Random thought

I need to stop waffling, but re-reading the previous post, it occurs to
me it might make sense to go from Santiago direct to Copiapo, and
instead do Valparaiso/Vina del Mar on the way back south.
Valparaiso/Vina del Mar are so close to Santiago that they're almost as
good as being there in terms of comfort about getting the flight back,
so it would seem sensible to spend time in them at the end of the trip
when there's less time remaining to deal with unexpected problems.

Possible itinerary: Santiago-San Pedro de Atacama and back

OK, I'm going to sort of make some notes here as I look at my guide
book; I'd be doing it anyway and if I do it here I'll have them to look
back on later. (For the record, the guide book is my Bradt Chile guide.)

I have 21 nights in total, though of course I must be in Santiago on the
last night ready to catch the flight back. I like Santiago anyway and
although I don't want to overdo it, I should probably plan on spending
at least 2-3 nights there before I fly back because it will be a
reasonable use of time anyway and it gives me a buffer so I have some
flexibility with the rest of the trip.

I arrive Saturday midday-ish so I plan to be out in Santiago on Saturday
night. Might be good, might not, but we'll give it a go. I don't want to
be jumping on a bus straight from the airport anyway. Ideally I'll stay
at the same apartment complex I used on previous visits, if they're free
and my stays aren't too short.

Let's say Saturday and Sunday nights in Santiago, then leave on Monday.

Valparaiso is about two hours away from Santiago by bus and without
studying the guide book in any great detail (I'm going to stop saying
that) it sounds pretty cool. Vina del Mar is practically next door and
it might be interesting to go there, though the guide book describes it
as "a holiday resort... dedicated to the pursuit of the tourist peso",
so maybe not. Let's say three days for the two of them and I might not
go to Vina del Mar at all.

La Campana National Park to the north sounds interesting if perhaps a
bit hard to access, but the guide book mentions a day trip from a hostel
in Valparaiso. Of course if/when I look into it more deeply there might
be better options. Let's shove in an extra day for this.

Ah. Having seen the name in the guide book, I remember that Mendoza was
one of the Argentinian towns near the border I was recommended by my
Spanish teacher. Los Andes, nearby-ish, might be worth a visit on a
possible Chile-Argentina circular route. I won't get sidetracked with
this at the moment though. If I'm going to get as far north as San Pedro
and back, I am going to have to leave some much bigger gaps between stops.

I could stop off in Chanaral, but while quite nice in a slightly dull
way (I spent too long there last time, somehow) I will probably give it
a miss this time, especially since on this itinerary I'm already
revisiting Santiago and San Pedro.

Might be cool to go to Copiapo, apparently the regional capital (of
Norte Chico?). This would bypass La Serena, which might make a good
intermediate point (or alternative), but for this initial itinerary I'll
just somewhat arbitrarily pick Copiapo. Guidebook is a little vague on
travel times, but there are buses from Valparaiso and given it's
slightly further south than Chanaral (which I did overnight from
Santiago on my previous trip), I will assume this can be done as an
overnight trip. Let's give it that and three nights actually in the town.

I make that 10 nights so far, so I'm practically halfway through my time
and I'm not at San Pedro yet. Still, let's push on and then I can tweak
things later.

Given that, let's call it another overnight bus to San Pedro. Actually,
let's make it 2 nights in Copiapo in that case, since I'd have all of
the day before the bus to see the place.

I've been to San Pedro before so I'm mainly there for the two activities
I mentioned in the previous post. I might be knackered but I would
arrive in the morning off the overnight bus. Let's be generous and
"waste" the rest of that day, on the assumption I'll be too knackered to
enjoy sandboarding or a night-time excursion to see the stars. I can use
that day to actually sign up for these activities. Sandboarding the next
day and assuming I'm not in hospital, star viewing that night. That's
two nights in San Pedro. I might need to spend longer there (e.g. if the
stargazing trips aren't on every night) but I'm not going to blow the
budget on that, any extra time lurking there can come out of slack
elsewhere.

Iqique might be cool but it's further north still and at this point I
probably want to be heading back south.

Antofagasta looks slightly interesting and I suspect is only a few hours
by bus from San Pedro. Let's call that a day journey and shove two
nights down there. That's 14 nights so far.

