San Pedro De Atacama - Chile

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Hey hey!

Apparently San Pedro is a quiet town... Until us and the Irish Boys rocked up...

It can only be described as a old style Western town with sanded roads, small wooden shacks of restaurants and bars and a lovely feel about it. We loved it.

The boys stayed in a cheap shack of a hostel but Tracy wasnt having any of it as the snob in her came out and thought there was a deal (and hammocks) to be had elsewhere. We trapsed around town in hot sunshine searching for her hammocks. We found them though to be fair and managed to grab a bargain at the same time at Hostel Covastch... Very nice but we later discovered very strict like boarding school! No alcohol in kitchen, everyone out of common areas by 10pm (10pm I tell you!) and NO visitors... BORING! We flouted all of those rules though as you would expect AND got away with it. The biggest disappointment, yet again, was the showers were COLD as we were in the desert so TSS stank.
We chilled out the first day but the boys were up for adventure so we booked sandboarding for the next day and a moon valley tour. Sandboarding was awesome but bloody hard work... no ski lifts, no helmets - just a board, a massive sand dune and our little legs. There was no teaching either - get to the top and go... Tash had images of how Lady Lara Ryan and Tracy snowboarded to perfection and as it was only the 2nd time on a board, it was clear that she was now an expert.. Actually not true. Tash could only go in one direction and that was diagonally across the dune with no effort to turn.. Interesting tekkers! But she stayed upright (albeit at 3.5 MPH). Tracy got to grips with the sand pretty quickly as an expert boarder and whizzed down but then became a little too confident on her last run and caught an edge and flipped head first in spectacular fashion... She stood up eventually and looked like a creature from the sand with sand absolutely everywhere... To this day, she is still picking it out of her ears... Very amusing! Apart from a stiff neck and chafing, she is fine. We then went to Moon Valley - called because it looks like the surface of the moon! It was pretty interesting... We then headed up to a mountain to watch the sunset over the desert with Pisco Sours on tap! Yum! The colours were incredible and tracy took about 3 million pictures of the same thing whilst ignoring everyone! Charming... She loves a sunset... Next day, we decided to hire bikes with the boys... It was all going very well until we decided to go off road up to a viewpoint on a huge hill above dinosaur valley (so called as the formations of rock look like dinosaurs!) We were blowing out of our asses... Tiring work but we made it and the views were again, just stunning... On the way down, we had mostly walked but Tracy decided to cycle the last bit down ON SAND! She leant forward, the front tyre dag into the sand and over the handle bars she flipped adding to her injuries with a handlebar shaped bruise on her inner thigh. TSS just laughed uncontrollably - other peoples misfortunes!!!! Can we just apologise here for the spelling mistakes etc.. This frigging keyboard is shit and is as old as a BBC computer with no spell check and sticky keys! We then cycled up a dried river bed and TSS bored everyone with the geography behind it... YAWN. The boys just cycled away but Tracy stayed to humor her... One of the boys then had a flip over the handle bars but did it much more gracefully than Trace... Again, TSS laughed uncontrollably. That night we made dinner for the boys and flouted the rules of the house - we drank booze and had visitors! We had to delay cooking because a swarm, yes a swarm of japanese tourists flooded the hostel and took over everything... Smelt damn good mind you! We played cards until the boys were kicked out at 10pm on the nose... Next day was more fun time... Horse riding with Robin... He does not look anything like a robin, more like a hippy version of John Wayne with long hair.. He spoke little English and our Spanish was not improving especially on the subject of horses so it was all down to hand gestures and interpretation. No instruction given, it was get on and go.. We are quite good at riding it has to be said, so we kept trotting, cantering and galloping off (TSS was waiting for tracys 3rd tumble of the week but sadly she stayed on) but the boys gave us much amusement... They both hated going any faster than a walk and had to arch their backs and tilt their pelvis´ up to avoid their little boys being crushed. Every time we galloped off we heard them crying "NOOOOOOO not again!!!". They didnt walk right for a few hours afterwards... Bloody funny. Trace then decided to have a race with Robin... I saw them gallop off and tried to catch up but my horse was clearly knackered having a heavy load on his back but he gave it a good go. Bear in mind chaps that we had no helmets on! DANGER! Trace and Robin were flapping on ahead and it turns out that Robin clearly beat Trace in the race as she clung on for dear life.. After that, we bought Robin a drink and met the boys later for drinks at their hostel. After lots of rounds of El PResidente and Ring of Fire (card games) we were drunk, giggly and up for more partying so we went into town. Tracy reminded TSS that we might not be able to get into our hostel as they shut the doors at 10 but TSS just waved her concerns away with another drink. The boys kindly escorted us home in what can only be described as a zig zag stagger across town with a pack of dogs in tow (there are dogs everywhere btw and ALL kept following Tracy randomly - she thinks she is Ceasar the dog whisperer....) We arrived at our hostel, doors locked and NOBODY answering the door bell... Shit. We were only 4 hours after the curfew and it was Saturday night! So we took matters into our own hands... The boys lifted Tracy over the 8ft high fence and she managed to let us all in.. We found the night guard asleep inside (git!) so we shut his door and went and hid around the back in the hammocks and swung each other on them until we all felt a bit sick! Saint-Sick nearly made an appearance. Eventually we turned in for the night since we had an early bus to Salta the next day... Buses, early mornings and hangovers are just not cool. We said our goodbyes to the boys who we will meet again in Buenos Aires and Rio and headed to Salta in Argentina!!!! "Don´t cry for me Argentinaaaaaaaaa"

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