Alison: San Pedro de Atacama was our first stop in Chile and it was a relief to come down to a reasonable altitude. The elevation there is still 2438m but even this was a relief compared to the above 3000m we had become accustomed to! The town itself is pretty small and the main focus is a square in the middle. San Pedro is very popular with both overseas tourists and Chileans because it has lots of nice restaurants and bars and it is also surrounded by even more spectacular scenery (South America is full of it!). There are salt flats, volcanoes, geysers, cool rock formations, lakes.....the list goes on and on!

Despite there being so many activities to do in San Pedro,we only stayed a couple of days here because time was beginning to get very tight, most of the things to see are quite similar to what we had already seen on the Bolivia tour, and it is very expensive. The town also gets lots of tourists on the weekend and as they take lots of money out, the 3 cash machines often run out of money. When we arrived we had to wait all day for the machines to be filled up before we could get any Chilean money! We were lucky we had some Bolivian money to change.

The only activity that we were really keen to do was to go star gazing as apparently the conditions in the Atacama Desert make it an ideal location for this (there is very little pollution from light so the stars are really bright and clear). Unfortunately for us, we were one day away from a full moon so when we tried to book a tour, some were not running until the following week and the ones that were said that the stars wouldn't be as clear. We decided to go ahead anyway as it was the main thing we wanted to do but to be honest, if we had the choice again, we might not have done it. It was very expensive for what it was and although the sky was clear so you could see lots of stars, the moon was so bright that the sky didn't really look any different from any other clear night sky that you could see anywhere. Our guide pointed to where the milky way should be and, although we wanted to believe that we could see a hint of white in the sky, I think it was more wishful thinking! We did get the chance to look through a really powerful telescope at collections of stars but they all looked pretty much the same to me! The highlights were looking at Mars, seeing the craters of the moon close up, and the cookies our guide gave us.....they were really tasty :)

Our next destination was Valparaiso and the bus journey was a big one....24 hours. We first had to get a bus from San Pedro to Calama which is about an hour away and then change buses to start the big 24 hour monster! The bus journey would also take us through the Atacama desert. It is known as the driest non polar desert in the world and has an average rainfall of about 15mm per year. It has been suggested that between 1570 - 1971, there was no significant rainfall in the desert. It was dry!!!

As we were worried about being late for our bus in Calama and because the bus times weren't quite right for our connection, we were in Calama around 4 hours early! We had already eaten so we couldn't do that so we hit the streets looking for entertainment. What we found to amuse us for the next couple of hours is probably not what most people would class as a good time but to me (and even secretly Nigel I think) it was fabulous.......a massive supermarket! It was the first giant supermarket selling 'normal' stuff that we had been in since we had started travelling. We were in our element! Having a glimpse of our old life where we could buy nice things and forgetting we are poor travellers, we walked out of there with a whole new selection of toiletries (no more snake gall bladder shampoo and face wash for us!), a pre-made Caesar salad, a meze style platter containing a selection of cured meat, cheese, nuts and olives, and a bottle of organic red wine!

By the time we had meandered around the supermarket and tried out its cafe, it was pretty much time to get on the bus! The bus was the best one we had been on so far as it was quite posh and the seats were cama which means they almost go flat and are very spacious. The journey went by uneventfully. The only unfortunate thing was that we had chosen the bottom seats at the back and there was a giant noisy aid-conditioner blowing cold air on our head all night. This was to be one of many bad seat location choices!l