As Napolean Dynamite would say ....."Vote for Pedro!"

San Pedro de Atacama.....this place is amazing in more ways than one..... Although just a small oasis town, San Pedro has significant importance as not only is it considered the archeological centre of Chile but also because of it´s extreme geographic position and the beauty and contrast of the surrounding landscape. Salt lakes, desert, geysers, hot springs, moonscapes, sand dunes....oh and don´t forget the eternal blue sky!

I remember when we told local Chileans in Santiago that we were going to San Pedro de Atacama, they would sigh and with a dreamy look on their faces ,they would tell us that the scenery around San Pedro was absolutely amazing. Well believe me when I say that they really weren´t lying! The photos do not do the landscape there justice at all. Google San Pedro and take a look at the websites for yourself. The photos will take your breath away. So can you imagine actually being there and being able to take all of this in with your own two eyes!

The town itself is tiny, the streets with small one storey stone/mud buildings lining the dusty roads and tracks. And yes, it really was incredibly dusty and dry. (Our little hostal was about 5-10 mins walk into the centre of town and in the days that we spent in San Pedro walking back and forth from hostal to town as cars and trucks drove by swirling up the dust into the air, well, I must have inhaled all the dust there was in the entire place! Believe me, I woke up many a times in the middle of the night  with a coughing fit and then croaking like a bloody frog feeling the dust lodged in my extremely dry throat! And don´t even begin to talk to me about the state of my clothes!). Afterall, San Pedro is in the Atacama Desert. For those of you who don´t know and I certainly didn´t know this before arriving in San Pedro (I for some reason just think of the Sahara with anything to do with deserts!), the Atacama Desert is actually the driest desert in the world.

Now due to the San Pedro being the gateway to all landscapes beautiful and also close to the borders of both Bolivia and Argentina, there are hordes of tourists and travellers and the town is very catered for them.....so basically most of these little one storey stone/mud buildings in town are mini marts, restaurants, cafes, hostals/hotels or tour agencies. And the hundreds of tourists, surprisingly, not just fellow dreadlocked wandering travellers (am kidding....don´t quite have dreadlocks just yet!) but alot of older tourists....like my parents´ age and even older! And not just Americans and Canadians but alot of Europeans (we were in a restaurant with an entire tour of middle aged Brits and then on the bus leaving San Pedro, a group of middle aged Germans!) most of whom come to San Pedro as part of a tour of Chile, South America...whatever. And yes, these are the people who stay in the hotels ...although when I mean hotel, no not the Hilton or Holiday Inn....still one storey stone/mud buildings.....just nicer than the average residential or hostal establishment!  (Although we did get told on one tour that there is a USD 400 a night hotel just outside of San Pedro.....yes, 400 bloody US dollars a night!! Now, Chile is one of the more expensive S.American countries but to pay 400 US dollars a night, that is crazy!!! Who stays in places like that???!! Honestly!!! Maybe Brad and Angelina were there!!!) But before you turn your nose up at the mass of tourists, let me say that this doesn´t take away any of the authenticity of the place itself.

Tourism may be the means for making a living for most of the 2,500 local population there but one step off the bus in San Pedro and it reminded me exactly what travelling is all about. Look past the tourists and just seeing San Pedro as a cluster of stone buildings against a desert and snow capped mountain backdrop (talk about contrasts!) where residents live a very simple yet fulfilling life without much modernicity (not even sure whether this is a word but you know what I mean!) and there´s no mistaking that this is the travelling real deal!  Most of the locals live 5-10 mins walk away from town in rows of simple and very similar stone/mud houses. Some of them earn a living from converting their houses into basic hostals. For example, our hostal Iquisa was actually the home of a mother (who did the cleaning), son (Roberto who managed the hostal) and little daughter (Stefania who was about nine). All their belongings were in two small rooms of the hostal (crammed with everything they owned...abit like my own bedroom at home really!) with the rest of their living quarters ..... kitchen, bathroom, courtyard all used as part of the hostal.

The water supply is basic....in fact, water seemed to come on and off as it pleased....we were lucky to have water at times let alone hot water! (It was hilarious, everytime I went for a shower I would knock on Mother´s room and ask "aqua? caliente?" which was "water? Hot?" because poor Annie on two occasions ended up having a rather refreshing cold shower!) Funny also how there was never any water when you needed it...like at night just before bed to wash your face or in the late afternoon when you badly needed a shower to wash away the mixture of suncream, sweat and dust plastered on your skin! But the worse thing about not having water was.....not being able to flush the bloody toilet!!! And just to make things worse.....remember I said San Pedro wasn´t very modern...well, their sewage system is also very basic and the toilet pipes are small.....so you couldn´t put toilet paper down the toilet!(Well, you can in some places in town but not at our hostal!). Yeah, I know it is gross......so can you imagine all the flies gathered in the bathroom (showering with 20 flies, no, not nice at all!)....not being able to flush the toilet and then not having any water to wash....really wasn´t too pleasant.......

The electricity was just about as temperamental with frequent power cuts although this wasn´t too problematic. There was one night when the power had gone and we had to walk into town in the pitch black (although even usually with electricity, the lack of street lamps meant that some parts of the road into town were very dimly lit anyways). But before my mum yells at me for walking in the dark in a quiet foreign town....we had nothing to be afraid of. The residential streets outside the centre of town may be quiet and dimly lit but we never ever felt unsafe. To be honest, I probably felt safer in San Pedro than I did anywhere else on my travels. And why, because, the locals there are ridiculously friendly people. You walk down the road and you get greeted with "holas". Ok, so I know we were tourists and seeing as tourism is their main way of making a living, obviously they want to make the place safe for us. So maybe I am a little naive and like to think the best in people but I really do believe they that they were genuinely friendly towards us and saw us as more than just dollar signs.

