San Pedro de Atacacma

Hello there!

Well......after we finished the salt flat tour we crossed the border back into Chile, we are now in the middle of the desert in a small town called San Pedro.

We had read about a couple of good hostels that were a little out of town and decided to walk round to one of them on our arrival. However.....when we eventually found the place it turned out no one was in to sort us out a room and would not be for another 3 hours. The lady who answered the door kindly said that we could wait but after walking the length and depth of the town in the sweltering sun all I wanted was a shower and a bed! So we put our bags back on our back and walked the long walk back towards town, checking into one of the first hostels we saw! It turned out to be a nice room with a mezzane that had a window that could open up completely to look at the stars above.

That afternoon we went to explore the town and who should we bump into but our buddies from Dragoman! Luca (our truck driver) was about to book a coouple of tours up for the group and kindly asked if we would like to join along; we were wanting to go on the same trips so jumped at the chance! First we visited the Lunar Valley, so called because the landscape looks like the moon. We made a couple of stops there and I was quite amazed at some of the rock formations and dramatic scenery. However the main point of the trip was to watch the sunset on the valley, as from the top you can see the Andes. The sunset was quite pretty and after the sun had gone down behind the mountains the Andes changed to a pinky-purple colour, but I have to say that I think I have seen better sunsets! Later the same evening we went star gazing at an observatory. The night sky in the desert is so clear due to the lack of pollution so the amount of stars that we saw were amazing, I have never seen so many. The guy talked through the different constellations and then we were able to look through several telescopes at different objects in the sky, including Mars. It was a good evening but by the time we got back I was ready for bed!

The next day after we pitched our tent (in a bid to save some money), I thought it would be a nice idea to hire bikes and cycle off into the desert to look at some Inca ruins. Now......it was a good afternoon but my god cycling in the desert is so exhausting! The heat is just overpowering and every minute or so you are dying of thirst that really you need a constant drip of water hooked up to your body!! We made it to the ruins and climbed up to the top of a viewpoint to have lunch but after that we were so hot and running low on water that we cycled back to town and got an ice cream! All in all though we had cycled 6km, so not too bad for a bit of exercise.

After a leisurely morning we decided to head to the nearby village of Tocanao; in the book it was described as a white washed town that I was imagining something resembling the villages in Crete. When we arrived at Tocanao it became clear that it was none of the sort! The town was really quite tiny and apart from a pretty square, had nothing much to it and the worst bit was there was not another bus back to San Pedro for another 4 hours! Well we made the most of our stay and went to a restaurant for some fine grub and fine it was too; soup followed by chicken casserole, very tasty! Now one of the other reasons we had come to the village was that it was suppossed to have its own vineyard making sweet wine. We asked the owner of the restaurant in our pidgeon spanish if he knew where it was but his resounding answer was that he did not know! This did not sound promising! Still, with 3 hours left to go we decided to explore for ourselves. We walked left of the square, right of the square, down, up, you name it we walked there but still we did not see any sign of a vineyard. Eventually we saw a sign saying ´Valley Jere´, we thought we could be onto something and ended up walking through an oasis in the middle of a rock valley. It was quite pretty and at last we saw some grapes growing in fields beside us, but unfortunately there were no facilities to see or taste the wine that is produced! Oh well, we caught the bus back to San Pedro and bought another ice cream!

And thats it folks.........today we are heading on a bus to Antofagasta which is on the Chilean coast and then on Monday we fly to Santiago, so more stories to come soon!

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