Viña and a dash north 3rd-7th of October

(the first pic are the switch backs coming over to Chile from Argentina)
I had a very enjoyable couple of days in Viña del Mar, enjoying the excellent hospitality of Claudio and his family (thanks again Claudio if you read this). On Friday evening we went for a drive down the coast to neighbouring Valparaiso. This is a big port city, which is basically Santiago's gateway to the ocean. Before the days of Panama this (like Punta Arenas) was a very important port for pacific trading. It sites on the hills right next to the shore, meaning that ones you are a few hundred metres back from the docks everything is on a hill. This means all the houses are literally built on top of each other and they is a very handy system of late 19th early 20th century elevators to take you up the hills. These are pretty much all funicular systems, in old wooden trains travelling between wooden lift houses at either end. All quite rickety, but a novel way of getting up and down a hill. On Saturday I wandered along the beach near Claudio´s house. Things are definitely starting to warm up now as I get further north with people even swimming in the sea. In the afternoon I went with Claudio and his wife Loreto for another visit to Valparaiso and a small drive along the coast. As well as wandering around the very picturesque barrios we visited visited the house of Pablo Naruda (one of Chile´s most famous poets), which had the most incredible views out over the city from his living room, bedroom and study. Later on we also rode another slightly more unique elevator, which involved walking about 100yards through a tunnel, before taking a lift straight up into a tower high above the houses below.Sunday was another day of long travel as I start my dash north to Peru. I had to endure another 24hy us ride up to a place called Calama, before changing bus to head over to San Pedro de Atacama, an oasis at the north end of the Atacama dessert (officially the driest place on earth). I am quite definitely in a completely different world than I was a few weeks ago now. gone are the glaciers and fjords, replaced scorched dry landscapes, with volcanoes and sand dunes. I arrived at about 10 on Monday morning, and in the afternoon I went to a place called death valley and another called valley de la lunar. The first should actually have been called mars valley (but due to a translating error it ended up at death), due to its mars like landscape. In the valley de la luna, it was possible to climb a giant sand dune to watch the sun go down over the dessert. Very pleasant although as soon as the sun disappears here it starts to get very cold (San Pedro is at 2400m altitude).Later on in the evening I went on a star gazing tour with a French astronomer called Allan. He came over to Chile quite a few years ago and set up a small astronomical research station here in San Pedro about 5 years ago. He is incredibly enthusiastic about the stars and getting very exited about an asteroid that was going to crash in the Sudan that night (unfortunately on the other side of the world so we couldn´t see it). He had a number of telescopes set up so we could look at things like the surface of the moon, being able to make out the craters and mountains very clearly (a lot better than my photo in fact). Also we could see Jupiter and one of its moons, various nebulae and even another galaxy!I didn´t gt to bed till half 12, which wasn´t very good for getting up at 3.45 to go on a trip to El Tatio Geysers. This are a couple of hours drive up in the mountains near Bolivia, and are most active before dawn hence the early start. However they are at about 4600m in altitude (the highest geyser field in the world), meaning that before dawn the temperature is -15 degrees! not great for standing outside in. Pretty spectacular though and we got to ave geyser hard boiled eggs for breakfast which was quite novel. Later on we went to some not quite warm enough to be good hot springs, still a dip was nice enough as long as you kept moving. On he way back to San Pedro we stopped in a village where we could by bbq llama, which I have to say is pretty tasty. I had a nice siesta this afternoon as I´m getting an overnight bus to Arica tonight, so tomorrow I will be in Peru!
O