It was another late rise for us, we all had time on our hands so we never felt we needed to cram our itinerary into fewer days especially when it would mean 4am starts. After a leisurely breakfast, we drove 10 minutes to the Bolivian border post at Hito Cajon.

The immigration office was a lonely hut in the middle of nowhere, there was not even roads here. It would have been easy enough to simply walk past but having exit stamps is pretty important even if you plan never to come back to the country in your lifetime. Neighbouring countries look for the exit stamp before giving you an entry into their country. It was a painless process and for a meager, but unofficial, Bs.15 we were given an exit stamp in our passports.

We had to wait for our Chilean bus to turn up and Juan Carlos hung around to make sure our luggage was loaded and we had our seats allocated. We said our goodbyes and let Juan Carlos and Martha get on their way back to Tupiza. It would take them between ten and eleven hours to reach there but at least their day hadn't started at 4am as it would with most tours.

We had to hang around for a bit while the booked passengers gradually arrived at the border post. We eventually left and drove another 5km through the desert until we reached an asphalt road - left for Argentina or right for Chile, according to the sign post.

We turned right and headed downhill for another 38km to San Pedro de Atacama. It was a constant downhill too, we dropped over 2,000m in altitude but being in Chile, the roads were a lot safer, they even had emergency breaking lanes every kilometre.

Chile did not have an immigration post at the border, it was in the outskirts of San Perdro. We nearly died when we got off the bus, we had 4 layers of winter clothing on for the altiplano but it was shorts and t-shirt weather down in the desert. We shed a few layers as we waited in the queue at immigration which turned out to be very routine. We didn't even get questioned on our visit, we just got our passports stamped and waived through to the customs hall to have our luggage x-rayed.

It was only a short drive from the immigration office to a parking lot nearer the centre of town with a little market set up. This is where we were unloaded but on asking the driver which way to Hostel Mamatierra, he told us to hop back in and dropped us off at the door.

It was still morning when we checked in at the hostel and fortunately our room was ready, but Carlee and Andy's wasn't. Having at least one room though meant we could drop the bags off and change into some lighter clothing before heading, the 10 minutes, into town.

We didn't have any local currency so our first need was an ATM. There were only three ATMs in the whole of San Pedro and according to Lonely Planet they had a habit of not working. The first one we came to was out of order and the second had a big queue and was working intermittently. While Maria waited in the queue, David went to check the third one but it wouldn't give cash to foreigners. We had no choice but to wait in the fierce sun while the queue inched forward at a desperately slow pace. Finally we managed to get some money out and we could afford to go for lunch.

We took a walk down some of the back streets, if they could be called that. It was more like the street parallel to the main tourist street but the prices for a fixed lunch were much lower and they seemed to have a better choice. We ended up in a small restaurant called Grado 6, which had a menu del diá for CLP6,000 (about NZ$12). It was a three course meal and the starter and main both had three dishes to choose from, plus you got a soft drink. Maria opted for the filled avocado followed by salmon fillet whist David went for the more robust quesadilla followed by a huge pork chop with merken (a smoked chili powder). We were both feeling pretty full but managed to eat the flan that was brought out for dessert. David also managed to sample some Chilean beers, Austral from Patagonia and Kunstmann from Valdivia. After the relatively plain dishes, albeit tasty, in Bolivia, it was a gastronomic delight - a stunning meal for next to nothing.

After lunch we walked back to the hostel via the bus station. We needed to book tickets to La Serena in a couple of days time, on Sunday evening and we knew tickets sold out quickly. It was going to be about a 17 hour journey so we wanted a bus with decent seats. We chose Tur Bus but had to settle for Salon Cama seats because the Premium had already sold out.

Number 3 on the must do list was to put our clothes in the laundry. After being in the dusty desert for 6 days, it was hard to find anything in our backpacks that didn't need a wash. It was back into town again, this time with a big bag of clothes to be dropped of at the lavanderia.

Finally, it was time to relax back at the hostel and just to make sure we didn't have to leave the hostel again, even if we were hungry, we took some pino (meat) and napolitana (ham & cheese) empanadas back with us. We stumbled across a small backstreet shop called Emporio Movil which specialised in cheese and olives. We couldn't resist buying some spicy olives, goats cheese and crusty bread for later. They even made proper espresso coffee. While David had a coffee, Andy wanted a fresh orange juice. Instead of having the juice and ice blended traditionally, there was a converted bicycle in front that blended through peddle power, so Andy had to work out for his drink.

The mini market next door to our hostel had a very good selection, in particular, fridge upon fridge stacked full of cold beer (in Copacabana, Bolivia, beer was stored in fridges that weren't switched on!). There were even tetrapaks of pretty good quality wine.

We were all set. We settled down to a nice evening on the patio, with all our snacks and drinks. It wasn't a bad temperature either for an evening, especially after the bitter cold on the Uyuni tour. One layer of summer clothes was enough which made a nice change to the 4 layers of winter clothes we had become used to.