San Pedro de Atacama is a very touristy oasis town in the desert but it somehow still has charm. Buildings are made of mud and are very small, there's not many trees, it's hot and very expensive by south american standards but you can't help but like the place. By night it is totally different than during the midday sun to the point where it's almost as if you're staying in two different towns. There's candles and low lighting everywhere and the town is inviting to wander around.

I'm still in a gang of Dutchies, Belgians, French along with another Aussie. Our first day is spent lounging around after the Salt tour but the second is action packed with the main activity being snow boarding....err, sorry I meant sand boarding. We actually used old snowboards though, which seemed to fall apart (only on me). To sand board you have to lean back in order to gain speed, which is different to snow boarding and some of the boards were not suited to our large gringo frames, which meant a very slow ride. Luckily, my board was perfect and with a bit of wax could accumulate some speed. All in all I much prefer snow boarding but it was great fun.

After the sand boarding the tour took us to see the Moon valley, which as you will see from the photos was a fantastic landscape of eroded earth and rock shapes. I haven't been to the moon but I reckon it would be identical. I didn't realise at the time but our egotistical sand board instructor / driver had about 4 beers before driving us back into town. They don't mind drinking and driving over here. If I'd have known about his beers then he may not be able to go sand boarding for a while.

New Year's Eve was a nice and civilised affair starting with dinner in a french restaurant followed by burning dummies everywhere to apparently cleanse them of their sins or something for the new year. Then the party started in the streets with drummers and musicians and loads of tipsy people. A great night in all but as my stomach was not too happy with something i skipped the 4am party in the desert in favour for my bunk bed.

The next day was spent mostly in a hot bus crossing the Argentine border for the town of Salta. The whole journey I couldn't stop thinking about juicy steaks and red wine......