I went North this week to a place called San Pedro de Atacama. It is literally the dryest place on earth, parts of it have never seen rain. It was cool!
First of all, deserts are cool places to go, they tend to have lots to do. I went to a place called Valle de Luna which is basically a sport in the desert with a bunch of cool formation where you go to watch the sun set. You should see the f***ing sand dune you have to climb to get there! It's huge!
I also went to Salar de Atacama which is a dryed up salt lake in teh middle of the desert, and there's a little bit of salt lagoon left and this is a habitat for flamingos. So I have lots of pictures of flamingos. I actaully did this with two random girsls from Sweeden, 'cause we got dropped off at the Salar with bikes and we were going to ride the 60 kilometers back to San Pedro... just one problem... I'm from Sea level, and San Pedro is at 2700 meters. After 20 kilometers I was hyperventilating every time I LOOKED at the bike so I had to give up at the town that was the halfway point and put myself and the bike on a bus. I don't feel quite as bad as I did though, 'cause the other 2 girls ended up hitching back too, they just made it 20 km father than I did. I wish someone would have told me that complete lack of appetite is a sign of elevation sickness a little eariler, I would have been more careful! but actually except the fact that I ate maybe one full meal total the ENTIRE time I was there, and that one little incident with the bike, I had no trouble at all with the altitude. (I didn't faint, I didn't have headaches, I wasn't tired...)
There was also bunch of Indian ruins that I hiked out to that morning. They weren't much to see, just a bunch of walls on a hill, especially since I got there just in time to turn around and walk back. I didn't get to climb into them much at all.
This morning I went on a trip to the Geiysers al Tatai. These things aren't quite as impressive as yellowstone, but they're a different kind of geiyser. They don't erupt, they go full time. You have to get up at fucking early to go see them though, becasue once teh wind picks up in the morning they stop being very impressive. This means getting up at 3:30 in teh morning to catch the tour at 4, which means I'm on my 22 hour awake, and on top of that the 3 hours of sleep I got last night weren't very good because I kept waking up every 15 minutes to look at my watch to make sure it wasn't 3:15 yet!
So anyway, I dragged my ass out of bed in the cold dark morning (did I metnion that San Pedro doesn't get electricity between 1 am and 6 pm? Or that because of the altitude the temperature at night gets down to about -10 C? or that my hotel only had hot water between 7 and 10 o'clock at night?) pack all my shit into my backpack (Mochilla in Spanish) because I was leaving and had to be out of my hotel room befroe I waould get back from the geysers, and go stand outside in the freezing cold wiht about 10 other people as the different tour companies come by and pick up their people... except that my company's van came by and they told me I was on the other van... and then the other van came by and told me I was on still ANOTHER van... except I was the only person left standing there... so the other 2 people for whom this was apparently the RIGHT van say that they'll make him come back before he leaves the town and if I'm still there tehy'll make him get me. So I'm standing there in the dark, under GLORIUS stars (anyone have a star chart for the southern hemisphere? I'd really like to know what I was looking at) and I hear from down the block someone screaming "Wait Wait, let me on the fucking bus" It was an Australian guy and girl and a french girl who had been out literally all night celebrating the french girls birthday so they were still drunk. They were also on my (at that point seemingly imaginary) bus. Yeah so anyways, at 4:45 the bus FINALLY shows up, and the aussie guy starts taking his mini-disk player that he keeps his trip diary on up and down the bus taking interviews of what everybody thoughabout this bus being 45 minutes late at 4:00 in the f***ing mroning. It is HILARIOUS ( he spent the trip back playing it for people) but anyways, it turned out the bus was late because it wouldn't start, and half way there it breaks down again and they spend an hour and a half trying to fix it before giving up and calling for a new bus... at which point we were all pissed off as anything. So the new bus gets there and 13 of us (including the whiny cranky children) keep going and 4 get in the broken bus that can at least go down hill and go back to sleep. But we lucked out and the wind started late today and it turned out to be really fun, and the australian (and french girl) were really cool, even if they were kind of hung over on the trip back down. I am too much the engineer though, I looked at these geiysers and started asking why no one was using them for Geo-thermal energy! And you guys weren't there to hit me upside the head either ;(
Anyways so there are these animals that live up there that are a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. They look like a rabbit, until you see them move with teh big tail out behind them. I think I got a decent picture, I'll have to show you guys.
Anyways, I got back from that, killed half an hour and got onto a bus for Calama which is where I caught the plane back to Santiago, except my flight was canceled (after we were all already on the plane waiting for take off!!!) so I had to take the slightly later flight which was therefore overcrowded, and I got back here at 11:30. Just a slightly long day don't you think.
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