San Pedro de Atacama

---

From Santiago, we took a 23 hour bus ride to San Pedro de Atacama...a desert oasis in the north of Chile. The bus ride was actually very pleasant, we went Cama class, which is to say, the seats completely recline to beds, and there is meal service, movies, all the mod cons, while moving up the coast.
San Pedro is in the desert, needless to say it's real dry, real hot during the day. It's a big backpacker destination, and for a small town, it seems the backpacker population may actually rival that of the local population.
We stayed at Hostal Katarpe, which was lovely, quiet and calm, especially coming from crazy Santiago, and the eminent Bush-Apec protests.
First thing we did was book an astronomical tour, which left at 8:30 at night, took us a few miles outside of town, to a cool little observatory. There an astronomer (i think he was french) and his family have this cool little adobe house, complete with hole in the roof for looking at the stars. There were many telescopes set up outside, and we saw lots of good things...and he even was able to set up our camera with a telescope for a picure of the moon! Kick ass! And at the end we got hot chocolate and cookies, so you know, we were in love.
Next moring at g-damn 4 in the morning, having overslept, we were woken up for our tour of some geysers and thermal baths...
It was sooooooo cold out, 20 minutes outside, and we were back on the bus to try to regain feeling in my toes! You go early when it's cold, so you can see the vapor coming off the geysers...it was really cool. Then, we braved getting changed into our swimsuits in front of many people (when in rome, eh?) and took a dip in a thermal pool, which was pretty magical, in the middle of the salt flats, with geysers all around...
On the way back we stopped in a little pueblo, and some people ate llama kebabs, but not us.
It was a pretty hectic 2 days, so the last day in San Pedro, we just hung out, took pictures, practiced our conversational spanish with some Chilenos, and ate a big lunch.
Then we boarded the overnight bus for Arica, which is the farthest north town in Chile...on our way to Peru and Arequipa!

---