So over the next few days (hopefully ;)) we will be taking you on a magically journey from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile where we left you last, north through the mountains of the Andes, through loco Bolivia, into very slightly less loco Peru, dash through Ecuador and find yourselves sitting next to us on the next bus through Colombia on our amazing journey.
OK - where were we?
San Pedro de Atacama - The Atacama Desert - Chile.
Watching the sunrise over the Atacama desert, in northwestern Chile, after a long 13hr night bus journey was the perfect way to welcome us to San Pedro de Atacama, a small town built on one of the few oasis's (or is that oasi'... hmmm damn grammar) in the Atacama desert.
The sheer distances in this place are astounding, as the sun pops its head over the horizon, it reveals a landscape incredibly different to anything we had seen before. The 6000m Andean volcanoes interrupting the horizon, the rest of your vision filled with giant seemingly endless stretches of sand, rock and some cacti for good measure. Simply amazing. A few llama around, but not many. Apparently it rains about once a year, although some locals tried to convince us it had been dry since 2006. We were ready to believe that when you look around the surrounding environment. San Pedro is at 2500m, so you do feel like the air is thinner and you get tired more easily - especially coming straight from sea level overnight like us.
The town is very small, maybe 500-1000 local residents, but this towns primary economy is tourism being a very good stopover point, being practically on the border of Bolivia and Argentina. It is also situated to the north of the biggest Chilean salt lake - Salar de Atacama, and its proximity to the Andes means awesome trekking, climbing (they do climbs up a lot of the volcanoes, ranging from about 5300 - 6200m) and great mountain biking. Also, because of the abundance of giant dunes, sand-boarding is pretty popular, and there are heaps of local companies who take you out to the dunes, rent boards - they use snowboards mostly, and try and get you drunk on free pisco sour as you watch the sun go down over the desert.
We found a sweet little place to stay, which incredibly enough had a small moat-like stream running through the middle, which was really relaxing - muy bueno! After getting our bearings after the night bus (i.e afternoon siesta) we organised to head out into the dunes sand-boarding, with a crazy Chilean/French guy. This might not mean much to some, but he was a dead set ringer for Damo from Goodtime - hilarious stuff in Doodles brain. Sand-boarding is very similar to powder snowboarding, except for a heap more friction, so its slower, and of course no lifts, meaning we were trudging up these giant dunes all afternoon. Tiring but super fun, especially after we only just arrived that morning and were now at 2500m, so we were feeling like unfit bastards!
We got some video on the GoPro, check it out below:
The sunsets in the desert are incredible, amazing colours and the landscape feels like your on the moon (drinking picso sours of course). Pisco is made from grapes, but is super strong, like a liqueur, and honestly - it gets you hammered! Two drinks down Boos Boos was stripping off and heading down the dunes on the sand-board in her undies.... OK that's totally untrue.. but you get the point - its STRONG!
The next few days flew by, being a really relaxed spot, with heaps to check out, eat, drink etc. We had organised to get the 4wd into Bolivia a few days after we arrived, so we had plenty to time to take it easy and do a few trips in the surrounding desert.
Doodles decided to borrow a mountain bike and test his unfit lungs against the desert, heading off in search of a swim. The Lonely Planet (curse that brilliant yet often incorrect book) was telling me there was a waterhole just south of the town, so after riding around for about an hour trying to find water in the middle of one the worlds driest deserts, I stopped and asked some locals (in brilliant spanish of course). I didnt understand much of what they said in return, but im sure that there is a universal facial expression that says: "Gringo dude, look around you! Your in the MIDDLE OF A DESERT and it hasnt rained in a year - there aint no cool little swimming hole here!"
So, after this little blow to the afternoons plan, I went in search of (funnily enough) Valley de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). Stupidly forgetting any cash for the entrance fee, a sneaky off road journey took him to a less visited part of the valley, which was totally bizzare! This was definately where they faked the moon landing! I found it! Cop that NASA, the Lid has been Blown on this little conspiracy theory! Anyway despite the thrilling news that Doodles couldn't wait to tell the world, this landscape was nothing like I had seen before, so much so I cant even describe it well in words - check out the pics below (sorry about dodgy photography - yet ANOTHER moment on this trip wishing there was an SLR in my back pocket).
The day before we left, we took a trip out to some salt pools, called Laguna Cerca (we think..). These were in the middle of a dried up salt lake, but were about 3m deep, and had such a high salt concentration you couldn't put your head under (although some monkey fools did, ending whinging about their eyes stinging and copious amounts of mucous coming out their noses... idiots!), and you floated halfway out of the water! Seriously, try as you might to sink, it was not happening, and it was pretty hilarious trying to not end up on your belly or back, the natural flotation kept trying to flip you over.
A day or so before we left, we caught up with Vasiles, our English architect friend who did the Spanish course with us in Santiago. He was heading into Bolivia too, so we convinced the fool to join us (he did have better Spanish too, other than being a funny cat - so there was definitely a hidden agenda :)).
8am - we leave San Pedro via immigration to officially end our stay in Chile, and wind our way up to the Andean plateau, where we start our 3 day journey over the Andes into Bolivia.
CIAO CHILE!
Peace and Love
Doodles and Boos Boos
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