Fri, Jun 28 - Driving to Copiapó

Sugar Loaf National Park

We had large rolls and orange cake for breakfast and set off at 8:30 in the sunshine driving uphill due east through suburban Taltal until we met the Panamerican Highway and hit some fog.  With the sun behind we could see some fogbows (like faint rainbows) stretching above us.

Fogbow

After half an hour we turned off onto a road leading to Parque Nacional Pan de Azúcar (Sugar Loaf National Park) and descended to a beautiful wide beach with a triangular shape island off shore (the sugar loaf).  We checked in with the ranger who recommended the Mirador (viewpoint) hike and Quebrada Castillo where we could see lots of cacti.  We parked at the Mirador trail head and hiked up a very gradual trail past lots of tall multi-branched columnar cacti, while checking out quite a few birds. 

We reached the top after 1.5 miles and had great views of the coastline as the fog had moved offshore.  We tried to spot some Humboldt Penguins for Caitlin but didn’t see any.

We returned and drove on a short ways to the Quebrada hike where we started seeing lots of tennis ball-sized Copiapoa  (dealbata?) Cacti piled up into mounds, and more of the highly branched one also, that have very wooly balls (seeds?) on their branches.

We finally had to pull ourselves away and head further south, along wide, empty, very white sandy beaches interrupted by rocky headlands until we came to the messy town of Caldera and turned inland towards Copiapó, a mining business town, but with leafy parks and nice old trees. 

Bob and Hilary got us to our hotel area, but we couldn’t find the hotel, Hotel La Casona, “an airy, charming old hotel”, according to Lonely Planet, and with whom I had made reservations many months ago.  Bob and I finally walked around the area of the address: O’Higgins 150...but there was no such address.  We queried some workmen and it turns out that some time ago, the hotel was sold and is now a restaurant!   So what to do??    We looked in our guide books and saw the Atacama Suites Hotel nearby which sounded OK and we drove over.  It is a 15-story fairly new business hotel.  We found they had rooms and we could park in their underground garage, after we finally stopped some traffic so Hil could back up to enter it.

We got large quite nice modern rooms for a very reasonable price - so we lucked out!  We met for dinner at 6:30 and had Pisco Sours, tuna, chicken, pasta, wine and panqueque (crepes) with apricot ice cream!