day two at Explora Atacama: rainbow valley, horseback riding, and stargazing

After some much needed sleep, it was time for breakfast. The breakfast here is a small buffet, although you can get basic warm breakfast dishes like pancakes, eggs, and quinoa made to order. They have an array of fruit, yogurt, juices, bread, granola, and always two baked goods. Also, a very extensive array of jams. I had some very creamy scrambled eggs, along with the creamiest avocado I’ve ever had. Also some really tasty white cheese and fresh cheese that kind of tasted like mozzarella. They also had extremely tasty fruit, especially plums and melon, and every day there was some new fruit I’d never seen before to try.

For our next adventure, we went to the Rainbow Valley. On the way, we passed by some llamas, which I seriously considered stealing. Our guide Rae told us that the ribbons tied around the llamas indicates who owns them, something I didn’t know. Also, the tiny bushes that the llamas are nibbling on? That is actually the rica rica that was in my delicious panna cotta yesterday. The more you know!

Absolutely adorable. Especially the baby one.

I gotta say, these llamas have good taste. Rica rica is quite a tasty herb.

While technically we went on a “hike,” it was more of a pleasant walk, and we stopped lots of times to take some pictures of the beautiful valley.

Fun fact: all those tiny bushes are rica rica plants.

After stopping for a quick snack, it was time to head back to the hotel, but not before we stopping on the side of the road for some more pictures. Even the drives going to and from excursions are beautiful.

We also bumped into some more animals. This time it was guanacos, which llamas are actually descended from.

Once we got back, it was pretty much time for lunch. To start, I had the chilled avocado soup, which really was more the texture of a creamy mousse. As someone who loves avocado though, I enjoyed it a lot.

For my main course, I had the grilled octopus with fava bean puree. I’m not really a bean person, but once you puree it, you get rid of the weird texture in whole beans that I dislike and it contrasted with the charred and flavorful grilled octopus.

I chose the grand marnier parfait was my dessert, which turned out to be a chilled, cross between a custard and mousse dessert. I liked how the sweetness only accentuated the grand marnier flavor.

Since the COVID-19 situation was so fluid, with borders closing every second, we finally decided during lunch that the best option was to go home after our stay at Explora. This proved to be an extremely wise decision, as Chile announced that they were closing their borders on the 19th. We planned to leave on a 11 pm flight to NYC on the 18th. Our hotel was also planning on closing on the 22nd, as most of their guests were foreigners and the hotel was noticeably beginning to empty out. 

Soon enough, we headed to our other excursion for the day: horseback riding! I don’t have many pictures from this, because it’s very difficult to take pictures without dropping your phone, but it was quite the exciting experience. The hotel has its own stable, so we rode through the town to the nearby mountains, which meant crossing a stream and a road. While the views were amazing, I will say that horseback riding for two hours in the burning hot sun is not as fun as anticipated. I think it’s also because I forgot how bad my allergies are around horses. Whoops.

After some relaxing time by the hotel pool, we had dinner. To start, I had fish of the day ceviche. The fish was really tender and mild and was a really good vehicle for the acidic and strong ceviche marinade.

For my main course, I had fish en papillote, which means it was baked in a parchment paper bag with vegetables, essentially steaming it. The fish was tender and flaky and with the vegetables, made for a light, yet filling meal.

The moment I saw churros with dulce de leche on the menu, I new I had to order it. These churros were not as crunchy on the outside as I would’ve liked, it was still delicious, but it’s hard for fried dough and dulce de leche to taste bad.

Around 10:45 pm, we went out to the hotel’s observatory to see the stars. We started outside, as the guide pointed out all the stars we could see with the naked eye. Then we went inside the observatory and used the hotel’s fancy telescope to look at things like globular nebulas. This was such a unique and amazing experience, since you can’t really see the stars in NYC because of all the light pollution. I didn’t get any pictures unfortunately, because neither my phone nor my camera were able to capture the stars. I did however, get a photo of the spread of tea, hot chocolate, and oatmeal raisin cookies they had right outside the observatory for us to enjoy. All in all, another amazing ending to an amazing day.