Into the home run now.

Our next adventure takes place in the northern Chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama, famed as being the driest desert in the world where some claim that certain areas have not experienced rainfall in living memory.  At San Pedro de Atacama there average a whopping 50.7 mm a year, almost a deluge compared to the other areas.  SPdA has become somewhat of a Tourist must over the past decade and the Township is pretty much one big tour agency with a shit loads of Hostels spread around the joint.  But that's what you come here for.  What brings people here I hear you ask?  The Andes range, the Atacama Salar and basically the odd worldly, misshapen hills and valleys.  The world's highest Geyser's are also near by as are climbable Volcanoes, it all adds up to be a bit of an adventure area.  Audrey and I took the most popular 4 tours as a package thinking that that was the smart way of doing things however it seems like that is the only way of doing things here.  The first of these was a day long trip to see the flamingo's on one of the salt lakes that dot this area and then off up into the hills, sorry mountains, to around 4,300 m in height to a picturesque lake setting called Salar de Talar.  Lunch was included, if eating food at 16H30 is still called lunch, I'm assuming that Shooter calls it 'a slightly earlier than normal dinner' that consisted of chicken and rice, a staple of this area we have since found out.  Day 2 saw us dawdle around the township while waiting for the afternoon tour to the 'Valley of the Moon'.  Having never been to the Moon, I can neither deny or confirm that this place looks just like the Moon would but we will let them continue using the name.  Hell if American can compete for a 'World Series' in a sport that only American teams compete in then anyone can call anything whatever they want in my opinion.  I digress ... again.  Its a nice walk and place to visit and most people do it at the end of the day to witness the sun dissappearing to the West again from high up.  I was a little dissappointed with the sunset as Audrey and I have been lucky enough to see some wonderful ones on this trip so far but its still nice to sit there and ponder the comings and goings of things in quiet.  That night was New Year Eve and Audrey and I celebrated with a dinner and some pisco sour and some red before retiring back to the Hostel at 23H30 to wait for the fireworks, they are 'legal' here apparently.  The New Year was a day off and we got to see more of the main street, however I must confess that this is not a very large town and once you have been up and down Caracoles twice, its probably enough.  Day 4 saw an early 4H00 start for the drive up to the El Taito Geysers for a sunrise surrounded by miss and fine sprays of water ... and minus 12 degrees Celsius just to keep us on our toes.  Along with this is a chance to hop into the thermal spring for a little swim.  Really, really warm in there but getting out and the trying to dry yourself off in the frigid temperatures was like having Parkinson's, could not stop shivering.  On the way back we stopped at a little town to try Llama meat, freshly killed (we saw one getting cut up around the back of a building) and BBQ'ed.  Delicious, probably the best 'local' meat that I've tried on this trip.  And then back to SPdA we went before our next sunset tour which was to start at 16H00 where this time we got to swim in salty water, not quite as dense as the Dead Sea but with the same properties, ie, you can't sink.  It's a strange sensation to know that no matter what you just can't sink.  30 minutes later and with a nice coating of salt on everything we got out and were on our way to the next destination which was another lake to wait and watch the sun disappear again, unsurprisingly, to the west.  This sunset however was spectacular, not so much to the west but when you turned around and watched the Mountains change from blue to red to oranges and finally to purples that right there is what you want to see when you are travelling the World, something that will define a moment in time and be forever remembered.

Due to a miscalculation is travel dates we realized that we still had 3 days left here and had no idea what to do.  Day 5 we tried our luck out by renting a bike for the day and riding around to see a couple of old ruins.  3 km's later and with my ass screaming in pain we reached the first ruin, Pukara de Quitor a 12th Century structure that was one of the last to be captured by te invading Spanish back in the day that's mainly due to its excellent positioning on a rocky promontory overlooking the oasis.  The ruins are and easy walk and convey a time gone by, and also the harshness of this area and the resilience that the ancients needed to survive this place, its not like it is now where you can just go and get an empanada and coke anywhere.  Due to the seat on the bike being harder than diamonds we decide that we were not going to try and get to the other ruin because that meant at least 25 km's on a rough and bumpy road but to ride a further 4 up the valley to what they call the 'tunnel'.  And guess what, its a tunnel that was dug through the mountain in 1930 but is now closed off.  What we didn't realize was that the last 2 km's of it was like riding uphill through hell.  Hot, no shade and a sort of road was what we dealt with and not being super fit, or even semi fit meant that we pretty much walked the bikes up.  The bonus was that the ride back was all downhill and that meant that we could stand up on the peddles and give the old backside a little rest.  Needless to say we returned our bikes early and went to lay down.  Day 6 was another tour out the see some petroglyph and then onto Rainbow Valley.  I confess that I am a petroglyph fan, I like the fact that we can clearly see something that someone in the past spent a lot of time on and then here we are today trying to figure out what it all means.  I can just imagine all the ancient sitting around laughing at us going, 'it's just a llama, it means nothing, I was bored one week and thought I'd let myself go creatively'.  The tour guide however has a different story and says it's all done so that the next lot of travellers though the area had some idea of what was around.  Yeh whatever, I like my story better.  Rainbow Valley was a bit ho-hum.  I think that Audrey and I are now a bit spoilt with what we have managed to see this year so unfortunately for Rainbow Valley it doesn't receive a high mark I'm afraid.  Day 7 was another day of nothing so we thought that we would visit the museum ... except that its been closed for 2 years.  Grrrrr.  Oh well off to look at Caracoles Street once more just in case we missed something.

San Pedro de Atacama and the surrounding districts are nice and definitely worth the visit but just don't spend to long there.