San Pedro de Atacama

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After getting to Antofagasta we decided to get the bus to San Pedro for a few days. We left our bikes in the bike shop in Antofagasta to get some work done and took the 4 hour bus journey over. San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the desert, near the border of Argentina and Bolivia. It has an awesome landscape around it as it borders the Andes and also has the barren desert environment in the nearby valleys which give it them a moon like appearance. On the first night we met up with Jeremy and Aline, the swiss cyclists we cycled most of the Caraterra Austral with, so was good to have a few beers with them and to catch up! We hired some mountain bikes as ours were back in Antofagasta and the four of us cycled to Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) to watch the sunset there. The next day we went sand boarding on some nearby dunes in Death Valley. It was really fun but knackering as you have to walk up the dune again after each run, especially as San Pedro is at about 2500m above sea level!

There's an area of salt plains near San Pedro called Salar de Atacama so we took a tour to visit it as well. We saw flamingoes in one of the salt lakes and saw some altiplanic lagoons that were at over 4000m. The town of San Pedro is really small (about 5000 inhabitants) and is built for tourists really. Every building is either a tour operator, hostel, restaurant or internet cafe! Was an amazing place to spend a few days though and one of the highlights so far. There are so many different things to do you can spend quite a few days there and still not have done everything. We got the bus back to Antofagasta on the fourth day and picked our bikes up from the shop. We're now waiting for a parcel from home so that we can change the oil in our rohloff hubs (needs to be done every 5000km) so will leave Antofagasta once they arrive. We'll then cycle to Iquique which is about 400km away and then head across to Bolivia and the salt plains. We got chatting to lots of travellers in San Pedro coming down from Bolivia so can't wait to get there now after hearing about it!

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Photos

Miscanti Lagoon
Antiplanic lagoon at over 4000m

Volcano Licancabur
Lanscape around San Pedro

Valle de la Lunar
Valley of the Moon near sunset

View from Valle de la Lunar
Volcano Licancabur in the distance

Sand boarding in Valle de la Muerte
Sand dunes in Death Valley

Flamingos in a Salt lagoon
Salar de Atacama