The next couple of days of tour through the desert were both very early starts but - totally worth it. There was a lot of driving involved but yesterday we saw some incredible places including, the tree rock, Mountain of 7 colours and the red lake. It's also crazy to see the ice formations of the sand. It's a dry desert so it is covered in sand but, because it's so high and cold there are crystallised ice formations in certain patches on the sand ... crazy beautiful. Last night was probably one of the coldest nights we've had on the trip, including the Inca Trail ... I think everyone was wearing all their clothes, in their sleeping bags and under the blankets! We got up at 4.30am today!! It was absolutely gorgeous though, I've never seen such a clear sky - you could see millions of stars and it was just gorgeous they were really lighting up the whole place. We had some issues starting one of the 4WDs in the extreme cold but after a little bit we managed to get going to our first stop the geysers ... which are kinda similar to the ones in Rotorua to be honest but interesting looking in the dawn light. The green lake was next and again gorgeous, the range of colours in this desert is just awesome. We stopped for breakfast at the hot springs - the best thing we did! It was sooo freezing but the natural hot springs were a perfect way to deal with that, once you got over the fear of actually taking off your clothes and freezing a lot for just a little bit. The springs were also helpful since there had been no showers since we started our 4WD trip!

Then all there was left was to cross the border in to Chile, funniest border crossing I've ever done. Just one little hut that said farewell, all you had to do was go up to the man and get your exit stamp ... I'm not sure if they'd notice just one car driving past though. Then, we had to drive another 2-3 hours to get the Chilian entrance point! Much more of an ordeal but, we made it eventually and went to get set up in our hostal in San Pedro de Atacama.