I'll note at this point Antofagasta has an airport, as do other places
(e.g. Copiapo) so of course I do have the option to fly back to Santiago
if I want. But it seems cheating somehow, and going by bus forces/allows
me to stop off at various little places en route.

I don't know if there's a bus service, but let's assume there is (I am
guessing it would be a stiffish overnighter of a similar duration to
Santiago-Chanaral) and take an overnighter from Antofagasta to La
Serena, a significant distance further south. (On the assumption this is
an overnighter, I could knock off one night in Antofagasta to
compensate, since I'd have the day before the bus to see stuff. But I
won't, just yet.) That's 15 nights so far.

La Serena sounds quite cool, so let's call it three nights there. It's
then a seven hour overnight run down to Santiago. Including that night
on the bus to Santiago, we're at 19 nights so far. So that would give me
two nights in Santiago before I fly back. (I might prefer three or more,
both as buffer and to give me a bit more time in Santiago if I want it,
but the whole schedule above is sufficiently vague that a day is neither
here nor there.)

Santiago - 2 nights
Valparaiso(/Vina del Mar) - 3 nights
La Campana National Park (from Valparaiso?) - 1 night
Valaparaiso-Copiapo - 1 night (bus)
Copiapo - 2 nights
Copiapo-San Pedro - 1 night (bus)
San Pedro - 2 nights
Antofagasta - 2 nights
Antofagasta-La Serena - 1 night (bus)
La Serena - 3 nights
La Serena-Santiago - 1 night (bus)
Santiago - 2 nights

It's obviously a bit ad-hoc (both in terms of where I'm going, the
practical details of getting between them and how much time I spend
everywhere) but as a first cut I think that's not a bad effort. I could
obviously hone things a bit by spending time looking at how much
interesting stuff there is in various places and the bus routes. Also, I
suspect, for example, it might be possible to switch the places of
Copiapo and La Serena in that itinerary.

I don't really want to be booking ho(s)tels up before I go, with the
possible exception of the apartment in Santiago (though booking in
advance there for the pre-return stay would ruin the flexibility of my
buffer, so I guess I'll probably book that last minute too and if I
can't get in then so be it). That way I get the flexibility of staying
longer in places I like, less in places I don't and it doesn't throw off
some horribly fragile schedule if I miss a bus or it turns out one isn't
running or something.

It is almost certain I am going to stay in Santiago for two nights and
no more when I first get there (three is tempting, but if I have the day
to spare I can spend it in Santiago at the end of the trip instead - and
a Monday night has to be one of the worst nights to stay there anyway),
whatever else happens, so if I can I might well book up for that
apartment complex then in the next few days. Everything else would then
be done on the fly.

The one thing that kind of worries me is availability. If memory serves
- and it may not - Chile north of Santiago was one of the few places I
visited on the 2010 trip where I essentially could not get a
web-bookable ho(s)tel at short notice. That's why I did
Santiago-Chanaral-San Pedro without visiting any of the other places on
the itinerary above. I won't be there at the same time of year
(November/December this time vs February last time) but it's all still
"their summer"-ish.

Unless I can get some advice (e.g. on some travel website forum) telling
me it's absolutely essential, I think I'd rather take a chance than be
forced to book up well in advance. It would ruin any sense of
spontaneity and just add a source of stress in terms of having to keep
to the schedule. (Not to mention I'd be worried my
weeks-or-months-in-advance bookings would get lost.) I guess the thing
to do is to have lots of alternate plans so, for example, even if
something like the above is my initial goal, I can change my mind and do
a circuit into Argentina if it turns out I'm having difficulty getting
any kind of accommodation on the route above. I don't have any great
fear of being unable to get a seat on a bus at any point - as far as I
can recall, that *never* happened on the 2010 trip - and I suppose if
push comes to shove I can probably always fly back to Santiago at great
expense. My flight back leaves at 13:30 on the Saturday, so if it was
otherwise unavoidable there is at least a chance to fly into Santiago
that morning and just change planes at the airport. That would obviously
be a last minute "everything has gone to hell despite me trying to get
back by other means for two or three days" option, of course.

