Hotel Alto Atacama San Pedro de Atacama

So it was another early rise (5 am) for the final bit of our tour. Again this seemed a bit unneccessary but the tiredness was forgotten when we arrived at the Geysers. I think I have seen Geysers before in the Canaries and not thought much of them, but this was different. The bubbling pools and the rising smoke whilst being up at 5,000m at 6:30 in the morning was truly inspiring. It would make a great ...

San Pedro s a quaint village right on the border with Argentina. Sounds easy to get to doesn´t it! Unfortunately our bus broke down after two hours of the journey meaning that it took us 16hours in the end instead of 9. Never mind. We arrived and a cute little lady picked us up in her Toyota pick up and made us cheese and ham toasties at 11 at night - it boded well that San Pedro was a good ...

... that for some people the photo is the most important aspect of their trip. Forget the experience, so long as they can see things through a few thousand pixels they seem to be happy....what a bizarre way to experience the world.<br><br>The ride back to San Pedro was murder. Imagine a straight road with the longest slow incline possible...then double it! A straight incline at just under 9km long which, given the strange perspectives of the desert heat, made it ...

... who´d just arrived and were planning on travelling in the smae direction as me into Bolivia. This was brilliant news, so I quickly latched onto them so that I could join a tour with them and be guaranteed English speakers (Julie´s Australian and Ian´s from Cleethorpes!).<br> The next dya was spent relaxing in a hammock in the sun before heading off for a tour of the Valle de Luna (Valley of the Moon). The scenery was astounding, but ...

... as the moon (quite a vital component of the sky), Andromeda, various star clusters and constellations etc. Again the science geek is never too far away as I loved all this malarkey, although it was flipping cold out in that desert in the night!<br><br>The following day we randomly bumped into one of the guys who we did the Inca Trail with, so celebrated with a beer before catching the nightbus to La Serena...

... two other salt lakes, Miscanti and Miñiques, both beautiful but with barriers preventing you from getting anywhere close to the actual lake. It wasn´t a bad tour but I liked yesterday´s much more. I eagerly would recommend it over this tour.<br><br>Today I got up at 4am to go to the Tatio Geysers, the world´s highest geyser field at somewhere over 4,000 meters. This time I was better prepared for the cold and had two layers ...

Nach zahlreichen tollen Erlebnissen in P**u heisst es vor**st Abschied von den B**gen zu nehmen und wir begeben uns von Arequipa aus auf die lange Reise nach San Pedro de Atacama in die trockenste Wueste d** Erde (50 mal trocken** als das Death Valley).<br><br>Zunaechst ging es mal mit dem Bus von Arequipa aus suedwa**ts nach Tacna, die p**uanische Grenzstadt an d** Grenze zu Chile. Dort hiess es einen and****en Bus zu finden d** uns ueb** die Grenze zur chilenischen Stadt ...

... dinner. There are a lot of restaurants in San Pedro. We chose Adobe because it had an open fire in the middle and had pizza and beer (so much for not drinking at altitude!). The walk back was a bit hairy as there are no lights away from the main street. We were glad we had brought our torch and head light!<br><br>DAY 2<br><br>The next morning Desert Adventure picked us up for our full day tour. We had booked it all using www ...