So penultimate blog guys, can't believe how quickly time has passed.
San Pedro is a small oasis town in the Atacama desert, the driest place on earth. Would you believe that it rained (twice) in the 3 days we were there?!? Thankfully they were quick showers and the rest of the time the sky was blue and the sun shone so I got some sunbathing in!
San Pedro seems to be a town entirely for tourists now with hotels, restaurants and tour companies everywhere - there were no "local" things at all. It hasn't been ruined (yet) but I imagine in high season it would be horrendous.

We decided not to fill our days up with the numerous tours on offer because a) G's stomach wasn't great b) they were very expensive and c) we may not have seen the exact things they were offering, but all the superlatives of Bolivia were not going to beaten here. If San Pedro was your only option to see salt flats, volcanoes, geysers etc then it would be fantastic but we have seen the best (well that's what we thought anyway, perhaps naively but no regrets here)! As we had such a nice hotel, we spent the time chilling out, reading, sunbathing, eating and catching up on sleep instead. Oh, and we made it to the small archaelogical museum in town!

We did do one trip to Death Valley and Moon Valley - bit dry in this desert!! We walked through Death Valley and came down a huge sandune which I found terrifying so had a complete sense of humour failure! Then it was onto Moon Valley, well a ledge above the valley, to watch the sunset across the desert - the changing colours of the rocks/sands were just incredible. We've certainly never been anywhere like this before.

A nice 4am start greeted us this morning to catch our flight down to Santiago and another night in the lovely Casaltura boutique hostal.

We've both felt very apprehensive at times this week about coming home. Sometimes I don't believe it's coming so soon and other times, it is all too real!! We are really looking forward to seeing everyone but getting back into the daily grind is not high on our excitement list! Saying that though, this trip has made me appreciate things more - I have a great life really and if working in a bank funds that, then so be it. Plus I quite enjoy it (at times) ;-)