I ate in the desert a llama with no name, & couldn´t get out of the rain

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One very long bus ride later, and we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama in Northeast Chile, after passing more windy valleys and high plateaus.

San Pedro is a wee desert oasis.. well kind of. Our hostel was on a dusty street with a sleeping dog wearing a kercheif on the corner. Through a large blue door we escaped the dust and emerged into a peaceful, kitten filled garden, tempted by the smells of brownie baking from Café Sonchek. It was a wee bit of an oasis for us.

First stop was to have the obligatory Pisco Sour, having missed them for all the wine in Santiago. Mmmm delicious. Then we bunkered down to a long night´s sleep as the cold wind blew outside.

Our first desert adventure was to Laguna Cejar, a salt water lake on the salt flats just out of town. The water was mostly warm with the odd cool current to keep you guessing, the salt content causing us to bob like corks as we furiously tried to stay under and out of the wind. Unfortunately the rest of our adventure was cut short. Due to RAIN. In the DESERT. We did try and make it through, but after several serious wheelspins we were well stuck, and waited on a kind Rangerover to wince us out. So we had another pisco, some doritos, and watched the sunset over the laguna while picking out characters from the NeverEnding Story in the clouds.


Adventure #2 kicked off at 3.30am after an almost sleepless night. Wearing almost everything we owned we set off two hours into the night for El Tatio Geyser, at 4321m above sea level. It was FREEZING! -6. Everyone else oohed and ahhed over the steam coming out of the ground. It just wasn´t Craters of the Moon. We were really there for part two of the trip, the bathing in the thermal pools. Being the brave wee lasses we are, we stripped down right away to our bikins and jumped in... to the claps, cheers and camera flashes of about 25 French tourists... check us out in the latest Travel mags in Paris!!!

On the way back to town we saw all sorts of wildlife including vicuñas, flamingoes and lots and lots of llamas, including a very cute wee baby who posed for hundreds of photos. I wanted to take him home (but sshhhh, don´t tell him I had just eaten his cousin as a kebab!)

Adventure #3 saw us set off on the bumpy road to Death Valley and the Valley of the Moon. It rained AGAIN. In the DESERT. So we shivered as we walked amongst crazy rock formations, salt caves and sand dunes. The coolest part was that with all the salt everywhere, the ice cold wind and storm clouds above it felt like winter... the salt looked like a light dusting of snow. We were told that when the sunshines the reflection looks like the moon. It was too damn cold for my imagination to comprehend. We then climbed up a huge dune for sunset... but my mind was already on the next adventure...

#4 the bus to Arica and a border bust into Peru....

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