The bus journey from Santiago to San Pedro was long and horrible. The bus barely stopped, we were only given a few snacks and the toilet was disgusting to the point of being unusable. Fortunately we had our own food!

We arrived in San Pedro in the late afternoon on Saturday 17 March. It is quite rural - most houses made out of mud bricks and there is not even a supermarket - but also quite peaceful. It was a bit weird to see these huge snow-capped mountains rising up out of this dry, dry desert. We checked into the hostal, grabbed a quick shower and headed off to do an astronomy tour. While waiting for the bus, we found what could be the best ice-cream shop in South America - sorry but the chocolate and dulce de leche flavour beats anything at Sinnful hands down. The outdoor observatory, run by a French astronomer and his Chilean wife, was really good. The sky is so clear out there and he was extremely knowledgable about things. He also had about 10 big telescopes for us to look through. After the talk, we all gathered inside for a cup of hot-chocolate and a Q&A session, before heading back to town.

Sunday morning we walked into town to enquire about different tours available to get accross the desert to the salt flats in Bolivia. There are stacks of companies but we eventually settled on a more reputable one (slightly more expensive, but with good reviews and safety record.) We had a nice lunch in town and got to pet some tame llamas (btw - 'll' is pronounced 'y' in Spanish.) We strolled around town a bit more before buying some light food for supper and the tour and then heading back to the hostel for an early supper. That night we got chatting with two Aussies who we discovered were doing the same tour as us the next day :-)

Monday we woke up early and were collected by the tour company. We drove around town a bit collecting the other people in our group before stopping at the Chilean migration office. It took about an hour to get our exit stamp from Chile, after which we headed off into the desert towards the Bolivian border...