San Pedro de Atacama

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After a 7 hour bus ride from Salta we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, a small town located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. This trip included our first border crossings which gave rise to that panicky feeling that we were supposed to have obtained visas from home and that we are going to be turned away! Luckily all went well and before we knew it we were stamped out of Argentina and into Chile.

On the trip across the Andes into Chile we experienced the first effects of altitude sickness but luckily not as badily as a number of other passengers on board which made for an interesting bus ride...

The Atacama Desert is one of the driest in the world with little or no rain recorded by the weather stations in the region. Accordingly, the town was incredibly dusty and it was impossible to stay clean. Also, we were asked to limit out shower time to 3 minutes which would have been a challenge if the shower water hadn´t been so cold!

We stayed at the Hostelling International Hostel in San Pedro which was quite good with very friendly staff and a cute dog who had adopted the hostel as his home.

Our main purpose for travelling to San Pedro was to book a 4WD tour through the Bolivian salt flats finishing at Uyuni in the south of Bolivia. There are numerous activities to do from San Pedro such as sandboarding but it is likely that we willl be doing most of those activities over the next month.

Therefore, we decided to limit ourselves to a trip to some hot springs. We had expected a hole in the ground filled with overweight German tourists, but instead we were greeted by an oasis nestled in the bottom of a beautiful canyon. The hot springs had been diverted into 8 man-made pools with hot water trickling down waterfalls from one pool to the next. Absolutely beautiful.

After 2 hours of soaking, we speed back to town on mountain bikes. Thankfully it was downhill for 28kms... an interesting adventure given the condition of the bikes and lack of decent brakes.

Whilst San Pedro was quite a nice town it was extremely touristy and maintained a cash-cow feeling. We did, however, like the adobe (clay) buildings and colonial feel.

We looked at a couple of tour agencies for our 4WD tour and decided to go with Colque Tours due to the good reviews we had heard. So, we´re off - now where did those car sick tablets get packed?

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Photos

Dangerous self portrait!
one handed going 40 kms per hour down a hill on a gravel road... nice.