Stopover in San Pedro de Atacama

8 hours on a bus on a winding road through the Andes is meant to be pretty spectacular... it was a pity I slept through most of it but I did see some salt flats, salt mines and volcanoes (many still active).

A short wikipedia description:

"San Pedro de Atacama is a Chilean town and commune in El Loa Province, Antofagasta Region. It is located east of Antofagasta, some 100 km (60 mi) southeast of Calama and the Chuquicamata copper mine, overlooking the Licancabur volcano.

The town lies at an average altitude of approximately 2,400m (7,900 ft) and visitors often experience mild altitude sickness such as dizziness, lethargy and headaches. The local climate is extremely dry (with little or no rainfall recorded in the town itself)"

The town with a big volcano in the background

We arrived at San Pedro de Atacama at 5pm and had to go through Chilean customs which is in the town itself. The weather was hot and intensely dry. At the post we met Marcileno, a local Chilean who invited us to stay at his hostel, Laskar. We agreed to go have a look and asked if our Norwegian and American friends could stay too. They in turn brought another 6 people along which meant that we totally filled the hostel! I definitely felt Riverdance and myself were due a discount for providing so much business! After a short walk around town, we settled back at the hostel where Marcileno provided an Asado and we got down to the serious business of drinking games!

The main street in town

Marcileno was a very interesting character himself. It turns out that he used to be a bodyguard for important Chilean businessmen and was knowledgeable in a wide array of martial arts like Kung Fu and Aikido. Despite his stocky appearance he put in a pretty impressive performance with his nunchuks and encouraged me to join him in battering his punching bag!

Marcileno demonstrates his technique

Getting in some solid punching practice. Can't recall why I needed a headlamp though

I even learnt how to use nunchuks

Me, Helena, Marie, Florian (Germany) and Daniel (USA)

Steak, in South America it is EVERYWHERE

The town is famous for its volcanoes and thermal geysers and provides a lot of other related activities such as sandboarding and stargazing. Our primary concern was to hire a cross country 4x4 trip to Uyuni in Bolivia so we walked around town for a while, checking out our options. Our team consisted of Riverdance, Daniel (West Virginia, USA), Helena (Norway), Marie (Norway) and myself. The architecture is a curious mix of Spanish and Indian styles and the crumbling ancient walls that lead out of town and into the dust tells of a long history. It turned out that we could only get on a tour in 2 days time so we booked ourselves on and decided to see what else we could do. We took a tour to the moon landscape in the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). This started with a drive to the Valley of the Dead which apparently had some story behind it which I can´t quite recall (something about all the migrating animals dying in the area). We took a 30 minute hike through a desert valley where we saw some sandboarders eating a lot of sand! Moving onward we were shown some interesting rock formations including the "3 Sisters", (a formation which is over a million years old) and then finally dropped at the bottom of a large ridge which we climbed to view the sunset.

Dust-Devils were fairly common

The Valley of the Dead

Helena and Marie doing the "C" for Chile or was it "Cheesy"??

Teeing off

Checking out the sand-boarders

Crawling through the Salt caves

The 3 Sisters

If we ever started a rock band, then this would be our first album cover

Sunset over the desert

That evening we had a seriously delicious meal at La Estaka restaurant. The wine service in particular was very impressive (it´s been a while since I´ve been asked to test the cork and check clarity with the sommelier - all very surprising considering this was a little desert town!). After dinner we messed around at another bar for a bit playing all sorts of weird games like chubby bunny and then headed back for a long sleep.

La Estaka

A delicious meal! Canneloni for me and Helena, Thai curry for Riverdance and Daniel and steak for Marie

The Thai curry

Marie playing "Chubby Bunny"

After a nice lie-in I gave a quick Capoeira lesson to Marie and moved out into the town to get some admin done (something which I am doing at this very moment!).

That evening, Marcileno agreed to take us on an evening excursion to a thermal spring. After having another good meal at a local restaurant (it was quite surprising the quality of food and drink considering our surroundings!) we hopped into Marcileno's decrepid truck at 10pm and drove out into the desert arriving in a dark valley. Headlamps attached and switched on, we moved down a ravine to a small stream at the bottom. We changed into our costumes and slid into the surprisingly warm water (I would have put it at around 25 deg Celsius). After splashing around for a while and getting "massages" from the mini waterfalls, Marcileno showed us another feature of the springs - mud. Apparently it was very good for the skin so he lathered liberal amounts on all of us. The stench of rotten eggs exuded strongly from the mud, a sure sign of sulfur from volcanic activity. After grudgingly leaving the mud on our faces long enough to suffer a few pictures we washed off and gazed at the stars a while before getting out and hurriedly drying off and putting on dry clothes again.