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Chile and Easter Island

The ice is thousands of feet high.

We visit a working estancia today for lunch. We are in for a treat Patagonian Lamb.

With a slight redrawing of Latin borders, the Atacama would not be Chilean at all. Wedged as it is into a 600-mile strip in the extreme north of the state, its salt plains and boulders push firmly against the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. Yet this merely supplies it with a remoteness that adds to its charm. The Atacama Desert is Chile at its most serrated; Chile without a safety net.

Danger mine field. The high desert sand claims everything including signs warning of danger.

The Atacama Desert is a plateau in South America, covering a 600-mile strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is the driest desert in the world, as well as the only true desert to receive less precipitation than the polar deserts. According to estimates, the Atacama Desert occupies 41,000 sq miles and 49,000 sq miles of the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included also..

Thousands of feet high the glaciers rise from the fjord.

Baltinache is a unique small restaurant in San Pedro. Its daily menu incorporates native ingredients as well as typically Chilean preparations. This intimate restaurant has a lot of charm. It's not the easiest to find, but it's worth the trip.

We enjoyed a great dinner of local indigenous fusions of food by chef Marta, the owner.

Nicole, our guide introducing Marta to our group of travelers. She was taking a few well earned minutes of rest after preparing a great meal.

Another local word we learned for today.

Ice so close we could almost reach out and touch it as we passed by.

The lamb was so good. I went back for thirds.

You would not dare get close to this.

It is located east of Antofagasta, some 60 miles southeast of Calama and the Chuquicamata copper mine, overlooking the Licancabur volcano.

Pukará de Quitor, declared a National Monument in 1982, is an ancient Inca fortress built in the 12th century, strategically placed on the side of a hill protected by a gorge over the river. Quitor was taken over by Spaniards in 1540. It was built with large and small stones kept together by mud used as mortar.

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