Hotel Dunas San Pedro de Atacama

... 1499;די להגיע עם הזריח 92; ל"אל טאיטו", שדה הגייז 12;ים הגבוה בעולם. בגובה של 4300 וקור של 5- מעלות הסת ...

... english pals Mike and Lucy and took a strool around the small town. We sat down and had a salad...then nearly fainted when we got the bill!! We paid as much as we would have done for a salad in a posh bar in London! That sold us the decision of cooking our own dinner that night....jacket potato and tuna it was! We also booked ourselves on the first bus outta there and such was our deperation that we jumped at the chance to hop on a 22 hour bus journey to Santiago!

... cover if a decent photographer was sent up there. The only downside was that with the smell of the bubbling sulfur, people felt they could **** away without anyone noticing. I recalled one of our group in the morning saying that they had been bunged up and now felt something brewing- thanks for that insight.

Next up were the hot springs, now you may think I´d be bored of these by now, but ...

... you that Chile has the largest number of Volcanoes, both active and inactive than any country on the planet? It is also the most seismicaly active place on earth, lying on a major fault line where there is an earth tremor every few minutes. It also has the largest number of men I have ever seen sporting dreadlocks, seems to be the craze in San Pedro ...
Today, Thursday is a chillout day, before making my way ...

... uiteindelijk niet het geval, maar bleek dat mijn bus niet ging en we overgeboekt waren. Vaarwel window seat voorin, die ik aangevraagd had. Jammer want we reden door een prachtig natuur gebied, Altiplano, bergen, meren, veel flamingos en alpaca´s en roofvogels gezien. Grensovergang ging goed, was een beetje bang vooraf, want had van een Engelse jongen in de bus gehoord dat ze zo streng waren, maar het viel allemaal mee. Ook al dat ik niets bij me had wat geloof ik echt verboden ...

... ov** 1km into the bowels of the earth.

Salar de Atacama is a vast 3,000 sq km salt flat, and a surprise because they are not flat at all. They are fed by und**ground riv**s and the salt sucks up the wat** that is rich in min**als forming uneven crunchy spikes. The pathways are a bit like walking through a UK town aft** snowfall with bright white powd** int**sp**sed with dirty sludge. The warm wat**s give birth to algae on which tiny, clear bodied shrimps feed. In ...

... tps a decoller, puis a5H , on se bouge et on loureun velo pour se balader ds la vallee de la mort et admirer le coucher du soleil!!! on pedale , pedale, cest un vrai labyrinthe, et on se trouve plus ds la valle quau dessus pour admirer le coucher de soleil. Marion persevere et enfin on arrive au bout du tunnel, on laisse nos velos, et on grimpe a travers la dune pour prdre de la hauteur, c magnifiaue, indescriptible, et en plus, je nai pas de photos car enorme ...

... Fancy trying to look cool on a sandboard at his age....really.

As per his wishes we were up bright and early and once again headed off into the the desert on our bikes towards the Valley of the Moon (Valle De La Luna). The start of the Valley is around 13 km west of San Pedro in the the huge National Reserve of Cordillera de la Sal (Salt Mountains).

Our route wound through various stone and sand formations which wind and floods have carved out ...

In San Pedro de Atacama, welches nur von der schönen Landschaft und den Touristen lebt, haben wir uns ein paar Tage ausgeruht. Wüste, Geysire etc. hatten wir in Bolivien schon reichlich gesehen, so dass wir hier nur einen kurzen Nachmittagsausflug zum Valle de la Luna und zum Valle de la Muerte unternommen haben. Im Mondtal (Luna) und im Todestal (Muerte) haben wir dann folgende Bilder aufgenommen:
 
San Pedro de Atacama ...

... a green lagoon in the morning which were really pretty. We also saw the Dali rock desert before arriving at Polque hot springs. It was freezing outside and we had about 6 layers on, however we changed into our swimsuits and ran across to get into the hot springs- it was like paradise!! It was so nice and warm and was the closest thing we had come to having a bath in the last 5 weeks. After drying off and putting all of our layers back on we ...