What a crazy and wonderful week or so we have had. We celebrated the New Year in San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile. An amazingly scenic and magical place. It had muy buena onda (good vibes) as the saying goes. We ended up camping at this very chill hostel, and bringing in the New Year with an ecclectic mixture of nationalities and people. One high light of the night was this Chilean family that had come to San Pedro de Atacama to celebrate the New Years. They were very festive and started dancing to cumbia and reggaeton as soon as the evening hit midnight. (At which point we burned a "tourist" which was dressed in bits of everyones old clothing). There was an older American woman present whom the Chilean matrons were trying to teach proper Latin dancing techniques. Which obviosly includes a lot of butt shaking. It was hilarious to watch the American woman try, quite fruitlessly I must add, and the Chilean matrons gyrating to the Reggaeton song "Culo".
After we and the entire town took a day to recover, we decided to take a couple of tours around the San Pedro area. I know we keep saying never again after every tour but these last few were pretty amazing. First we went to the Tatio Geysers near by which created an impressive and earie landscape 4000 meters above the sea. A high light was eating eggs boiled in the hot water of the geyesers. The tour group consisted mostly of Brasilians who gushed over absolutly everything. We kept stopping on the way back so that the Brasilians could photograph the "wildlife" including llamas and this specific type of rabbit ( biscachas) that lives high in the altiplano. At one point we passed by some donkeys innocently grazing near a stream bed and the driver was like "look, wild donkeys!" at which point the Brasilians started gushing all over again. Who's ever heard of wild donkeys anyway!
We also took a very relaxed tour with the owner of our hostel to the Valle de la Luna. Amazing! We got there with about a hundered other tourists to watch the sun set over the sand dunes. Afterwards we took a moonlight hike through a cave to watch the full moon rise over the dunes. Truly a memoriable experience. San Pedro has amazing energy, which could be because it is surrounded by a lot of geothermal activity or it could be because it is amazingly scenic.
From San Pedro we managed to finally take a tour of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. This was something we had been wanting to do since we arrived in South America but our visas ran out right before we were able to in Bolivia. The whole reason we went to San Pedro was to take a tour of this region. We had heard a lot of horror stories about terrible tours where the guides disappeared, the food was inedible and of being in the car for long hours over very rough roads. Still we were determined to see the Salar de Uyuni region because despite all these discomforts everyone we met has said its worth it. Fortunatly we ended up with a terriric group of people, with a terrific guide and good food! And the sights were fastastic! We drove through some unreal scenary that was absolutly breath taking. And not just because of the strong winds. We did spend a lot of time in the car driving over some extremely bumpy roads, but honestly it was vale la pena! We saw active volcanoes, boiling mud, flamingos, hot springs, lots of wildlife and of course the Salar de Uyuni; a 12,000 square Km salt flat that extends as far as the eye can see and is at times up to 16 meters deep. We even spent a night in a hotel made of Salt, everything from the tabels and chairs, beds, the walls and floors all made of salt blocks! Only the showers and roof were made from normal materials.
Now we are back in Arequipa, Perú after more than 65 hours of not sleeping in a bed! In part due to the fact that we drove from the town of Uyuni in Bolivia to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile over night and then took a night bus to the Chile-Perú boarder. We decided to head back to Chile to cross into Perú instead of going through Bolivia to escape the instability of the road system in Bolivia but of course we ran into a road block coming back to the Chilean border. Figures. We took one of the worst bus rides to date from Tacna, Perù to Arequipa. The driver refused to put both our backpacks under the bus because he claimed it was his sleeping area. So Sepi was forced to bring her bag onto the bus, it being the smaller of the two. But of course there was no space for it on the bus so she had to put it in the aisle. This Peruvian woman who was perhapse one of the most ill tempered person we've met on our travels proceeded to yell at her for having my bag in middle of the aisle even though there was no where else to put it. She was the only person who was concerned over this, no one else minded stepping over my bag. She even proceeded to insult Sepi and all Americans in general. Finaly Sepi lost her cool and proceed to yell back at her in an incomprehensible Spanish. We eventualy managed to put her pack somewhere else and were extremely thankful when the ill tempered women and her poor husband whom she kept yelling at got off the bus. It was only then that we realized it was the mountian of luggage they brought that had caused the lack of cargo space and the entire scene in the first place!
How happy we are to be in Arequipa for a few days. A very much needed rest! On Tuesday we catch a flight to Iquitos in the Amazon.
Pictures coming soon!