Anyway, enough waffle. At least I've started to think about it. The
above is maybe just a tiny bit rushed, but I don't think it's that bad,
and it's got me thinking.

Chile travel plans

Well, a bit over a month ago, following a drunken idea and a couple of
conversations with friends who convinced me to pursue it, I came to an
agreement with work to take three weeks off before Christmas and three
weeks in February.

A month ago I booked return flights to Chile - I fly out to Santiago on
the evening of Friday 25th November, and I fly back from Santiago on
Saturday 17th November. There is some suggestion I am perhaps being
foolish going back to Chile a second time, but it's a big place (2400
miles top to bottom, more or less, if my memory is correct) and while I
may end up revisiting some places a bit, it's still up in the air and I
think it will be OK.

(Not too sure what the three weeks in February will involve. I am
tempted to go back to Latin America again and save anywhere more exotic
and/or maybe less interesting for when I have more time to travel. Not
worrying about it right now.)

I've been ridiculously lax in making plans (especially since it ought to
be an enjoyable experience - half the pleasure's in the anticipation
etc) but there you go. I also haven't studied any Spanish at all, even
though I hoped this would give me a kick up the arse. I may just
possibly start to get round to that this weekend, but I've thought that
before. With a couple of minor exceptions I haven't spoken any Spanish
since I got back from my last trip in June 2010 and I haven't had any
lessons either.

When I drunkenly conceived the idea of a three week trip to Chile, the
vague itinerary I had in mind was a few days in Santiago, then travel
overland up to San Pedro de Atacama, stopping off at some places I
didn't stop at before. (I haven't checked my blog from last time, but I
believe I only stopped off in Chanaral on the way last time, largely
because I couldn't get into hostels in most places.) While I didn't like
San Pedro much as a town, there were two touristy things to do there
which I get round to and which I think would make it worth revisiting.

You could go sandboarding there, and while I flirted with the idea, a
certain time pressure combined with fear of injuring myself put me off.
I am not 100% sure I'd have the balls to do it anyway, but it is tempting.

The other thing you could do was go out into the desert at night with a
group and (I think) a telescope and look at the stars. That sounded
pretty cool and I would have done it if I'd had time last time round.

On that rough itinerary I sketched out in my head, I think the plan was
to return to Santiago overland, ideally by a different route, and finish
off with a few days there before flying back. I worked out at the time
that three weeks would allow me to do that route pretty comfortably
without feeling rushed, so it would hopefully have some of the slightly
laid back feel of my six month trip in 2010.

Since then I have mulled it over very intermittently in my head and had
a couple of other ideas, which are vaguer:

- I could maybe head east out of Santiago, cross over into Argentina and
perhaps loop round (if there's another suitable crossig point) back into
Chile, doing some kind of circular route. That would, with the exception
of Santiago, be completely new and also potentially quite cool. I have
some recollection of my (Argentinian) Spanish teacher telling me about
some interesting town/region in that part of Argentina.

- I could head south out of Santiago and visit the southern half of the
country. With the exception of the extreme far south (Punta
Arenas/Puerto Natales) I have no been anywhere south of Santiago, so
that would all be new too.

- As I come to write down the two previous ones, it occurs to me that as
a minor variation on the Argentina trip, I could maybe do some kind of
circular route solely within Chile but staying relatively near to Santiago.

I have to be honest and say that a big part of the idea behind these two
three week trips is to escape the UK winter, as well as to give me the
chance to do a bit more "serious" travel before I turn 36. (The earliest
I can imagine taking another 6 month or longer break is October-ish
2012.) So that slightly puts me off the heading south idea, but it is
going to be more-or-less summer there and it's unlikely I would get as
far south as Puerto Natales (though it might be cool if I did make it
that far, in a way) so I probably shouldn't write it off.

Anyway, having got all that out of the way (deliberately) without
looking at any books, I am now going to sit down and have a brief flick
over a guide book, or at least stare at a map a bit. Vague plan is to
sketch out a possible trip to San Pedro and think about the others
separately afterwards, but I can imagine getting sidetracked once I
start to look at the book. We'll see...

Does this still work?

And if it does, should I write up my forthcoming trip?