Pictures of San Pedro de Atacama

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San Pedro de Atacama

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Wow!!! San Pedro de Atacama is truly unbelievable!  It's simply incomprehensible how beautiful the earth can be sometimes.  The beauty stretches further then the eye can see, and it's overwhelming and addictive.

We left Santiago by plane on Wednesday late afternoon and arrived in the town of Calama after two hours.  We spent the night in a hostel in Calama, and then took off for San Pedro about 1pm the next day.  It was only a one hour bus ride.  We checked into our hostel in San Pedro, then joined the hostel owners for an asado (bbq) and homemade wine from the south of Chile.  They were celebrating their one year anniversary of owning a hostel!  It was a great little place, very clean and cute.  Except for the hordes of young travelers in hostels, they are really great places if you can find a good one.  I think a great idea would be a hostel for 28 and older travelers!  We were constantly awoken by loud drunk kids coming back late.  The hostel also had 7 cats living there.  It was so funny to see cats lounging everywhere when you came back.

On Friday we rented bikes and rode them out to Valle de la Luna, which is so called because the terrain is so dry and strange, like the moon. It was about a half hour to get to the entrance of the park, where we had to pay $4 each to get in, and then it was progressively harder uphill cycling to get into the valley.  We stopped at the salt caves, about 20 minutes in, to walk through them. They were really astonishing!  Rivers had carved deep tunnels through salt rock, and we were able to walk through them. It was super fun. Here's a video:

Then we cycled some serious hills to get further into the valley.  There was a very rare storm at the time, and it rained off and on for short spurts of 30 to 60 seconds. And it also hailed at one point! The wind was pretty heavy as well. It actually made for more beautiful scenery, to see the dark storm clouds.

As we cycled, we saw dogs running alongside other people on bikes.  I was so shocked there were dogs living out there!  There was not another living thing.  No tiny birds, no weeds, no bugs.  One of them, who we named "Brownita" started to follow us.  We felt horrible for her and gave her water and some bread.  She kept up with us for about an hour, even as we started heading back.  But at one of the down hills she lost us. I was very concerned about her!  Until the next day, when I saw her in town, lying on the tile floor, looking content!  Isn't that crazy?  She took herself on a trip to Valle de la Luna for the day I guess!  Did she just wake up that day and think, "I'd like to take a trip today to the valley."   ??  :)  Here is a pic of her in the valley and in town:

At some point, when the road was still not with an end in sight, I told Jesse I couldn't keep going and would sit and wait for them if they wanted to try and find the end.   I was thinking about the return trip, and knew I had to save the small energy I had left.  Also, the wind was really bad at this point, and I just couldn't keep fighting it.  So we turned back.  And boy was I right about the return trip! It almost killed me!  About 30 minutes of it was on a slight incline, but because we were so tired, it felt like a huge incline!  I had previously learned the concept of bike gears (after almost killing myself on the first hill we got to) and had them on the lowest settings.  The wind was bad, my butt was on fire, and I was just repeating to myself "block the pain, mentally block the pain."   At one point I was literally blown off my bike!

We FINALLY got back to town and walked around to find a place to eat.  It is a bit pricey in San Pedro because it's so touristy, and we couldn't afford to eat in the nicer places.  But we found a great place called La Delicias de Carmen: homemade food and it was reallly good.   Joe got the cazuela, which is a Chilean soup of chicken, corn, pumpkin, and potato.  I got the lentil soup, which was really great. I adore lentil soup. I love soup in general, but lentil is one of my favorites.  Jesse got a pizza.   It was so awesome to be off the bikes, have a beer, and eat some great food. We were starving!

After that, the boys took off to go watch the Chile vs. Mexico Copa America soccer game.  I went back to the hostel in search of a hot shower, but only found a warm one.  Then I went and joined them at the only bar in San Pedro, which was, of course packed.  The indigenous people of San Pedro do not like all the tourists and noise, so they don't want to have bars, only restaurants where you have to order food.  There is somehow a bar there, that's been there for 4 years, and only serves beer.  The locals also go there, so it's a great place, breaching two communities.  When we were there one night, the owner (a Finn) asked us to edit some text to introduce his petition to the patrons. It was about how the bar is facing political envy and opposition.  We both signed the petition, and hopefully the bar will stay open!
Anyway, Chile won the game 1 - 0.  Which probably has something to do with the fact that half of the Mexican players were ejected from the Copa due to hiring prostitutes while in Ecuador... yeah.... awesome and hilarious!

On Saturday Jesse and I took a tour on horseback! Which I knew was not going to be good for our butts, but I just love riding horses!  It was beautiful and fun.  We saw some old Inca ruins on a hill, but didn't get a chance to explore them.  Next time!  Before we went on the horses, we ate at La Delicias de Carmen again and Jesse got cazuela with llama meat!  Poor llama!

After the horses we had to have some beers! lol. It was painful to sit!  Then we got an early night because we had to get up at 7am to go on a tour of the salt flats.  The tour went to these massive salt flats where flamingos and 6 other species of birds live, feeding on larvae, and these tiny little shrimp organisms.  They fed us breakfast and then took us to see the Tropic of Capricorn post, which was not very interesting really lol, and then on to a small oasis village called Tocomao, where we bought a wall tapestry and got to pet a llama!  It was adorable!  We got back to San Pedro about noon and got on a bus to leave at 1:30 or so.  In Calama, we ate, then took a taxi to the airport and got back late to Santiago, as our flight had been delayed.  I am still exhausted!  We didn't want to come home because there is so much to do in San Pedro that we didn't have time to do.  We couldn't do the tour of the gysers because they were closed due to snow, which was really disappointing!  So this is why we have to go back to San Pedro! :)  And there were other cool things to see and do, like the ancient petroglyphs which have been dated as old as 5,000 years.

This is a pic of the salt flat:

I will post my pictures of the trip soon!

This weekend Joe and Jesse are in Valparaiso. Our friends Nico and David are going with them too.  Today is really wet and ugly in Santiago, so I hope they at least don't have a torrential downfall of rain all weekend... Jesse doesn't have a raincoat.
I am very excited to be alone for the weekend!!  I am having some girlfriends over tonight for wine and cheese! :)   And other then that I have no idea what I'll be up to!  Some errands, and hopefully shopping, if I can justify spending the money!  hmmm... Don't think that will be too difficult. :)

In other news, we have just gotten our temporary resident visas/working visas! Very exciting. Too bad we aren't staying that much longer!  It would be so easy to immigrate and live here legally going the route of an English teacher...

We have another friend coming to stay the day Joe leaves!  Slightly overwhelming, but we are happy to help him, Jesse's friend Jeremy, who is moving down here to teach English as well.  He's from San Francisco too.

We don't have anything planned for traveling until November 22nd as of now, when we go to Punta Arenas at the very south of Chile.  San Pedro was slightly expensive, and a lot of our classes have been suspended this month because schools are on winter break and people are going on holidays.

Hope all is well with you all in the homeland!