our rooms were like:
Our showers were slightly smaller this time around, and one only got to ‘warm’ instead of my wife’s preferred temperature of ‘boil yourself alive’. The second room also had a bit of a musty smell to it. But it’s only for one night, so we decided not to make a big deal of such minor inconveniences.
On the subject of showers, it was time for mine. One of these days I will compose a sonnet to describe just glorious it is to rinse off the travel grime.
But not tonight. Because we are instead going to pop open one of those three bottles of wine and raise a glass to our final night in Chile.