We started our Bolivian blog with wow it's cheap, well Chile is the opposite, the most expensive place we have been since Brazil. Having ummed and arrred as to whether we should travel south to Santiago through Chile or Argentina, after a few hours here we had decided Argentina it would be. However, the bus to Salta in northern Argentina didn't go until Sunday morning so we had three days to get a little taste of the Atacama desert, the most arid in the world you know. After the wonders of Bolivia in the morning we spent Thursday afternoon wandering round the town which while pretty, had a fairly artificial feel as it is pretty much entirely geared up for tourists. On Friday we went sandboarding and also tried sand skiing, now not many people will spend their 34th birthday doing that now will they. After opening my card with lots of messages I opened my one present, a snickers bar, and was that evening taken out for a slap up dinner by my beautiful fiancee, a pretty cool birthday all in all.
On Saturday Gemma and the pair of us teamed up with 3 guys she had met previously and hired bikes for what we were told would be an 11km cycle out to Laguna Cejar. This turned out to be 26km across the Atacama desert. We cycled along a very quiet highway with volcanoes all along the road before turning down a sand track that took us through the desert and past a pretty incredible sand tornado that whipped past us. After a pretty hard slog we reached the laguna which is a salt lake in the middle of the desert. Steve was the first to jump in and after screaming like a girl at how freezing cold it was he jumped out 30 seconds later. Having seen that the other 3 guys didn't stay long in the water Alison decided she would just enjoy the sunshine. The water was incredibly salty and we really had no idea why these deep pools of salt water were sitting in the middle of a desert. We then set off home which was pretty torturous, we were all suffering with saddle sore and ending up pushing our bikes for spells along the highway in the pitch black of the desert night. Despite the journey back it was great to get out and see the lagoon under our own steam.
Sunday morning, with our budget in mind, we hoped on a 10 hour bus with the rest of the cycling gang to Salta and entered Argentina for the 4th time on our trip. It is a shame that we couldn't spend a bit more time in Chile which has a much more European to it than the last 4 countries we have visited but we will have at least a few days in and around Santiago in a week or so.