After a less than refreshing overnight bus, we arrived in Vicuna ridiculously early and made our way to the hostel where, thankfully, the guy took pity on us and let us check in right away. After a quick nap, Gerard dragged me to a bug museum in town which featured display cases full of all the enormous spiders, scorpions, beetles, etc that we can expect to encounter in South America. Already feeling itchy and uncomfortable, I reached the back of the room only to discover the live spiders including the second most deadly on the continent. Lovely. We didn't stay long. That evening we went stargazing at the Del Pangue observatory. We were picked up at 11pm and driven up a pitch black dirt road to the top of a 2,000m hill where the observatory is based - very atmospheric. The sky was amazingly clear (which is the reason so many observatories set up camp in this area) and the two small clouds we thought we could see when we arrived actually turned out to be galaxies! We saw the Milky Way, shooting stars every few minutes, Jupiter and its moons, incredible nebulas, and even a star spewing matter that doesn't actually exist anymore (it's a super nova that's expected to blow in the next 300 years but since it's 7,000 light years away from Earth it means the explosion already happened at least 6,700 years ago and the light just hasn't reached us yet). All a bit mindbending but very interesting. The only slight disappointment was when I asked if they'd made any big discoveries at the observatory and they told us it's actually built for us - i.e. it's the tourist telescope.

The next day we met up with some of the NYE gang again - since they'll feature quite a lot over the next few days, their names are Tia, David and Dan. We caught the bus to Pisco where we had planned to do a tour of the pisco distillery but it turned out it was quite expensive (by traveller standards) and only in Spanish so we decided to put the cash to better use with a pisco sour pub crawl. We got a bit carried away and only just made it back to Vicuna in time for more stars in the evening at the Mamalluca observatory. Quite a different experience from the previous night and also really interesting but since it was a bit more touristy and the telescope was not quite as good, I preferred Del Pangue.

Our next stop was San Pedro de Atacama, right in the north of Chile. It's obviously a popular destination choice; we had to catch a bus to La Serena and change there but when we arrived we discovered it was a 10 hour wait for the next available bus. We used the time wisely, helping Tia to celebrate Australia day (pronounced "Straya day" apparently) in style with G&Ts and handmade aussie flag hats on the beach. Still having a couple of hours to spare after it got chilly, we watched a terrible Keanu Reeves film at the cinema and stuffed ourselves with fast food before we were finally on our way. When we arrived at last in Atacama (after another, thankfully shorter, transit in Calama), our next task was to find somewhere to stay. Conveniently, a family drove past us at the bus station and asked if we needed a hostel so, going against 29 years of stranger danger indoctrination, Gerard managed to convince me to hop in and we got a room. It must have been a nice place because the next day we accidentally left the keys in the door all day and nothing went missing. In Atacama we met up with another couple from NYE (Daniela and Marius), increasing our group size to 7. We discovered over the next few days that there are pros and cons to travelling with 7 people - it's loads of fun but it takes so long to get stuff done. We only had one day to sample everything Atacama had to offer but it took us until midday to get everyone sorted (despite a fairly respectable 9am start). We had an awesome day once we did get going though, cycling in the Valle de la Luna, the driest place on the planet, during the hottest part of the day, building up our stamina at the higher altitude (2,500m) with the uphill sections, and finally having a well-earned chill out session (in more ways than one - the water was cold!) floating in the super salty Laguna Cejar and watching the sunset with pisco sours.

Next day we were off on our Uyuni salt flats tour. We'd heard that the tour starting in Chile is tougher than the round trip from Uyuni because of the rapid change in altitude but we hadn't quite appreciated how rapid. We ascended 2,000m in an hour and hit 5,000m ASL that afternoon so unsurprisingly we all came down with pretty horrendous headaches. The scenery was incredible though and totally different from anything we'd seen before - possibly even more impressive than Patagonia. There was so much to see, we were stopping almost hourly with a new highlight: beautiful mirror-like and coloured lakes; a thermal pool that I could have stayed in forever even though the altitude and the water pressure made it hard to breath; geysers bubbling and steaming away... That night we stayed in a refugio in the middle of nowhere and, as testament to our suffering from the headaches, we couldn't even get through a bottle of wine between 6 of us and were in bed by 8.30pm - rock on! Day 2 of the tour we descended a bit so thankfully the headaches eased up. We saw lagunas and flamingos galore, stunning desert scenery with crazy rock formations, and checked off a few fauna spots (vicunas, guanacas, llamas - which all look pretty similar in my view but our driver helped us to distinguish between them). We also skirted the edge of a thunderstorm which hailed on us while we watched lightning against a backdrop of huge volcanoes. So surreal to be in such a bizarre landscape with literally no signs of life for miles around. Our second night's accommodation gave new meaning to the word basic. The first hostel we arrived at turned out to be full so we were taken next door to a building that was half finished - showers being one of the items on the to do list. We played cards till dinner time when we were presented with chicken and chips. We quickly discovered that the chips were cold and the chicken didn't look too healthy either. When we mentioned this to the Bolivian lady that had brought us the food, she stuck her hand (black with grime) in the chips, gave them a good squeeze and told us they were calientito ("a bit hot"). Her explanation for the chicken was that she'd taken it out of the fridge yesterday so it should be fine. Needless to say we decided to skip the food provided and dip into our snack supply of crisps and cookies instead - while laughing hysterically over the unforgettable image of the woman with her hand in our chips. At least we had a great driver though, we'd read and heard so many stories about drivers being drunk and/or falling asleep at the wheel so we were happy to accept a bit of potential food poisoning as our worst experience.

Our third and final day was largely dedicated to the salt plains, with a brief stop at the train cemetery (where the rolling stock from the disused railway ended up). The salt flats themselves were not quite the highlight we'd expected after seeing so many other amazing things en route but it was still beautiful. Because we're here in Bolivia's rainy season, the whole area is flooded with about 2-3 inches of water which is reflective so in places it's impossible to tell where the sky ends and the ground begins. We were pushed to the limits of our patience trying to line up photos of big people and small people and get 7 people to jump simultaneously (not as easy as it looks) but it was all worth it in the end because we got some good shots.

For the first time I seem to have exceeded my character allowance - i didn't even know that was possible. That'll teach me to post more regular updates. To be continued in part 2...