Give Me the Desert Any Day (And I Don’t Mean Dessert)
Have you ever been asked, “Which do you prefer, the beach or the mountains?” My answer is, “Neither. I love the desert.” I don’t know what it is about sand, cacti, tumbleweeds, intense heat, and hills of brown and red rocks. I absolutely love the desert. Some of my favorite escapes in the United States are Arizona, northern New Mexico, and southern Utah. The chilly nights and blazing hot days just warm my soul, and I can’t get enough.
One day, I read about the Atacama Desert in Chile, which claims to be the driest desert in the world. I knew I had to go there. It was beyond all expectations. The Atacama Desert covers nearly 41,000 square miles, and it would take months to see it all. My husband and I had five days, and I was determined to make the most of it. After six hours of flying and driving from Santiago, Chile, we arrived at the Awasi Lodge smack dab in the middle of the desert.
Twenty minutes after checking in, a huge rain and hail storm hit. I’ve seen some pretty heavy rain in my home state of Oklahoma, but the beauty of pelting rain and hail hitting the parched grounds of the driest desert in the world was pretty incredible. It lasted over an hour, and the next day we were told they hadn’t had a storm like that in fifteen years. We spent three days with a guide, driving for miles down muddy roads and trails that had rarely seen a drop of water.
Lakes appeared where there used to be beds of dry rock, snow was on the mountains, and the reflections under the sun was spectacular. On our hikes we saw wild flowers popping up out of nowhere, and the sand dunes that normally were too hot to hike barefoot were cool with the new moisture from the storm. One of my favorite memories of that trip was sliding down the sand dunes barefoot, practicing all the forms I had learned in snow ski school back in college.
At the lodge, the chef prepared dishes made from herbs and vegetables that grow in the desert, as well as ingredients from other parts of Chile and the bordering country of Bolivia. After a long day of hiking I sipped a pisco sour and had a lesson from the chef on how to make a proper empanada, filled with pork that was raised on a farm just a few miles away.
The sous chef, Paula didn’t speak English, but she patiently watched me roll out the dough made with corn flour. She showed me how to pinch the dough into perfect pleats that I could never quite manage to imitate. We baked them in a wood fire oven until they were blistered with specks of blackened flakes. It required a lot of patience to wait for them to cool enough to bite into, but Paula kept my glass full of pisco, which made the wait a little easier.
Five days in the Atacama wasn’t enough, and I often dream of going back. I will take it slower, admire the scenery and breathe the perfect air. I’m going to sleep under the stars, and if it rains, I’m going to get soaking wet.
There are few places I truly miss with all my heart, but the Atacama is on the list. And I’ll never taste an empanada as good as the one I made while I was there. Some things just can’t get any better.
