After saying our goodbyes to the the rest of the group, us two, Fabien, Dorf and Anthony caught our bus, which turned out to be a nice people carrier to the border crossing for San Pedro de Attacama. The boarder was a long process and Rachel got caught out as she forgot there was an apple in her bag, although the immigration staff let her off. We then got dropped off in the centre of town, where we were surrounded by promoters for hostels. Dorf and J went off to view a couple and we settled on one near the centre of town. We had a lazy day in the hammocks at the hostel and got ready to go out as a group for the evening. In the end it was just us two, Fabien and Anthony, as Dorf went to meet a Slovian girl whom we had met at the hot pools... The four of us had a set meal in a really nice restaurant and the guys introduced us to our first Pisco-sour in South America. We both really liked it, a lot nicer than the Brazilian Caprini's! We then went to the only bar it seemed in town which then shut at 1am. We were all tired though from the early nights of the tour.

The next day Rachel, Fabien and Dorf went sandboarding. When they arrived the sand dune was a lot steeper than what Rachel had expected and nerves started to kick in. The climb to the top was hard on the sand, but once at the top the instructor was helpful and gave pointers on how to balance. He held Rachel's board for the first bit and her confidence grew and when she knew she would be able to stop herself. The boys were going at crazy speeds but Rachel started slowly but did get quicker. Although when she thought she was getting too quick she often fell over. It was a really fun activity, but she had decided to stick to skiing on the snow! They went to watch the sunset over Moon Valley, with the view of the volcano behind them which changed colours as the sun set. J and Anthony had been out to get the ingredients for dinner and we had a big cook up back at the hostel. We got chucked out of the kitchen at 10pm though, which is a silly rule of the hostel we were staying in, so moved on to the sports bar again.

Dorf and Anthony left for Salta the following day. The two of us and Fabien then went in to town to look around the market stools and souvenir shops, after some tasty empanadas from the shop opposite, where we had become regulars. We then decided to rent some bikes in the afternoon. We began to cycle to the old fort 3km out of town which was a good viewing point of the volcano. After we had climbed it we then decided to cycle through Death Valley to see if it would lead anywhere. However after 45 minutes of cycling and the scenery not changing we decided to turn back. We were hoping to find a river that the lady in the bike shop had mentioned to swim in, but the only rivers we found were dried up. We should have guessed this would be the case in the driest desert in the world. That evening we cooked again at the hostel and played yanif before being kicked out again at 10pm!