Wednesday 12th December An early start today as we were going to view the El Tatio geysers. At 4.30am our bus arrived with guide Enzo. We had collected our box breakfasts from reception and had a couple of coca teas before leaving. It was dark and cool but we were expecting it to be much colder as we ascended to higher altitudes. We dozed in the bus before reaching the 9.5 sqkm geyser field at 4500m. It was still dark when we drove up the last track, and we wer...

Tuesday 11th December. Delicate start today for Bill - must have been something we ate. Today we have the ’Cactus valley’ trek with a civilised start time at 8.30. Gonzales and Juan are punctual and we travel in the freshly valeted 4x4 for about 40 minutes, up into the canyon belt below the Andes, travelling from an altitude of 2400 metres in the town, to 3000 metres. We pass a couple emerging from their camper van when we park to start if our hike - brings...

Monday 10th December The prediction was correct- it was another restless night despite throwing off the blankets and employing the hurricane force fan in the middle of the night! After all our over-eating yesterday, we opted for a light breakfast of fresh fruit and scrambled eggs, before setting off for the Puritama hot springs (3500M elevation). The bus had a padded internal rollcage- is there something we don’t know about this trip? We arrived 20 minutes b...

Sunday 9th December Last night was a restless night- maybe the heat or altitude - 2400m. The room was a nice temperature and the bed comfortable but we felt as if we were sleeping on a heap of pebbles in a furnace / fridge. Accordingly we started today feeling grumpy, couldn’t find our belongings, faffed about a lot, muttered about hot, dusty, dirty deserts and generally found fault with everything, including the perfectly decent breakfast! We started the day...

Saturday 8th December There is a major religious festival in Chile today. A huge number of people (hundreds of thousands) are making a pilgrimage to Lo Vasquez sanctuary between Santiago and Valparaiso to celebrate the feast of the immaculate conception. Many of those people make the journey in foot, and so they have closed the motorway. This does rather complicate our journey to the airport! Our departure from hotel Zero was brought forward by 2hrs, but we sta...