Salt Flats, Sand Dunes, and Sunny Weather. Must be San Pedro de Atacama!

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Last week was spent in the driest desert in the world, the Atacama, with some other EAPers. As dry and dull as the little city of San Pedro was, the surroundings were simply amazing, and honestly, I couldn't have picked a better group of people to do it with.

Salt Flats

First day at San Pedro, we went to the salt flats nearby. The Atacama salt flats have some of the saltiest water in the world. A bunch of us that went jumped in to the almost freezing cold water. I just remember the faces of the others who looked on as a bunch of students jumped in to the water. The salt flats reminded me of the Dead Sea, except it was dead cold (pun intended) and didn't hurt as much since our bodies were all numb by the time it was over.

Sandboarding

Atacama is famous for her large sand dunes, sand dunes which were used for sandboarding. A group of us went, and contrary to what I first thought, it was pretty easy to catch a hang of. A little easier and less painful than snowboarding, in my opinion, but also less smooth of a ride since sand could weigh the board down and slow the motion. After, we went to see the sunset at Valle de la Luna where we met a few other Americans and one British with some pretty cool stories.

Bonfires and Beaches

Later that night we went to "La Playa", the "beach", which was actually just a little river where we started a little bonfire. In perspective, it was like the United Nations there. We had Chileans, Americans and Brits, among others. While more could probably be said, we stayed out pretty late that night.

Mini Inca Trails

We trekked a few miles the next day, to the mini Incan Ruins near San Pedro. It wasn't too bad of a hike, the incline was low that made the trek a little longer, but that was all good and OK with us, we tried to take it slow and easy anyway. We took a pretty cool picture together at what looked like a sacrificial Incan pit, and later at the summit, we grouped up with the others and enjoyed lunch other, consisting of mostly shared fruit, which everyone brought together.

Flamingo Reserves and Lagunas Antiplanicas

We got up early that morning (the trip started at 6AM), and got on bus to try to get some sleep, which was a complete failure, since the bus driver had some pretty sweet music, and we all, I mean ALL, started singing along to pretty much every song. When we got to the flamingo reserves, it was pretty cold (understatement, it was freezing, literally), but we got to see some white flamingos and learn about them, as well as soak in the amazing view. We left for the Lagunas later, which were easily some of the most beautiful pieces of nature I've ever seen personally, but I'll let you judge it yourself by the pictures.

Geysers, Llamas and Cacti

When I said we woke up early yesterday (6AM), I lied, 6AM wasn't really that early. To go to the geysers, we had to wake up a little under 4AM since our bus left at 4, but we got some good sleep on the way to the geysers. When we got there, we had some time to admire the beauty of nature and the heated Geysers. Our guide brought some eggs and chocolate milk, which he cooked in one of the geysers, no joke, I took pictures. After breakfast (the eggs were cooked pretty well), we headed over to the hot springs, which weren't that hot, so we didn't go for a dip. We headed over to a little city in which llama farming was the main business, and I had a llama meat empanada (again, I took pictures), and headed over to the land of the cacti. A pretty decent trek later, we reached a pretty tall cactus, about 30 feet, which doesn't sound impressive, but really is seeing as that species of cactus only grows about 1/4 of an inch per year.

So that pretty much sums up the week, which really does it no justice at all. While I miss the nice heat and company in San Pedro, Santiago needs me and I need Santiago and I'm pretty glad to be back, though I sure do miss San Pedro!

Special shout-out to everyone who showed up.

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Photos

Sanboarding
My action shot, I should send this in to SI eh?

30 foot cactus
Use us as a reference. I'm 6 foot 2, and we got the whole cactus in the frame!

Our Breakfast
He really did it, I didn't lie!