Take for example, the family we stayed with who made us feel so welcome.....we even ended up taking photos with them and buying little Stefania lots of chocolate. But not just them.....everyone else too..... the woman at the market with her little daughter Constanza.....(let me just say that South American kids are absolutely gorgeous....if I could buy a few to take home with me I would!!!! God knows what my mum would say though if I came back with 3 South American kiddies stashed away in my backpack!! Oh and probably for her to look after at some point! I guess, they´re not just for Christmas either!)....who gave us a little souvenir each just because we played with her daughter. Oh and our tour guides who we bumped into in the days that followed and who would greet us with a kiss like we were old friends.....and coming with us in their own time to the ticket office to help us with getting a bus etc.

But what really made our stay in San Pedro an even more incredible experience than it was already was being there for the week of the carnival/festival (celebrating Mother Earth so we were told!) and it really was amazing to be able to witness the streets of this little town come alive with the celebrations as locals danced and played music in the main square and streets. The old and the young, all in their beautiful and brightly coloured costumes, the various bands with their instruments both traditional and brass, travellers and locals alike all gathered to celebrate together.....and soaking up the incredible atmosphere. For such a small town, it really was spectacular to see.

I had to admit though....as lovely as this was, haha... the carnival did get to us after a couple of days. Why? Because, for five nights after the main celebrations in town, the locals would gather at a different house each night and carry on the celebrations. And this was great and I´m certainly not one to stop a good party...only one small teeny weeny thing though...this meant the band and music playing all day long and all night long, every night for five whole nights! And guess where the party was held each of those nights....oh...surprise surprise, always in a house very close to us!!!! And funnily enough, the music seemed to always start up whenever Annie and I wanted to sleep!

Take the night of the main carnival for example. Annie and I had to get up early the next day for our tour to the geysers.....a 4:30am pick up (yes, I am being totally serious, a 4:30AM PICK UP!!!! THEY REALLY DO HAVE TOURS THAT EARLY!!!) which meant a 3:45AM WAKE UP!!!  We left the celebrations in town and got back to the hostal for about 11:30pm thinking we would have at least a few hours of shut eye. Ooh but guess what?! As soon as we had gotten comfy in nice little warm beds and closed our eyes to see the sheep bouncing across the fences before us....we heard alittle music in the distance shall we say...then it got bloody louder and louder until it sounded like it was right outside our bloody hostal!!! AND IT STAYED THERE JUST RIGHT THERE OUTSIDE OUR HOSTEL UNTIL 3:45AM!!!!!! Oh and to make things even worse, there was also no water!!!!! So no sleep and no wash!!!

Oh and just to elaborate further, when we got back from the geysers, we wanted to sleep obviously but once again as soon as we got into bed, the band (which we realised now was camped opposite our hostal) decided to start practising again!!!!!!!Come on, surely they must be perfect now!! Did they really have to practice even more!!!! (Anyone seen the recent Ben Stiller movie "The HeartBreak Kid" where Ben Stiller pays the music quartet to play to wife but then it gets on his nerves so much that he throws a fit?! Well, think Ivy doing that!!!)

I have to say, for a small town, the atmosphere in San Pedro really is fantastic. Although the carnival really brought this out, we witnessed this on another night also when a famous Chilean band came to play a free open air gig. Whole families came out to see the band play, the old, the young and even the travellers and tourists. All just having a good time. At home, you would never get anything like this.....the guys would be drunk with beer cans in their hands and no doubt trouble would start within an hour of the band playing and then the police would have to interfere and the gig would be cut short and blah, blah, blah...you know the drift! Sometimes, I think some of us can really learn alot from places like San Pedro (bar the lack of hygiene that is!)

And the surrounding landscapes and all the sights to see and all the activities to do.....really made San Pedro absolutely incredible. We took two excursions, one to Valle de la Lunes (Moon Valley) and one to the El Tatio Geysers and we also went sandboarding in Death Valley...haha sounds alittle more frightening than it actually was! But we could have done and seen even more.....the salt flats, the salt lakes, the flamingoes..........the contrast and the beauty of it all......

But believe me when I say that our time in San Pedro was not all fun and games! A nasty incident with a tuna sandwich on the bus from Santiago and the lack of hygiene generally meant that Annie and I were laid up in bed for alot of the time in San Pedro. This along with being advised by one tour agent not to go to Bolivia during the days of the carnival for our own safety as many of the drivers for the 3 day 2 night jeep tours would be drunk and hungover (in fact, one company even suspended all tours until after the carnival) and also that there was no other way to get to Bolivia (train from Calama to Uyuni had been suspended for months, buses were all booked up weeks in advance etc, etc) apart from the jeep tours, we really felt that there was this whole conspiracy in San Pedro to get travellers to stay longer and spend all our money on the place!

But despite being sick, the lack of hygiene, the lack of a decent toilet, the lack of water, the lack of sleep....and just about the lack of so many other things......San Pedro is still one of the most spectacular places I have visited on my travels and I really advise anyone travelling in South America to make a pitstop there. I would like to go back.....even just to visit little Stefania again....but I would probably pay alittle more and stay in one of the hotels!!!! Oh and I would take more drugs with me (being sick in somewhere alittle more rural is horrendous)....and a fly swat!!!!!