San Pedro De Atacama

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Sarah and I woke up at a decent hour and decided to hunt for breakfast. No luck. Everything was closed so we had to settle for a couple of biscuits and carton of juice from the mini-mart.

At 10am, we were picked up for an excursion to a “salt lake”.

The driver picked us up and decided to tell us on the way that we had to pay an entrance fee which i found frustrating because I'd paid the tour company a fair amount of money and struggled to work out why that didn't include entrance fee and indeed, what exactly I had paid them for. And then to add insult to injury, they decided to mention that if I'd had my youth card, there would have been a discount.

But anyway, we went on to the salt pool which had dramatically reduced in size due to the lack of rain but was still quite impressive.

After sun-creaming it up (& being told by an American that I shouldn't bother- could he not see how pale I am?!) I warmed up in the Sun for a while, watching the others before attempting to get in.

For a while, I sat on the edge - the water was freezing- and whilst my toes could handle it, the rest of me couldn't.

Then I just went for it and jumped in. And bobbed straight to the top of the water.

Somehow I managed to cut my hand on the way in which of course, stung throughout but I got over it.

You should have been able to synchronize swim in there but me being clumsy, I kept turning myself over by accident. You really don't have much control in there! It was fun to be able to be in the water and keep my legs and arms up in the air and every now and then do a little spin.

In the afternoon, we went for a visit to the Chilean Valley of the Moon. Verdict: beats Bolivia hands down. Massive sand dunes everywhere and walking through the mountains looked just as you would imagine a crater to look. And they cracked! Well, made loud cracking noises because of the heat (or maybe the recent earthquake.)

Come evening, we trekked up hills to watch the Sun set behind the valley (with a glass of Chilean Pisco sour in hand) which was really quite impressive and then trekked down to return to the hotel.

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