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Just before Brad and Cara’s wedding in Banff (note to self, finish editing those pictures) I made a quick 7 day trip to Calama, Chile to help with the casino opening there. Calama is a city of about 150,000 people in the far north of Chile, about 1,500 kms North of Chile’s capital, Santiago.

Calama itself is not a destination, it is a mining town. Let’s put this way, nobody is in Calama because they want to be. But, less than an hour away is San Pedro de Atacama, a tiny tourist trap with some interesting sights to offer.

The city of Calama is 2,400m above sea level, and typically ‘boasts’ a relative humidity of 30-40%. This makes it an extremely harsh climate; and for those who have grown up closer to sea level, an exhausting experience. I was warned of bleeding noses and headaches before I left; however I think the dryness and elevation of Edmonton (~800m) may have helped somewhat.

These two factors also make for an extreme climate. When I was there the daytime high was typically around 30C and the nighttime low at or below 0C. It’s not hard to imagine the difficulties of living in this climate, especially those who settled in this wasteland.

The town itself is an oasis; not quite an oasis of culture but nevertheless, technically, an oasis. There are lots of trees in the city itself, and the ‘river’ may actually contain water sometimes. The same can be said for San Pedro, although it leans much more on tourism than mining.

I managed to get Sunday off, so not knowing when (or if) I would ever be back in this part of the world, I dragged my dehydrated corpse out of bed, grabbed a traditional Chilean breakfast (well, my traditional breakfast in Chile: coffee and toast) and hopped in the trusty Yaris. When I left at 10am, the temperature in Calama was approaching 15C. With a bottle of agua con gas and my BlackBerry, I drove into the desert. 

And this is what I found:

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By the way, if you’ve never gone 150km/h in a rental Yaris on a road made from salt in 30C temperature with nobody to help for miles, I highly recommend not bothering. But, between the salt lagoon, flamingos, colorful mineral pools, crystal formations, adobe houses, towns with sand streets, volcanoes, and a drug smuggling checkpoint, it strikes me as a place unlike anywhere else on earth. And I was there, man!