San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

We arrived on Sunday, January 27th just after mid-day. Our first task was to find a place to sleep for the next three nights. Once that was taken care of, we started booking some excursions. San Pedro de Atacama is a popular destination because of the driest dessert, high altitude lagoons and salt flats. It sounds a little like the trip we just took, but we thought it would still be worth a visit as we had such a good time during the past three days.

We experienced a little bit of a shock as the prices here are so much higher than in Bolivia. Not only for accommodations, but also the restaurants and the cost of the excursions. Good thing we didn't plan to be here for too long. We had been below our travel budget up till now and suddenly we are over-budget.

Our first day out, we were up at 4 am to visit the geysers. It was a long drive up into the Andes to an altitude of over 4,000 meters and it was a very frigid morning up in the mountains. Once the sun rose over the mountain, we started to warm up. These geysers were quite different from the ones we saw in Bolivia, so it was good to see and quite interesting.

Our guide was very knowledgeable about the geology and also showed us some interesting animals. We had already seen the Vicuña in Bolivia but we had never seen the Vizcacha which looks like a cross between a rabbit and a kangaroo but is the size of a large rabbit. You see one in the photos below amongst all the boulders. The next photo is of a Tagua Gigante. He is carrying a bunch of grass in his beak and waking across the wetland heading towards the nest he and his mate are building.

The afternoon trip was to the Valley of Death and Moon Valley. In the Valley of Death we stopped at Coyote Rock for a photo opportunity, walked through the valley and went down some huge sand dunes. At Moon Valley we waited for the sunset and watch the rocks turning nice colors of orange and red.

Our next two days adventures took us to a couple of highland lagoons, the salt flats, and some amazing rock formations in the desert. If we hadn't already been to similar sites in Bolivia I think we would have been greatly impressed. It is a beautiful part of the world and although more expensive, it is also slightly more sophisticated than Bolivia. Regardless which country you are in, being in the middle of the Andes gives you a feeling of space and serenity that is hard to beat.

It is now Wednesday and we are sitting waiting for our overnight bus to Arica, which is on the Pacific coast and will take us close to the border of Peru. We have done four excursions in three days and quite frankly, I am not looking forward to getting on another bus, let alone spending a night on one. But that's the life of economy travelling!