Hello from San Pedro de Atacama.......

The bus journey to San Pedro was a long one which I (Kate) spent sitting next to a sleeping Chilian man. I was worried I was going to fall asleep on him so didn't sleep that much! There was also some mechanical problems with the bus so spent a while sat in the desert too...but after all of this arrived in the beautiful San Pedro. It was a small village on the edge of the Atacama desert and the buildings are made entirely of mud.

We stayed in a nice little hostel on the edge of the village. Ate in a lovely restaurant with the crew which a whole in the ceiling and a fire in the middle (sounds worse when you write it but it was very atmospheric!) Just to explain our crew- we were on a tour with the company Kumuka and there were 17 of including Heidi our tour guide. There were us 3 English girls (team UK), 3 Irish ladies, 3 Euro girls (Team Euro as they were known!), 5 Aussies, 1 Kiwi and a canadian. All absolulty lovely people, we were very lucky- lots of funny memories!
Had a cocktail on our first night here, which may have been a bad idea as this was our first time at real altitude (around 2500) but we were fine. Becky in particlar seemed uneffected by altitude with cigarette and cocktail in hand!

The next day we spent organisng pretty much. We put our washing in to laundry (some interesting communication through sign language with Chilian lady!) and changed our Chilian pesos in to Bolivianos in preparartion for border crossing. This was a pretty dodgy experience too. Next was tour to Valley of the Moon and Valley of Death. A lot of the group went and we hopped in a van and were driven in to the desert. The valley was beautiful and we walked down then back in the van to visit Valley of the Moon national park. This was beautiful too and we climbed a hill just in time to watch sunset over the ampitheatre- amazing.

Becca and I also went on a star gazing tour that evening at midnight. I was a little dubious at first as there was a russian sounding man babbling about the stars and outer space. But once I was given a coat I was fine (It was freezing and I was unprepared!) He was pretty fun though and knew his stuff. It was actually really interesting and we got to look through different telescopes at amazing things. The last one was focusied on the moon and you could move it around and see the craters on the surface. It all finished with a (surprsingly tasty) cup of cocoa sitting around a candle looking at the stars.

The next day we left San Pedro pretty early for our drive to the Bolivian border
Bye San Pedro... Salt Flats here we come.

xxxx