A tourist trap

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You should plan a bit ahead of your trip to San Pedro de Atacama. It's not easy to leave. One company leave for Calama (against the Chilean coast) daily. But two other companies serve Argentina the same days only three days a week. And the buses tend to be full booked. So if you arrive on Monday maybe you have to stay until Friday or Sunday.

Everything are costly in San Pedro. Drinks and snacks, sigarettes, etc are somethimes three times the normal price in Chile. Para habitaciones y comidas you can add some 30-50%!((MISSING)most rooms are really small) compared to Santiago. Buses in an out of the city are also extremely expensive. I found Gemini cheap an bought my ticket at 28.000 pesos. The time to Salta depends on the paperwork on the border, I think.

Some 20 years ago there was more or less nothing here. Nowadays the city contains of expensive tour operators, restaurants and artesanian shops which offer the same articles all over. A tour cost a night at an expensive hotel, and you have to pay taxes on tours because they call the tour areas national parks.

They have divided into 7-9 different tours, an market them as "Luna"-tour, "Geysir"-tour, "Sandboarding", "Dead Valley"-tour, etc. You are picked up at four in the night and are home around noon. The next tours start abuot 4 pm. and you are back early enough to waste your money in an expensive restaurant.
Tour operators will normally offer you two tours a day so you could use your time effectively.

When I arrived two days ago i got a room at Hostel La Ruca. This dormatory was among the cheapest in the Lonely Planet-book. It is clean but nothing more than that. The security is really bad at this hotel with two entrances and no people in resepcion most of the day. They stop the water at 10 pm. because of a shortage of water here in the desert. The temperature can easily be more than 40 degrees, and is more ore less stable the whole year.

The houses are more or less adobes in the whole city. The first night I was so hot that I was unable to sleep. But yesterday I had a sleeping pill which helped a lot. This is the second place I've been to down here operating with mixed dormatories.

The moneymachine are calling all the time while being in San Pedro. I leave to morrow, and today I only eat bread and cheese with water. Sometimes I have to cut down on expenses, and I've got a nice opportunity in San Pedro.

Well, I stop here, and let pictures tell about a desert consisting of mountains, stones and sand. Different metals and salt. The more interested reader should call internet. I had one tour in the Luna valley, and my guide was speaking a spanish nobody understood. At the hotel they said the tour was in english.

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