Deserted...

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(Holly writing)

So, after Salta Jane and I headed to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, which is the highest desert in the world - there are parts of it where rain has never been recorded!

San Pedro itself is a tiny town/village which caters solely to tourists. It used to be an essential stop-off for merchants crossing into Bolivia from the Pacific, and was also once agricultural. now however, flying's easier and farming's harder.

It's true what they say about deserts... they're hot in the day (marvellous) but FREEZING at night. it's so wierd having to take your fleeces around town with you,but once the sun goes down you lose 1 degree of heat every six minutes.

While we were in San Pedro, Jane and I went horse riding at sunset through Valle del Muerte, or Death Valley. It's a canyon completely devoid of life - we saw one lost dragonfly and that was it. The horse ride was exceptional though; like Bariloche, we got the most docile horses in the world and riding under the full moon was stunning. You honestly wouldnt expect to see landscape like it on this planet. It's no wonder 'Moon Valley' is just around the corner.

The next day we returned to Death Valley, this time covering the 4km distance to it on bikes with sandboards on our backs. We met a guy named Sandy the day before, and the three of us decided to give this crazy new sport a go!

Sandboarding is similar to snowboarding in that you're given a board and a slope. The primary difference is that you're bombing down on sand rather than snow. well, i say bombing down. i mean falling over! For some reason we couldnt get our boards to go that far down the sand dunes - they kept nosediving into the sand. We thought there'd be some expert sandboarders to ask for advice if we needed it, but it turned out that the three of us were the only people sandboarding. We literally had the entire empty silent valley to ourselves. It was amazing!

Later that afternoon Jane and I went on an excursion to see the Moon Valley, which is as Lunar as it's name suggests. We climbed another sand dune (surprisingly hard work) to reach a crest from which we watched the sunset. Dusk out here is amazing - the sky turns electric blue, with a pinkish tinge smudging above the blue mountains. for a while the changing patterns of blue and pink made the sky look like a snapshot of the northern lights!

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Photos

The view from our hostel
Literally, San Pedro de Atacama is in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful nowhere.