The driest and the most inhospitable place on earth.


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Published: February 2nd 2007
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Valley de LunarValley de LunarValley de Lunar

Peter took a side trip to the moon as you can see by the back ground behind him. It was all very strange...
Greetings all
sorry for the time since the last blog however we have been very busy doing all sorts of ¨grintastic¨ (thanks for the saying Nick) things since we last blogged and to be perfectly honest havent had time or really felt like writing a blog. We are no longer in San Pedro but hopefully we can give you a back dated run down on various things.

We left Salta via bus at 7am which in backpacker time is far far far far far far far to early and headed for Chile the trip passed uneventfully except for several events. Firstly the road to Chile is very very windy and several people decided to get car/bus sick, Second we arrived at the Argentinian border checkpoint which is at 4200 meters above sea level which is pretty high and a larger lady on the bus started having breathing problems and had to be put on oxygen by the driver. Then a strange odour of crap filled the bus and steadily got worse until the driver noticed and shouted out ¨Aye corumba.¨ I would have found this immensely ammusing except for the strange smell eminating from god knows where. Apart from these
San pedro de Atacama streetsSan pedro de Atacama streetsSan pedro de Atacama streets

Triona standing in a street in San Pedro.
events which now cause a smile to stretch across our faces and a little chuckle the bus trip was fine.

We arrived in Chile after the bus trip and went through customs which consisted of searching through everyones bag´s very very thourghly for various items including bees which cant be taken into Chile and made me very glad that the several bee hives that i had been storing in my backpack over the course of my trip were left in Argentina. After this the bus driver told us it was just a short walk to San Pedro and that it would be much faster than getting back on the bus which was true he did however fail to mention that San Pedro is the driest place on earth and that any water would be consumed within about 3 metres of the immigration office leaving us slightly thirsty for the rest of the walk.

San Pedro is a tiny place of about 3000 people where everything can be reached easily within about 2 minutes the town survives on tourism and is a really cool place it actually reminded us a bit of byron bay as it had the same chilled out feeling and the same tourist mecca feeling. The town has heaps of tour offices from where you can book all sorts of things.

The highlight of our time was a sunset trip to the Valle de Luna (on Australia day) which claims to be the most inhospitable place on earth it only rains for one week of every year in San Pedro and that week falls in feb some time and thats it till next feb the valle was awsome with great views and the colours were pretty amazing the valley is full of tourists in the afternoon and the best views are from the top of a giant sand dune which wee climbed and duly recorded for posterity. The whole tour was really good with the bus taking us to other places such as death valley which we survived and several other cool sites around the San Pedro area.

The real purpose of our trip to San Pedro however was to hook up with any of the several tour agencies heading into Bolivia these trips are 3 days in a 4WD and go over some amazing scenery including the worlds biggest salt flats and some very unusual lagoons. The tour we chose was Colque tours based on the fact that they where listed first in the lonely planet and had the most chance of english speaking people being with us. We also managed to convince our new friends Andrew and Sarah that they to should travel with Colque tours as we were going and they agreed. So we left to wait and see what our trip would be like.


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Sand duneSand dune
Sand dune

You can see where people climbed along the sand dune to reach the top for an awesome view of the sun set at the valley de luna. At 3000 metres this climb was more exhausting than we had expeceted
VolcanoVolcano
Volcano

Apart from this volcano been impressive it also marks the boundary between Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.
Road to ChileRoad to Chile
Road to Chile

The road from Argentina to Chile was very very windey. Plus it went up to 4800 metres a.s.l. This did not agree with some of the other bus passangers who ended up wearing oxygen masks


2nd February 2007

Honey
I told you both that you would just have to make do with commercial honey while travelling. Great photos
10th February 2007

Amazing Scenery
Glad to see you guys are having such an amazing journey. Some of the shots you guys have taken is amazing. Keep it up.

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