12. San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

The biggest problem we had with San Pedro was getting there from Uyuni, Bolivia. San Pedro is in the far north of Chile, south of the Bolivian border. There is no cross border passenger service of any kind. After some research and plodding all over Uyuni, we found a small company that could arrange this. There were two others with the same problem - 2 young ladies, one from Spain, the other from Belgium.

This was the sequence: We took a jeep halfway to the border, stayed overnight, all 4 of us jammed in an unheated basic room. It was still very high altitude and it was freezing cold. Next day the jeep took us to the border. After clearing out of Bolivia, we boarded a minibus which took us to San Pedro, where we checked into Chile. Quite the procedure, but it worked.

San Pedro is in the Atacama desert, the driest place on earth. It is a dusty town with no paved roads, but it has no shortage of tourists. And it is expensive. Most storefronts are either a tour agent, a hostel or a souvenir shop. There are many interesting places to visit in the area - most of which we had already seen similar or better in Bolivia. We were also pretty tired after 6 straight days in jeeps and basic, freezing accommodation.

We did do a couple of interesting trips. One was to Laguna Cejar, an ultra salty small lake in the desert. We swam there - it was really weird - you couldn't drown if you wanted to. Just bobbed like a cork. Something like the Dead Sea. We then moved to two small ponds called "Ojos de Salar" or eyes of the salt flats. The water there was much fresher and we swam & rinsed off the salt. Then on to another "lake" - a large salt flat with about 2 cm salt water uniformly across the whole area. The water was dead calm and acted as a perfect mirror. People were standing in the middle - looked like they were walking on water. Watched the sunset, while enjoying a Pisco Sour - Chile's national beverage.

Next day we visited Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon)- a very arid area with some strange rock formations. Crawled through a long sequence of caves that were used many years ago by the natives to hide from the Spanish. Again watched the sunset on a high cliff overlooking some interesting terrain. No Pisco Sour this time!

Had to change hostels mid-visit due to a loud, howling dog next door to our original pick. Next stop is back to Salta, Argentina, but there was a slight problem - all the Argentinian bus companies are on strike. Finally found  a Chilean company that had space for us.

 Little Girl at a local market

The bus strike was settled the day we travelled back to Salta, Argentina but there was still a lot of bitterness. Just as we arrived in Salta, somebody threw a large rock at our bus, shattering the window mext to the people across from us. No one hurt, but very scary.