Getting our just deserts....

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Man flu.

It makes Ebola look like the common cold, its ancient form no doubt wiped out the dinosaurs and im sure the flu the conquistadores brought with them to the new world was man flu.

I’ve managed to contract the super virus in the driest desert on earth 1000's of miles from the ailments only known cures such as hot whiskeys coupled with generous helpings mums Chile concarne and a Sunday watching the rugby with dad.

Man flu is the least of my concerns right now as the bus, after driving through darkness for hours has dropped us at the bus station at the edge of town in total darkness and we have to navigate our way to the hostel, rucksacks tethered to our backs and day bags to our front making us looked like beer bellied hunchbacks. Using only our basket case of

We were confronted with narrow dirt layered streets lined with single story dwellings, the streets were for most part completely deserted save the staple south American stray dog using a doorway as a bed, the fellow bus passengers who obviously knew where they were going had disappeared into the night Occasionally light would shine from the odd doorway of a bar or restaurant revealing the odd scatter of people smoking, drinking and chatting in; languages not indigenous to the continent. The odd one is strumming a guitar and the music

Its also cold, extremely cold and the hoody I wear to stave off the buses air conditioning stays on. We eventually found the central square, the place de armas and begin to follow our directions to the hostel, which are about as vague as birds and the bees talk you get in 6th class in school.

Our landmark was the local cemetery and we soon found ourselves pottering through a 100 metre stretch of undulating wasteland. From the edge of the beam of our torches fleeting darting shapes of grey dart, packs of curious wild dogs, you can hear the distant barks of more in the distance. With the kind assistance of a local man on his evening stroll we locate the hostel and settle down to bed.

San Pedro is a very different town in the daylight, sinister shapes of wild dogs that were encircling us during the night are cuddly inquisitive mongrels, the dark little houses are tour agencies trying to flog sand boarding, pony trekking and even three day trips to neighbouring Bolivia, these trips are apparently fantastic so long as your driver isn’t drunk as allegedly most are. The packs of mongrels while being all shapes and sizes all have one thing in common, they all have Alsatian esque features. Dogs with the bodies of terriers, Labradors, retrievers all have heads with German Sheppard like features, the reason for this was soon apparent when we went past the police station where two absolutely magnificent Police Alsatians were asleep outside the front door looking completely exhausted, seeing their legacy in the physiques of every wild dog in town there was no doubt Starsky and Hutch were the top dogs in town!

For this entries educational segment San Pedro developed around an oasis located 2000 metres below sea level, the original inhabitants, Atacameños, began to domesticate the local wildlife and were famous for creating small ceramic pottery, replicas of which are available to purchase today for about a weeks pay. The inhabitants themselves were very fond of using such ceramics for the consumption of snuff and later on consuming the residue of the hallucinogenic cacti that are indigenous to the area, with the jaw dropping scenery on offer locally they probably saw some seriously crazy visions. The Atacameños, always on the lookout for a rapid buzz, soon began to expand their stash by trading their wacky cacti for coca leaves with the Bolivian tribes located over the mountain. Today, san Pedro has about 5000 inhabitants and is visited by literally thousands of travellers making their way to Bolivia or simply exploring the countryside.

Our room mates are a Korean couple on a year long honeymoon and they are lovely and have a great sense of humour, most evident when they were cuddling one of the 7 cats that live in the hostel BBQ whist saying, “I want to BBQ you YUM YUM” In hindsight I want sure if this was said in jest or not!

San Pedro is pretty much a hub, all the exciting things to do are located in a 20 km radius and the name of the game is to arrange to go on the various tours on offer by the travel companies that inhabit every second house in the town.

Our first trip was a cycle through Death Valley, also known as Mars Valley(its sister valley, Moon valley, is a few kms away but I’ll get to that next time.) We got two mountain bikes and given a map that looked like it was a treasure map drawn by someone in baby infants, from their imagination. With our fisher price bike map the chances of us getting lost and succumbing to the desert sun were high, nevertheless it was as my brother Bryan likes to say “GO TIME” and we set off. We eventually came to a dirt track leading off the main road down into a foreboding canyon. Cycling through it was incredible, your hemmed in on both sides by orange yellow rock, but the striking thing id the silence stop your bike and you hear NOTHING, no birds no cars, no wind just complete and utter silence. You climb up on the rocks to get a photo and you cannot see anything bar sand swept rock formations for miles.

Eventually we came up against the great dune, a massive huge sand dune that looks like something out of the first star wars film. Sand boarders, think snow boarding in the desert, were like small little specs bolting down its front and the grains were as small as dust. The great dune brought with it its own problems though and the sane become too deep to cycle which lead to us having to push the bikes for a good kilometre up a slope. This was tough going, how my mate Jimmy actually ran a 5 day endurance race through this is staggering. Miss power at this point was getting quite stressed and the quote that most sums up here mood would be “ANNDREWWW were going to die in the desert and get eaten by wild dogs”

Eventually we reached solid ground and began to make progress and shortly after we left death valley to enter the main road. Niamh, who was quite distressed with the half hour of bike pushing in the blazing sun, soon found that her ordeal wasn’t over and that its tough being blonde in South America.

After a short stretch on the main road we encountered a road block manned a construction worker holding a walkie talkie, he told us along with the rest of the traffic to halt, the road was being resurfaced for a good 3 kilometre ahead and traffic had to be ferried through in dribs and drabs. When he saw Miss power wearing her Alien sunglasses and sporting her small green shorts and still locking lovely despite the fact that she was worn out and extremely fed up, ANDREW I UST WANT MY BED AND WATER being the them of conversation at the present time his eyes light up and he sniggered something into the walkie talkie. I told Niamh that she would have to pedal through when beckoned very quickly unless she wanted to hold up traffic, Niamh on the other hand said she would be taking her time…a decision that led for a gruelling few kilometres.

Obviously given a tip off by walkie talkie man, Niamh came around the first bend to be greeted by about 20 Chilean workmen giving her a round of applause interspersed with a generous helping of whistles, cat hissing and declarations of love. Providing a second helping were the long columns of transport trucks coming from the Bolivian border, poor Niamh would get an ear splitting blast of a fog horn while men leaned out the window to make “inappropriate” gestures at her. Every few hundred metres another pack of workmen would appear and the process would repeat itself for no less then 3000 metres. Poor Blondie was quite distressed by the time she got to San Pedro. After a long day cycling

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Photos

Who's your daddy?
Police dogs leave their legacy!