Last night I dreamt of San Pedro... de Atacama

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I arrived in San Pedro after my tour of the salt flats. Having spent the best part of three days freezing my ass off I was happy to return to a lower altitute and nice hot showers (or "civilisation" as the bus driver put it). The border crossing was a bit more hassle than entering Bolivia, but it still wasn't much. We were made to line up in a room with our bags so that they could be "searched". This basically involved taking out my bar of soap, peering inside my bag and then passing me on.

The first thought I had of San Pedro was that it was a complete shit hole. I later revised my opinion when I realised it was a shit hole with a large amount of gringos & stray dogs. There were plenty of nice resturants (I ate at a particularly good pizza place) but I have to say the place as a whole didn't impress me. It had the feel of a place that had been developed far too quickly to cater for the large amounts of travellers passing through there.

Having said this, the truth is there are plenty of things to do around and about. The first night there I decided to go late night sand-boarding (or "full-moon" sandboarding). The company (Maxim Experience - Caracoles) picked us up at around 8pm, and we went off to the Valle de los Muertos. After a short ride in the car we walked for a wee while until we came across a nice big sand dune. As the moon was full the whole landscape was highlighted with a silvery glow. It was a strange sight. We passed about three hours on the dune sliding down and then climbing back up. It might have been cold but I didn't notice... climbing up sand dunes keeps the blood pumping!

The following day we decided to hire a bike and cycle off to the other Valle: Valle de la Luna. The thing to do is to go there and then watch the sun set. Unfortunately I didn't have the time as I had a coach to catch to take me to Arica later that day. So we left with our bikes in the afternoon... possibly not the smartest thing to do given the heat, and made our way out of San Pedro and towards the valle. I would recommend seeing the Valle this way (as opposed to going through an agency). It's a tough cycle... from San Pedro to the end of the Valle it took us a good few hours, but the best thing about avoiding companies is that you can go at your own pace. It wasn't an easy cycle to get there as most of the way it was uphill... the cycle back however was good fun and we did it in about half the time! The valle itself is quite moonlike in appearance. We started in the caves which are just inside the entrance gate and then cycled through the valle taking in the various sights, including the three marias (rock formations composed of gravel, clay, salt, gems and quartz - they're about 1 million years old), the salt mines and the amphitheatre.

I guess San Pedro wasn't that bad a place, but it was far too much of a gringo hangout for my liking. One thing that riled me is how most people there spoke Engish to me only because I was a blatant gringo. It didn't matter if I asked for something in Spanish... the reply would be in English. I just don't understand why people do this. My theories are perhaps they want to show off, or perhaps they're eager for the practice, or maybe they feel like they're doing me a favour. Whatever the reason it pisses me off. If I served a spanish speaking person in England, I wouldn't reply in Spanish just because I could. It reached the point where I pretended I didn't understand English and needed things explained in Spanish! This seemed to do the trick. (I'm now Turkish by the way).

So that was San Pedro... I had fun sand boarding and cycling to the Valle, but I couldn't have stayed there for much longer than I did.

Ciao

PS... I've organized my photos a little bit now. They can be seen here:
http://flickr.com/photos/13183189@N06/

and here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14643121@N05/

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Photos

San Pedro
Preparing ourselves. It looks dark but the moon provided enough light to see

San Pedro
A tight squeeze... the caverns at Valle de la Luna

San Pedro
On ya bike. Las Tres Marias in the background (Valle de la Luna)