May 7 & 8 - San Pedro de Atcama, Chile

We woke early and hot footed it down to the Salta bus station for the 10 hr trip over the Andes from Argentina into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

The bus drive was slow as we winded our way up and over the Andes reaching a maximum height of 4,750 m above sea level just as we crossed the border. The bus became very quiet at this point as most people became quite sleepy with the altitude. The roads and scenery were absolutely amazing. While the first few hours flew by as the scenery rapidly changed, the last few hours were a little tiring as the vast expense of flat desert started to take their toll. We all hopped off the bus to get our passports stamped as we were about to leave Argentina. While standing in line at the border with the desert sun beating down, one traveller collapsed and passed out, this woke us all up a little and more water was taken on board from then on.

"Break out the sunscreen, my spf 50+ shirt, my broadbrim hat, my lightweight full length pants and make sure the aloe vera cream finds its way to the fridge" were the first words out of Brendan's mouth when he stepped off the bus at San Pedro (de Atacama).

We arrived late afternoon into San Pedro and took a short stroll around the town to get our bearings and start to investigate options for the Salt Flat tours into Bolivia. There are so many different operators all offering similar tours and in the end our decision was based on the safety and track record of the respective companies as well as being offered avocado with our lunch.

The sunset was brilliant and the night sky was full of stars. Once the sun went down the temperature quickly followed. We headed out to dinner and landed at a little restaurant where we planted ourselves next to the outside fire. After some great food and red wine shared with a few other Aussie travellers, it wasn't long before we were tucked up in bed, with some additional warmth provided by the sleeping bags which got their first nights use.

The next morning we took a quick stroll up to an old fort which overlooked the town. The view gave us some idea of the oasis that San Pedro was, surrounded by desert and mountains far off in the distance. We were accompanied the whole way by two dogs that decided to join us at the on the way up to the lookout. Finally they found another few tourists to latch onto as we came closer into town.

Two of the key attractions of San Pedro are the Sand Dunes and the Valley of the Moon.

The Sand Dunes, located in Death Valley, is the location that was used to originally film the home of the young Luke Skywalker, OB1 and the funny men in red cloaks. It was barren and void of life, hence the name Death Valley, however it did have some massive sand dunes ... and what do you do with massive sand dunes in the middle of the desert? You sandboard down them of course. Similar to snowboarding with some significant differences, firstly there isn't a chairlift, so you have to hike the dunes, and secondly sand tastes a whole lot worse than snow. We lathered up the sunscreen and headed up the dunes, puffing with the new high altitude. It was SOOOOO awesome. We had a few fun hours going up, falling down, trekking up and successfully managing to fill every pocket full of sand, amongst other cracks and crevasses. Brendan tried his luck at a few jumps and was successful only in gathering more sand through his beard in the process.

Once the sun started to set our guide drove us over the Valley of the Moon. The Valley is a well regarded location to watch the sun set and allowed you to observe the changing colours of the desert landscape as day quickly turns to night, with the backdrop of the Andes. We stood up the top of a rocky ridge and enjoyed being in a completely new place. After a couple of Pisco Sours (local alcoholic lemon based spirit) to warm the tired and weary travellers we again returned to the lodgings to prepare for the Salt Flat tours starting the following morning. We sat around the outside courtyard sharing discoveries of sand in new places on our bodies and decided to burn our last Chilean dollars on some pastry treats before heading into Bolivia. Chile, well San Pedro anyway was done.