Arriving into San Pedro after a pretty good night bus we walked into the main square and found a little cafe for breakfast. The sun was up pretty high already and the arid nature of the area was very apparent. You could feel the moisture being drawn out of the pores in your skin.

We set off to find our hostel which was a little way out of town. On our way a local befriended us and offered to show us the way. We were fairly certain of where we were going but we were unable to convey this in Spanish. We pretty much showed him the way and when we arrived he suggested we should give him some money for beer. I asked how much and when he suggested $5 my Spanish started to fail me.

The hostel was beset with cats who had no problem in jumping up and causing havoc especially when trying to prepare food. Cheeky chuffs.

We spent some time wandering around this outpost border town and booked a 4x4 trip over the Atacama desert into Bolivia and tried to book a trip to to do some start gazing. The star gazing was booked but considering the skies we'd seen in NZ this wasn't such an issue. We also ummed and arred about hiring snowboards to have a go at sandboarding on the local sand dunes but with no uplift the prospect of walking up sand dunes carrying a board in crazy heat at about 3000m up didn't sound too inviting

In our dorm we met Franzi and Kevin from Frankfurt, Germany. They were on a South American trip and were planning the same trip into Bolivia. We joined forces and early on a Saturday morning set out to catch our bus to the border and into the desert.