Thu, Jun 27 - Driving to Taltal

We said good by to Carla, our lovely cook and cleaner, and to Katia, the manager, and sadly left the wonderful Planeta Atacama for the long drive south to the seaside town of Taltal.  We started off at 8:50 driving back on Chile Rt 23 with plenty of truck traffic towards Calama which we bypassed and started on Chile Rt 25 behind a large truck.  At one point he pulled over to the side and police with lights flashing came by chaperoning three massive land movers heading towards some mining operation.

Our highway merged with the 4-lane Panamerican Highway which heads southwest towards Antofagasta where it all began.  We pulled into a gas station to visit the bathrooms and buy ice cream and Bob was thrilled to find the Chilean Copec multi-volume travel guide, the  equivalent of a Michelin guide, to replace the one he bought 14 years ago.

We turned off the Panamericana south of Antofagasta and continued on through the extremely barren landscape, passing the entrance to the European Southern Observatory’s  Very Large Telescope unit on Cerro  Paranal. 

Finally we descended from 6000’ into the coastal fog and suddenly started seeing a wonderful variety of cacti. 

Fog Pouring over the Hillside

There was no place to turn off and the visibility was very poor, so we didn’t stop, but hope to spend more time with cacti tomorrow.  

We reached the coastal plain at Paposo and passed by rugged volcanic rocks and surf, and some wide beaches. 

Some wildflowers were even in bloom,  After about 30 miles we reached Taltal, a small fishing town with an obvious summer tourist beach scene.  We found Mi Tampi, our hotel, a block from the beach and checked into our tidy but small rooms at 3:20.

As we had been driving for six hours, we decided to walk around town, which was very quiet with few people around, and found the carefully manicured central plaza and church. 

We walked along the beach walkway, painted in orange and yellow, and found a small place selling empanadas and ordered several which were delicious!  

Cait getting some exercise!

We continued on to the fishing piers.  A fisherman came along and started hitting the metal railing with a bottle and several South American sea lions suddenly appeared.

 

South American Sea Lion

The man threw fish heads at them and they wallowed and barked and attracted a lot of gulls to what must be a daily feast!

We returned to Mi Tampi and inquired as to when restaurants open and were told 8:30 PM!  Way too late for us!  The motel has a refrigerator with beer and wine for sale and our nice manager said we could get some take-out and come back and use the breakfast room, so we decided to do that.  At 6 we walked out to the corner empanada shop....which said they only had cold sandwiches...Sigh.   We walked back to the plaza, finding all the shops that had been closed at 4 PM were now open and everyone was bustling about!   A nice coffee shop was open and amazingly they had fish, beef and chicken empanadas which they would heat up for us to take away.  We returned to our motel, settled into the breakfast room with a bottle of wine and ate a very nice supper!  The manager came by with some orange cake for us that he had baked!