Blogs from San Pedro de Atacama, Antofagasta Region, Chile, South America - page 9

From Caldera, the next jump is up to San Pedro de Atacama, deep inland not far from the Chile-Argentina-Bolivia border. The struggle to get two tickets to get us there shows just how popular our next destination is. A tiny oasis town in the middle of the Atacama Desert, San Pedro is a minute, almost insignificant blip on the landscape. But oh, what a landscape! And this is why visitors to Chile flock to San Pedro de Atacama in their thousands. It's hot, it's dry, it's high up - the 2,400 metre altitude doesn't agree with everyone - but this little town of barely 5,000 inhabitants is surrounded by some of the most astonishing scenery in Chile. Again, here, the pictures will do most of the talking. We spent a delightful four days here, visiting the ... read more

Apparently, it is well nigh on impossible to drive across the border from Bolivia directly to Argentina. Therefore, Dragoman drives from Bolivia to Chile first and then into Argentina. Today was all about crossing the desert to ultimately reach Argentina..... A 5.00am start with bread rolls toasted on the Dragoman gas burner and a quick hot drink of tea or coffee, then on the road towards Chile. Across the desert with a local guide along mainly single tracked dusty compacted tracks.. The drive across the desert was extremely varied. We stopped for a late breakfast at a stagnant lake at which a large group of flamingos had settled. Bumped along many more tracks over a high pass of over 5,000 metres to a plant where they made boric acid and which was the border point for ... read more

I started my first week of backpacking in Peru, after forcing myself to leave the luxury of staying with friends in Arica. After a 7 hour (very short by Latin American standards) bus journey through yet more deserts I arrived in Arequipa, a large town in the Andean foothills. I was initiated into backpacker lifestyle and soon realised how easy it was to meet people. Although the majority of people are in their late 20s (everyone my age is in Thailand), it was easy to get on with people. Unfortunately, the hostel operated tours which left at 3am, at which point each morning half of the dorm would evacuate and wake me up. So far I have met backpackers from at least 20 different countries and its great to get so many different perspectives on the ... read more

Our 9 hour bus ride from Salta to San Pedro De Atacama was definately one of our better journeys on the trip so far, we slowly climbed up into the Andes with some amazing scenery along the way. The road winded its way up and up with the rocks and mountains constantly changing as we went. This was also our first sightings of Llamas by the roadside and a huge salt flat in the middle of nowhere. It took about 7 hours to reach the Argentian border which was a small brick building with nothing around it but desolute mountains, when we got out the bus we also felt a big difference in temperature being so high up. After getting our exit stamps we borded the bus again and i thought we would then go through ... read more

Our last few days in Bolivia were spent in the largest salt flats in the world. We arrived in Uyuni, a tiny tourist town in the middle of nowhere. We spent a good few hours comparing tour agencies (there are probably over a hundred) for 3 day trips into the Salt Flats. In hindsight, we realised that it is simply potluck - all the agencies are kind of the same and even lump customers together for a trip. We had heard lots of horror stores - drunk drivers, no food, running out of fuel in the desert and breaking down. While on our trip, another tour group was left in the desert after confronting their driver about being drunk, while another group (the company we were going to go with originally) had a drunk driver on ... read more