Desert Raving

After 4 days of driving through the salt flats and mad landscapes of Uyuni, it was nice to be able to breathe air with oxygen. We descended 2000 metres from the barren orange dirt plains in the Bolivian Altiplano to the driest place on earth, the Atacama desert.

Chile is a proper country, you can tell by it’s border procedures. Leaving Bolivia? 15 minutes, including an administrative hurdle where someone had lost their pass for Uyuni. Entering Chile, two hours, full bag search, empty everything, explain why you’re bringing any fruit, nuts or animal products into Chile. Wash dirt off shoes.It takes a serious country to be this rigorous. Certain places can be just as time-consuming to enter, due to either nonsensical bureaucratic procedures, or simply guards wanting bribes. Was heading down to Chile for 3 days, organised as part of the tour around Uyuni.

The drive was fantastic, coming out of the heights on a perfectly tarmaced road, mountains each side of it, to see the vast flat desert opening up below. A complete dead zone, the Atacama is so simliar to the moon that NASA sometimes do experiments here. We got dropped off in San Pedro de Atacama, a desert town of clay and mud, where buildings are half underground to keep the heat out. I found a hostel on the outskirts with a pool, that turned out to be under renovation for the low season. The owner, a 28 year old Chilean American called Bernardo, was an outgoing, slightly eccentric, party and woman lover. Pretty much a latino stereotype, yet somehow not sleazy. We got talking and I mentioned how I was running a travel agency, and he advised me on some companies to contact in Peru, and to take his number if I hear of anyone wanting a surf trip in Chile.

Bernardo told me to go cycling for the afternoon/evening, and that night, he hoped I was up to party, because there were rumours of a desert rave. The cycle wasn’t that unusual- there’s a valley that looks like the moon (Valle de la Luna) a few km from town, and it was well worth the visit. I met a girl from Hong Kong also cycling there, a serious, studious kind of person. Very Chinese in her attitude towards life, but willing to come to Chile and cycle on her own into the desert, which is something to be admired. Didn’t mention the desert rave to her though. We passed high dunes pockmarked with people sandboarding, making mohills that the desert winds blew away each night. Otherworldly, it’s mad that in completely opposing climates, snowboards come in handy. Don’t get that at home. The sun began to set over the desert, with the moon rising from the west over the Valle de la Luna. Looking out across the red and orange hills, with conical peaks and the white of snow on the mountains in the distance, it was the moon of an alien planet.

Bernardo had hyped me up for a party. He was a social guy, and had lined up a few people to join us before we headed off. He’d also lined up a lot of cocaine, without asking. I know we’re in South America, but he didn’t have to hit that stereotype so hard. We got lifts out to the desert with a few of his friends in a banger of a car.

Generally, I wouldn’t advise hopping into a car with a load of people you didn't know, most of them well on the coca, to go to an undisclosed location in the middle of the desert, without telling anyone you know. But, do as I say, not as I do. I’d do it again in an instant. We drove for a good half an hour, into somewhere truly remote, where you could see a few lights from a stage and hear the thump of music. Outside of that, an inky black shroud surrounded us. You could tell where the sky began with the twinkle of the stars. Music was reggaeton. Dancing was salsa-y. There were a few hundred out here dancing in the darkness, there were a few lads selling drinks from cooler boxes, it was like a mini coachella with none of the wankeryness. And absolutely zero reception or places to charge anything. An old school party, to be remembered, or not, in our heads.

We were up in time to see the moon set and the sun rise.

Then a day in bed, and back up the mountains to Bolivia, to lose our breath again.