San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

We were up about 6.30am, quick taxi ride and then onto the bus for the trip to San Pedro de Atacame in Chile. The bus ride was long but the scenery was pretty cool as it got progressively more barren, sandy and mountainous. Around 1 or 2 pm we hit the Chilean border and it took us a good hour to pass Argentinian passport control before back on the bus. Our Chilean immigration check was only done once we'd arrived in San Pedro de Atacame, luckily no visa fees for Aussies or Germans here. We were finally dropped in San Pedro bus station about 4.30pm and made our way to our hostel. The place was very basic and they had messed up our booking, but at least the staff were friendly and also the other travellers.

Once we dropped our bags we wandered into town and found some tour brochures, got some money from an ATM, changed our last Argetinian currency over to local and then headed back to the hostel We had an early dinner at about 6pm at a restaurant called Carman which was just what we neeed and then back to the hostel. I was feeling pretty worn out from the bus journey so was happy with a fairly early night.

Slow and very cold start to the day today...everything is so dusty here, and cold, and very dry! Getting chapped lips already. About 11am we head out for a late breakfast (again at Carman) and then wander around town. We spend quite a while trying to locate a certain shop that sells guitar strings as there is a guitar at the hostel I was keen to play but it had a broken string. After much asking and much walking up and down the main street we finally found the shop we were looking for and got the strings! We also checked some tours at the YHA hostel in town and got some advice not to visit the geysers straight away so that we could better aclimatise to the altitude (it's 2400 metres here already). I also picked up some thermals from the North Face shop which were expensive but necessary as it gets down to -2 celcius at nights here.

In the afternoon back at the hostel we took it pretty cruisy, did some internet and I restrung the hostel's guitar, tuned it and enjoyed playing for the first proper time in probably 6 months (apart from two brief opportunities in Thailand early on). In the evening we ventured out to Adobe restaurant for some dinner which was excellent (pasta and a glass of vino tinto). Bought a beannie as well for these cold nights and immediately it started to pay off. Back at the hostel many of the guests were enjoying a late barbecue and wine, and Sandra and I joined in for a while and I played guitar while we sat around the fire. It was a good fun night but we didn't make it a late one finishing up about midnight.

So finaly getting organised now, we head into town for breakfast and dropped off our laundry and stopped by the North Face shop to see Pablo who we'd met yesterday and who had come to the hostel to enjoy the barbeque and fiesta in the evening. Pablo had agreed to help us with booking our geyser trip at the lowest possible cost as he knows someone, so we were happy to take up the offer. Bus will pick us up tomorrow at 4am!

In the afternoon we booked a sunset tour which left from the YHA at 3pm and stopped by the Valle de la Luna including visits to the Valle de Marte, Valle de la Muerte and Tres Marías. Not the greatest tour, but the views over the lunar-like landscape and the vast salt lake of Salar de Atacama. Back in town in the evening we enjoy dinner and then a quiet night before our extremely early start tomorrow for the geysers.

Today we go to see the Del Tatio geysers. Our day began with an insanely early alarm clock at 3.40am then onto the bus about 4.15am for the two hour trip taking us up from Sandra Pedro at 2400m to the geysers at 4200m. It was already about zero degrees when we left San Pedro but by the time we made it to the geysers it was a ridiculously cold -10.3 celcius. Fortunately they had blankets on the bus but still we were bloody freezing! The geysers with all the steam are quite a sight especially in the early hours of the morning. I had expected big jets of water shooting 10+ metres into the air rather than only a metre or less but overall the experience was still very cool. After sunrise we headed to the thermal spring for a quick dip to warm up which was awesome apart from of course the getting in and getting out parts which sucked. On the way back to San Pedro our bus had a minor suspension issued which delayed us and the extra time at that altitude without proper aclimitisation started to get to us and by the time we got back I had a smashing headache and Sandra wasn't far behind. I lay down the rest of the afternoon before heading out for a traditional Chilean soup dinner then back to hostel to sleep and recover.

No big plans today, nice to have a day off! Also nice to wake up without a headache and much refreshed compared to yesterday afternoon and night. We head out to sort out our bus tickets to Iquique for tomorrow, go to the ATM, get breakfast and some brief shopping then back to the hostel for a relaxing afternoon of emailing, blogging, playing guitar and later some red wine. We had dinner at a nice little place just down the road and watched Chilean 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' while we ate which was weird but funny. Later I drank more wine...and then lost track...and then felt very poorly and went straight to bed, ouch!