Atacama Desert

We nearly missed San Pedro de Atamaca, as the official bus stop was just down some random back road somewhere and as it was the middle of the night we couldn´t see anything! However when we realised and got off the bus, we were met with music from a brass band as locals paraded and danced down the next street in colourful costumes. Sitting by the pool the next morning eating our breakfast in the glorious sunshine in the most arrid place in the world, we recieved the news of all the snow at home and laughed! San Pedro is a very small town, it´s main street has about 20 premises which were restaurants, supermarkets, tour operators and souvenir shops. It had a certain charm about it though as it didn´t look or feel like the buildings had changed since it became a popular tourist spot for trips to the Valle de la Luna and the Taito geysers.

Firstly we took a trip trekking through the Valle de la Luna. It´s not the only one in South America, it seems that any area that slightly resembles the moon is called this. It wasn´t until after booking this up though and reading that you should acclimitise to the altitude (2440 m) before doing any physical excercise, that we realised a 13km trek wasn´t the best idea. It was most enjoyable though, we walked along the tops of cliffs, ran down sand dunes, passed over dried up river beds and ambled through canyons carved out by raging rivers thousands of years ago. We got to watch the sun set over the mountains after climbing to the top of a large rock formation. It was beautiful. To visit the Taito Geyers we had to be up at 4am as the steam is more visible when the temperature is cooler, before sunrise. The Taito Geysers cover a large area and there were about 50 geysers steaming and spurting out water sporadically. It was lovely walking around them as the sun slowly rose. I had to wear all my clothes that morning as the temperature in the desert was -5° and as I´ve said before I´m slightly lacking in the warm clothes department. Things warmed up eventually and we had a picnic breakfast there before going off to the thermal baths. The next stop was a small town called Manchuca, which is a dwindling stop-over town for people travelling from the Pacific to Bolivia. The main points of interest there were the beautifully simple church and the chance to try Llama meat kebabs (not what i really wanted at 9am, but nevertheless we tried them) which we actually quite liked. From here we went to the cactus forest which was really good fun. There was a small river which carved a green path through the desert with cacti growing on its riverbanks. We walked along the banks to a small waterfall which we climbed down and around as people explored further or paddled in the river. The scenery here was different from anything I´d ever seen before, so naturally on arrival, the memory card ran out on my camera. Typical.

After much deliberaton as to whether to go to Bolivia or back into Argentina, we decided to do the latter and head for Salta. The small matter of being able to get on a bus within the next couple of days became a problem so we resulted in getting a private transfer with 4 argentinians, a middle aged Peruvian woman and her elderly mother. We were happily travelling along in a spacious minibus seeing the sights of a 6000m high volcano, some salt plains and flamingos when as we crossed the border we were bundled into 2 cars, like something from a dodgy film. This was a bit of a squeeze for the next 5 hours, but although we could only just about converse, the 2 Peruvian ladies were good fun except for the fact that the elderly mother kept passing wind.

Since we decided to leave san Pedro at the last minute, we had to quickly check out from our hostel and pay up, but the cash machine doesn´t always seem to work in San Pedro. Luckily we met 2 friendly Germans who agreed to change up some American dollars for us later so that we could pay for our room, but we didn´t have quite enough so that poor couple ended up with 50,000 Argentinian pesos, 38 American dollars and a fiver for good measure.

Leaving so late, we had trouble finding somewhere to stay that night also, so out came the SPG Sheraton points and at 2am we arrived at the Sheraton Salta, very tired, but not too tired to spend the next 3 hours in the casino in the hotel drinking free drinks and playing roulette wth a crazy Argentinian guy. Most amusing.