San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

We were welcomed in this dark small town in the pouring rain without a hostel. After bouncing from hostel to hostel we finally found one that was half decent, cheap and available. San Pedro is a very touristy town that is well known for all the tours you can do all around the town. If you walk along the streets you will mostly see gringos. You can´t say this about many towns in South America.

The next day we opted to do the Moon Valley Tour. This involved biking out to the desert valley that looked like the surface of the moon. There were many caves, hoodoos, salt mines and the valley was surrounded by mountains. It was very scenic and there were cool things to check out along the way. You needed any excuse to stop biking at that altitude. We went to the very end of the moon valley to check out the sunset. Well, we got there a little early so Matt and I decided to take some jumps with our rental bikes. What else are you going to do with your rental bike? The sand was a bit bogged so we didn´t do anything impressive, haha. We trekked some hills and got some good snaps of the sunset and started the long trek back in the dark. We made a long pit stop at the salt mines but really only found a weird salt house that was probably haunted by salt ghosts. We didn´t want to mess with salt ghosts so we headed back to the road. Oh man, what a sketchy ride back. Matt was the only one with a light but wasn´t enough. This road was up and down, super bumpy and had many surprises on the way. Matt nearly killed himself on a hairpin turn. But we finally made it back gasping for air.

Instead of doing one day tours of lagunas, salt flats and mud baths we decided to go balls to the wall and do the 3 day Bolivia tour that ended in Uyuni. Basically, this does all these things plus more in a 3 day tour that ends in Bolivia which we were headed to anyway. So, the next day we met our group and we were off!