Ayelen Apart Hotel Calama

Hier, in Calama, mitten im unwirtlichen Norden Chiles, hatten wir eine Übernachtung, weil wir von hier am nächsten morgen nach Santiago weiter flogen. Ansonsten hätten wir uns noch eine der größten und tiefsten Tagebauminen (800m tief) anschauen können, aber wir hatten inzwischen schon genung vom Sand der ...

... heat of the sun expanding the already formed cracks on the surface. Rode out to Lago Chaxa which was about 140kms round trip to see the salt lake with the pink flamingoes and then went to the base of one of the many volcanoes that dot the landscape around San Pedro. San Pedro itself is a great place for tourists with plenty of hostels & restuarants and a relax feel to it, meet 5 guys from Brazil touring around on their bikes and had to have a couple of ...

... everytime I manage to put the rucksack on, plus carry my day bag (around 18kg total) I am defying all laws of gravity by even managing to move, let alone walk half a mile! Anyway, we did make it to Hotel El Mirador, which was a bit of an oasis in Calama, enough said. Can't quite believe it but the only place we could find to eat was a chicken roasters place, except they didn't have chicken.... Nice hotel though.

... omplir el paperet que has d'omplir)... perquè s'adonin que els papers del cotxe estan malament (no coincideix el número de matricula i el de de motor amb del permís per passar el cotxe d'un país a un altre ni amb de l'assegurança internacional)... total, que no ens deixen entrar. Obviament agafem un cabreig monumental, tot i que no ens possem bordes amb els de la frontera (la culpa no es seva)... ens veuen tan emprenyats que els pobres ho deuen haver vist... fins i tot ...

... tea at traffic lights, waiting for the lights to change, in the street, anywhere at all basically. I thought irish people loved tea, but we´ve nothing on Argentinians. The best ever was on a little tourist train in Iguacu national park. The train took literally 4 minutes to go out to one of the big falls, and the family in my carriage used that time to have an emergency mate....because lord knows any cup, sorry gourd, might be your ...

... a fresh brain and lots of stories. Finally, I was delighted to get a text from my dad today, while in the middle of the andean highlands!, letting me know that Kilkenny beat Cork by 9 points...sorry Eimear!...I checked youtube for highlights earlier but the only thing posted so far is a clip of cha fitzpatrick getting hit in the balls! Entertaining but not exactly what I was looking for! Talk soon, Eoghan

... mixer...but as with everything in Chile...humungous. We decided that we would bypass Antofogasta and drive an extra hour straight to Calama. This way we could spend more time in San Pedro de Atacama. The roads were mostly dirty, dusty and dry and we just followed the road for miles and miles seeing eerie deserted nitrate towns easily appreciated from a car window. At Calama we stayed at ...... expensive town because most of the ...

... fail being violently ill. (I think it was a result of drinking the water from the taps on the La Paz Golf Course). In typically melodramatic male style, I announced to the four girls in our group over breakfast that I was definitely dying and just asked that they say nice things about me if asked. Te two Irish girls, Elaine and Evelyn, took pity on me and provided a number of stomach settling drugs, advice on diet for the next couple of days and moral support. I seem to ...

... sun in the Salar de Atacama!! But enough of malaise because that is not the point of this blog. Really we want to share how collectively these have been the best 4 days of the entire trip so far - and that´s saying something! We headed into town on the first night, about a 1km walk and found San Pedro to be a really quaint place. There are loads of tour companies, even more restaurants, filthy water flowing in man made channels beside the roads (luckily our hotel had ...

... So when they were coming up with a name for the even bigger one in Germany it obviously had to be an even more impressive name than the Extermely Large Telescope, so they are calling it OWL (get this) which stands for Over Whemingly Large telescope!!!! Not one word of a lie, check it out on the web.....NASA......holy god almighty.... After getting bitten by bed bugs we decided to leave the lovely hostel we were in and headed north ...