Time to depart the desert. We woke up early as it’s a bit of a drive to the airport in Calama and my previous experience made me think that we’d get bogged down in the process of returning the rental car. Rental car procedures being what they are in South America. We made good time and as it happens we were the first flight out that morning so the airport wasn’t even open yet. Nor was our rental car agency. I dropped the keys in the box and just assumed that’d work out alright. We had to stand around outside security for a while waiting for them to open the airport and when they finally did there was a critical shortage of coffee inside.

Flying around Chile is really cool because the Andes, at 20,000 ft, aren’t that far away from the plane even at cruising altitude and as they are constantly covered in perfect white snow it makes for some great views.

I had a quick connection in Santiago to get back to Buenos Aires but Hayden had a good eight or so hours to kill so we took a detour so I could let him into the Pacific Club so he could at least have access to food and alcohol. Left him there and for the first time in a long time we realized the next time we saw each other would be in Colorado.

I walked right onto my plane for the short flight and long drive back to my place in Buenos Aires and then crashed.

Today featured a lot of driving.  We also drove up to 16k ft and across hard packed flats to these crazy salt lagoons which was pretty neat considering we had no clue where we were going. We headed back to the hotel and recouped for a bit before trying for the millionth time to see if our “star tour” was on. It was delayed so we had dinner at Pica del Indio which was alright. Then returned to discover it was in fact on. As I’ve mentioned the skies in the Atacama are gorgeous and we got to use the largest telescope available for public viewing with was a nice superlative to tack on. However, the tour itself was a little rudimentary.

Woke up at not too early an hour, had breakfast and then saddled up for another day of riding. Today took us up on top of a ridge that overlooked the entire valley for a great view. The really cool part, though, was then riding straight down from that ridge across a massive sand dune. We returned to town in the afternoon and I was pretty exhausted. We each worked for a bit and then headed into town for dinner at Ckunna which featured the best steak I’ve had since leaving America. Then we went on a wee pub crawl around San Pedro in a search for live music that, while technically successful, was a bit disappointing in the end. Although we did get to hang out at Los Gor 2 and Mal de Puna so that’s something…

Once again had to work in the morning but then set out on a very cool excursion. We went horseback riding out into the Atacama desert. It was about a five hour ride up through the canyon that follows the one tiny river. We camped next to the river and had dinner there. The Atacama desert is the driest climate on the planet and has almost no light pollution so it’s the best place on the planet to see the stars. Couple that with camping out in the middle of a ravine and it was pretty spectacular. Oh, and freezing.

Woke up at the crack of dawn and headed to the airport for the short flight to Calama and then an hour drive to San Pedro de Atacama. We had an awesome truck for the weekend, sadly it was a manual which I haven’t driven in… six years so that took some readjusting to! We checked into our place at Hotel Altiplanico and I had to work for a while. In the evening we headed up to Coyote viewpoint which overlooks the Valley of the Moon and caught the sunset which was excellent. We went to a very authentic pizza place for dinner… Casa de Piedra.

It was a very wine themed day today. After working in the morning again we headed out to Vina Cousino Macul which is the oldest winery in Chile. We did the wine tour and tasting there which was basically your standard vineyard tour but our guide was a cool guy. In the evening we went to Bocanariz for more wine and tapas.

I had some work to do in the morning. In the afternoon we basically just walked all over Santiago to see what it was about. The view of downtown against the Andes is pretty impressive. Probably the best thing about the city in point of fact. We stopped and had lunch at La Cuisine which was an average French place. The tallest building in Latin America is in Santiago so we went up to the top of that and snapped some pictures. In the evening we went to El Meson Nerudiano and had dinner and caught some live music.

Shook off the prior nights celebrations, packed, headed to the airport and flew to Santiago. I met up with Hayden at our very nice Hotel Cumbres and we went and grabbed drinks at Peztoro down the street. We strolled around our little neighborhood of Santiago and then called it early as I was still recovering from the night before and he from the flight from DC.

Crazy fun day. A bunch of us piled into cars and we headed about an hour out of town to this private polo club. The grounds were gorgeous and it was a perfect fall day. They had the best empanadas I’ve ever had and some wine to welcome us in. We watched some of the members play and practiced our polo swings. Then we had an excellent lunch. Afterwards they just set us on some ponies and turned us loose to play ourselves with no direction. The whole thing was hilariously fun because everyone got extremely into it despite the limited amount of action.

Came back to Buenos Aires and had some farewell drinks at Valk in honor of Tyler who is parting ways with us early. Finally returned home… at some point.