Atacamadventure San Pedro de Atacama

... 1499; 97;ם לסלטה בארגנ 96;ינה ומפני 01; מקום לסטקי 01; שמחכי 01; לנו.
או ;הבים ומתגע 90;עים
א 89;י ועינת

... La Serena is a beautiful little city and it's central plaza is a joy to behold. We spent our only full day there visiting the beach and the city centre during the day and the observatory at night. When the chap arrived to pick us up for the observatory tour he confused everyone by just saying “Marmaduke” to us when we answered the hostel door. We wondered for some time who Marmaduke might be but he could only say Marmaduke to us over and over again. After five minutes of ...

... about 0,8L of water and a hand-drawn map from the geezer at the rental place. I set off clowly to censerve water (and because cycling on dust roads is much more difficult than cycling on asphalt, which I hadn't taken into consideration) and soon arrived Pukará de Quitor. It has some cool big ugly heads carved into the rock and then a path which turns into a cave which I went in to explore, obviously. It was very dusty and slippery, just like the roads, and I was still ...

... time) but unfortunately I felt really sick at about 3am - not sure if it was the chicken or the altitude who knows...
So today i am going to bath in the hot salt springs where you can float like in the red sea..
Then tomorrow I will go on a 3 day trip to Bolivia which should be really good (bit worried about the altitude though and what it will do to me as we hit about 4k meters... hopefully I am acclimatising here...

... and this must be the most fun trek we have completed so far.

Again, providing anoth** astonishing contrast are the El Tatio geys**s, the highest in the world, which lie high** up in the mountains at 4,500m in the foothills of 1 of the active volcanoes, Putana. Our visit is at dawn when the hot, boiling wat** leaping into the sub z**o atmosph**e, provides the most spectacular aquatic display. We have to leave the hotel at 5.00am and I walk into the reception ...

... Chile appeared far more "civilised" and advanced by western standards. San Pedro was very clean, there was no hassle from hawkers or beggars and the food a pleasure to eat. Whilst parts of Bolivia were great, I don't think I've ever experienced such a stark difference in the standards of living by simply crossing a border.

San Pedro is famous for its surrounding desert landscape. The desert beckoned, so the following day we hired a couple of mountain ...

... the sun set over the lagoon and surrounding volcanoes.

A good cafe we found was Cafe Esquina on cnr Caracoles & Domingo Atienza. The pizzas and freshly sqeezed juice are great and the price is good.

As far as we discovered there are only two ATMs in town. The first only takes mastercard and is just near the main square and information centre. The other is for visa cards and is near the Cafe Esquina but on the other side and a bit further down the street.

San Pedro de Atacama

Ein Zwischenstopp in Chile mit mehr egal eineinhalb Stunden für die Einreise, jede Tasche wird gescannt, damit man auch ja kein Obst oder sonst irgendwelche Naturprodukte ins Land kommen. San Pedro an sich ist ein reiner Touristenort, warm und direkt neben der trockensten Wüste der Welt, da regnet es einen Teelöffel ...

... burn in the wind. Everything else: 0 but soon to be much higher seeing that all our suncream got nicked!

What we miss: Not wearing slops in the shower.

What we dont miss: Cleaning a house (or a bedroom for that matter).

We enjoyed Chile but it didn't beat its predecessors, Argentina and Brazil. Still a great country and we had a handful of unforgettable experiences (like being issued a visa in 20 mins). Next stop - Bolivia!

... for 8am, however when we got there it was shut and nowhere in the town appeared to be open. We wandered around for a while but were followed by stray dogs which got quite annoying after a while. Eventually a café opened where we went for some breakfast. Whilst we were in the café we noticed a clock saying 7.30am - we hadn't realised that there was another hours time difference, oops!! After breakfast we went back to the rental shop which ...