San Pedro De Atacama, April 15-18

Taking the 11 hour bus from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama in the north of Chile was our first taste of altitude (the 4500 metre Jama pass) and our first taste of Chilean customs officials. Both left us a little seedy.




Going over the pass meant a climb of 3000 metres in a few hours and you could see the rest of the passengers on the bus wilt as everyone felt a little soroche - altitude sickness. San Pedro D.A is 2436 metres above sea level and we figured a good place to acclimatise before going to the salt flats in Bolivia.




San Pedro is a small town of 2400 people, with uneven dirt roads, crumbling buildings and has a nice relaxed feeling about it. It has loads of cool bars and restauarants - all offering ´happy night´. We also discovered a bar where the empanada´s were bigger than your head.




After a day relaxing we decided to do the El Tatio Geyser tour, which meant starting at 4am´and putting oursleves in the hands of Fernando (our driver) and Diego (our guide). To get to the geysers meant climbing to 4500 metres in a little over an hour. After the tour bus drove over the geysers to a suitable spot we got to wander amongst them, varying from bubbling water to more impressive ones belching out huge amounts of steam. Apparently some unfotunate tourists have, in the past, gotten a little close to the geysers and ´perished´




We passed on getting naked with the German tourists in the hotpool and instead checked out the wildlife - llama, vicuñas, and loads of others including a bird looking much like a pukeko. Our tour took us to the town of New Machuga, situated about 20 metres away from the now abandoned Old Machuga. Machugas 40 inhabitants treated us to some BBQed Llama, some Coca tea and empanadas.




We relaxed after a long day in an open air restaurant with a pisco sour and contemplated the next day´s departure for a 3 day tour of the Bolvian Salt Flats. The open roof is the perfect canvas as the clean atmosphere and San Pedro´s remoteness provide the most vivid blue sky we have ever seen... a far cry from london!