San Pedro de Atacama
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2008
1
17
36
Trip End
Jun 01, 2008
San Pedro de Atacama,
Chile
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
After checking in we headed straight for the ATM to obtain some Chilean pesos. WeŽd had a major panic in Salta after hearing there was only one ATM in San Pedro, that is frequently ran out of cash and only accepted Mastercard (we only have Visa). Our attempt to change a load of Argentinian pesos but had been met with "not possible" so we just had to turn up in San Pedro and hope for the best
Katie in her goggles
! Luckily we found the ATM with cash in it and managed to withdraw cash using an RBS maestro card. Having obtained some cash we went for some pasta with the guys in our room in this lovely little restaurant with a thatched rood and open courtyard bonfire.The next day we chilled out had a scout round a few of the tour agencies for a 3-day Salt flat tour to Uyani and after much deliberation went with Cordilleria. We had planned to get a taxi out to an Oasis 3km out of San Pedro but discovered it wasnŽt open on Mondays.
That night we went stargazing in the atacama desert. We were picked up in a minibus and driven out to the outskirts of town where we met a French astronomer and his wife. They had half a dozen telescopes. We spent half an hour looking at the stars through the telescopes before the moon rose. One of the telescopes was pointed at Saturn and you could see its rings, it was awesome. Watching the moon rise was beautiful although its light dimmed the rest of the stars in the milky way. Once the moon had risen the astronomer got out his magic glittery laser pen and pointed out the different constellations in the sky and talking to us about the history of astronomy and the stars. He really new his stuff and it was both interesting and entertaining as he had a comedic flair . Later, we had another chance to look though the telescopes before heading into the cottage for a cup of hot chocolate and some more star facts. The whole night was magic!
The next day, we decided to walk out to the oasis for a swim, having been told it was a 20 minute walk we arrived 50 minutes later sweaty and dehydrated to discover the "oasis" was infact nothing more than a man made swimming pool in the middle of a campsite - disappointing
Neil Sandboarding
. Katie was also limping again again after managing to stub her toe twice in one day which blood-tastic results. We had a short swim, got heckled for being gringos by some locals and trekked back to town for our sandboarding lesson.Our sandboading lesson was in "Death valley", we got picked up our hostel and drove five minutes out of town when the landscape changed dramatically and we found ourselves in the midst of giant sandunes and crazy rock formations. The setting was amazing!! We then climbed to the top of one of the giant sandunes, were given some quick instruations, a board and some wax (Katie also got a delightful pair of blue goggles to protect her contacts) and we were on our way. It was so much fun, although Katie quite often managed to wipe out half way down the dune and Neil kept going headfirst into the sand cause of his natural snowboarding instincts! Only bad bit was having to drag the board back up the dune each time in the blazing hot heat.
After a couple of hours sandboarding, the jeep picked us up and took us to the Moon Valley to watch the sunset. The Moon Valley was like the Death Valley but is called the moon valley because of the salt which makes it appear white. The scenery was stunning, it was looked like another planet, like being on the Moon, and when the sun went down and the sky turned red, it was like being on Mars!
