San Pedro de Atecama, Chile

Well, if you've ever wondered whether you're affected by altitude sickness, one sure-fire way to find out is to ride a bus which ascends from 1500m (5000ft) to 4900m (16,200ft) in about an hour. This is exactly what we did in the first hour of our 12-hour Andes-crossing bus ride from Salta, Argentina to San Pedro de Atecama, Chile. We were in pretty rough shape with headaches and nausea by the end of the journey and were relieved to drop back down to San Pedro's comfortable elevation of 2500m (8250ft). This was our first exposure to high altitude thus far on the trip and wasn't all that pleasant of an experience. Luckily we had a few days in San Pedro to take day-trips to higher alttitudes and prepare for the Bolivian high plateau.

My food-ordering prowess was still in fine form when I orderd our first meal in San Pedro: tacos, which came out as two steaming plates of fettucini alfredo. Now, I'm pretty sure 'taco' is the same word in English as it is in Spanish, so I'm not sure where I went wrong there. Regardless, I opted to have Charlotte order our next meal that evening: tortillas, which came out as 2 vegetable omelletes. Maybe it's them.

We did one incredible tour in San Pedro called Valle de La Luna (Moon Valley) and one not-so-incredible day tour called Geysers del Tatio. The Moon Valley tour took us about 2km SW of San Pedro to see some old sediment deposits left by the Pacific ocean which used to occupy the area. The Moon Valley is supposedly the most Mars-like surface on earth which is why NASA teams trialled their Mars Rovers in the area. I also trialled my new llama beanie in the area which I'm pleased to report performed well. The Moon Valley tour was capped off by watching the sunset atop a giant sand dune with the Andes changing colors in the distance. It was a pretty incredible site that I'm not sure the photos really captured.

The other not-so-great tour we did was the Geysers del Tatio tour, which had us up at 4.30AM for a 2.5-hr, sub-zero bus ride to 5000m (16,500ft). The Tatio Geysers, which are best viewed at sunrise, could be likened to watching a kettle boil. When she warmed up enough to speak, Charlotte declared that it was officially the coldest she'd ever been, and angrily lit a cigarette at 5000m. We took a quick dip in the hot pools next to the geysers, followed by a visit to a Quechua village and then headed back to the hostel. The good news from the Tatio tour was that we'd finally acclimated to the higher elevation (something to do with your body producing more red blood cells) and didn't have any problems with headaches or nausea above 3500m. This was important because the next day we left for our 3-day 4x4 tour of Southestern Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni, and we wouldn't be dropping below 3500m until we got to Colombia. Goodbye Chile!