San Pedro

Every time we talked to other travels about our plans to come to San Pedro, they all told us how awesome it is here and how much they loved it. Well, we were not disappointed.

Day 1

We arrived in the late morning after a night bus ride. While we were able to sleep some on the bus, there were several interruptions. First, of course, they had to check out tickets. The guy also took our passports because there would be a police check, our second interruption. They came on the bus and walked up and down the aisle, apparently looking for something, though I'm not sure what. We heard a dog on the upstairs part of the bus, though. Then we had to stop at some control station where everyone had to get off the bus and get all their luggage from underneath and put all of it through a scanner. It was a big and full bus, and it was cold. Then we made it to Calama, where we had to wait for about 30 minutes for a different bus. Then we went to San Pedro. Needless to say, we didn't do much but rest and eat.

Day 2

It was an early morning. A tour bus picked us up at 430AM from our hostel. They drove us up to over 12,000 feet to the geysers. They are some of the highest in the world. In fact, the only ones higher are 2 in Bolivia. It was cold, but the sunrise and the steamy geysers were totally worth it. Plus we saw some cool wildlife.

We also took a visit downtown to schedule more cool stuff. There really a lot to do here. It's a beautiful town, though dry, quiet (except for some barking dogs, but it beats car horns at all hours of the day and night), and very walkable.

Day 3

At about 10AM, we met with a tour group to go sand boarding. So cool!! It isn't quite as fast as snow boarding, but it is definitely as hard. It doesn't hurt as much falling. But the sand gets piled on the board and make it really heavy and hard to turn. But it's really fun. The hardest part is walking back up the same dune.

After a quick lunch, we picked up our rental bikes for the afternoon. Our goal was to see Devil's Canyon. But we didn't quite make it. First, we took the wrong road and ended up going towards Calama. We climbed this enormous hill, only to find that there was another one to climb. So we stopped for a pretty view and to make sure we were going in the right direction. Concurrently, a young couple's van was stuck in the sand, so we tried to help them push it out. Then a couple of other bicyclists came by, and we asked them if we were headed in the right direction. They showed us on the map that we were, in fact, not, and where we should go. Then they also helped push the van. It worked. The van was free, the bicycle men went up the hill, and we went down the hill. It was super fun and scary!

Once we got back to town, we proceeded to go in the right direction toward Devil's Canyon. We made it about half way, then took another wrong turn. And then we went in the right direction. But then we didn't really know where to go from there. So we rode around for a while, enjoying the scenery. The trip should have been about 6 kilometers one way. Total, we biked closer to 26. It was a beautiful afternoon. But we were tired of being lost and ready to be back in town.

Day 4

It was a later morning, but we got quite a bit done - dropped off laundry, paid for everything outstanding, had a good breakfast, showered (a big deal these days). And then we decided to spend little more to have a cab take us out to the Valley of the Moon. This is a popular spot to go and watch the sunset, but it also is a huge park. And we were after the cave. Most of the time we were just in between huge walls of rock, but we did go into the cave, and it was awesome.

The driver was pretty cool, and he drove us to some other spots around the park. Even though this is a desert, it is really beautiful here.

In the evening, we did our last tour in San Pedro, one that we had been looking forward to. We got lucky, too, because we almost didn't get to do it because the moon was too full. But fortunately, our last night here we got to see and learn about the stars. It was so awesome! We couldn't take pictures because it was so dark, of course, but it was really beautiful, and we learned a lot. We can't see these stars in Alaska. And then we got to look in the telescopes and see huge star clusters and even Mars and Saturn. Saturn was the coolest because we could even see the rings!!

All of San Pedro was really fun. It is a really popular tourist town, but amazingly that doesn't take away from its charm.

Next stop: Buenos Aires!