Well we didn´t exactly find warmth. We arrive arrived in little San Pedro de Atacama in the middle of the FREEZING cold night. We´d booked the only place we could get hola of with a view to finding somewhere cheaper in the morning. We had a gorgeous dinner in a little restaurant called Todo Natural and then as per usual after one of our long bus rides we went back to the hostel and conked out.

Morning came and we moved into Florida backpackers. It had a sunny little courtyard with hammocks and an annoying owner who kept asking us if we´d paid every two minutes when he´d written down that we had. We went out an explored the town, well the travel agencies really. Thats mostly what San Pedro is. A small town in the desert which nowadays exists to serve tourists. Its got hostels, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and tour agencies and thats about it. We headed straight away to see if we could book a tour of the night sky with this astonomy guy. All the other agencies run exactly the same tours pretty much but this french astronomer and his wife have their own unique company. We´d heard great thing and we were lucky enough that there was a tour in English that night that still had spaces.

It was absolutely freezing. -2 to be precise. They drove us out into their house in the desert in a little minibus. The guy, Alain was absolutely hilarious and it was really interesting so we managed to survive the two hours or so before he took us inside for hot chocolate and questions. We got to see Jupiter and Saturn and crazy nebulas through different telescopes. They have the most powerful touristic telescopes in south america apparently. He explained how we see the sky depending on where we are in the world and the time of night and time of year. He showed us constellations and black constellations, the milky way, alpha centari (the closest star to us) and explained the myth that if you can see a star its already 'dead'. not true.

The next day we looked around the shops a bit, went to a museum (very disappointing - they´ve removed the desert mummies we went there to see) and went to book a jeep tour to Bolivia (not part of our original plan at all but one of the couples we met in Uspallata convinced us to do it) We had lunch in Todo Natural and sat down next to these two Aussie girls, Jess and Lisa, who we got chatting to. They were doing the same tour as us that afternoon to the Valle de la Luna (valley of the moon). They also wanted to do the Bolivia tour, leaving the same day as us so we told them to go and sign up with Colque, the company we were going with cos it was just us two on the list at that point.

The tour that afternoon was cool. We started off in Valle de la Muerte (Valley of the dead) where the mummies were discovered.

to be continued.... just discovered we´ve got MORE camera trouble. this time Maias memory card has somehow been wiped of santiago, valpo, san pedro, and bolivia photos apart from yesterdays and todays!

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alrighty then, just arrived in peru so im very behind indeed on this blog.

san pedro....

valle de la luna was ridiculously windy so we were walking around with sand in our eyes. those photos have been wiped from our half remaining camera so we're gona have to nick some off our friends' profiles. it cant really be explained in words, welln not by me anyway! the finale of the tour was walking up the side of a big sand dune (ridiculously hard work, especially at high altitude) to watch the sunset over the mountains before running down the dune back to the van. we chatted loads to lisa and jess (the aussies) but also to these two english people, nicola and chris, who were going on the same tour as us in the morning. san pedro is all tours. in fact the town exists for tourists and consists of tour agencies, bars, restaurants, hostels, and souvenir shops pretty much.

that evening we went for dinner with jess, lisa, nicola, chris and some other english gap year student who chris and nicola knew. after dinner we headed to this bar called 6 degrees that was next to our hostel. the owners of the bar and the hostel were either very good friends or the same people, we couldnt quite work it out. anyway, they'd given us a load of vouchers for free pisco sours so we headed there to take them up on their offer. we drank quite alot of strong south american cocktails. knowing we had to be up for 4am for our trip to the geysers, aislinn cleverly decided to head back at 2.30 or so. i was foolish and stayed on with jess and chris. when the bar closed we were invited to a party, two in fact. every one was milling around on the street and then the police turned up and everyone quickly went towards the two parties. jess and chris grabbed me before i followed the gringo crowd and we went on a little adventure in search of the chileno fiesta. we didnt find it. and at 3.30, when we couldnt stand the cold any longer we admitted edfeat and headed back.

DONT DRINK AT ALTITUDE. thats what the next day taught me. i was rudely awakened half an hour after crawling into my bunk by our bus driver declaring in spanish that we had 3 minutes to leave. we hurridly shoved on as many layers as we could manage and ran outside. no bus. we were terrified it had gone without us but it turned out he'd just gone round some of the other hostels while he was waiting. the first thing he said to me was had i been drinking. i said i was fine and he said that it was a problem if i had at the altitude we were going (about 4200m). he was right. i felt absolutely disgusting all day. the next thing he said was that the road wasnt very good, in fact it was very bad. no kidding. i was so tired that i kept almost managing to sleep but every so often we'd hit an even bumpier bit and we'd all fly about a metre out of our seats. all i managed of the buffet breakfast when we finally got to el tatio geysers at sunrise was a cup of tea. aislinn was only feeling marginally better. the smell of sulphur wasnt great for me either but the geysers were pretty amazing. we went on to a hot spring which i'd really been looking forward to but i just couldnt manage it and stayed on the edge, taking photos of aislinn and the others.

we stopped in a little village last of all where the smell of llama kebabs (!) was just to much for me and i was finally sick. when we finally got back to the hostel in the afternoon we went straight to bed. we woke in the evening only to change some bolivian money, eat something and get packed up for our departure on a jeep tour through bolivia the next morning...