San Pedro de Atacama

22.05.2010 - 25.05.2010 18 °C

We wanted to see the driest dessert in the world so we headed next to San Pedro de Atacama, which is an oasis close to Bolivia. Our buss arrived quite a few hours late, as usually without any specific reason or other info, so it was already dark when we arrived and there is almost no electric light in the village. Still we could feel that we were in a dessert. All streets are dirt roads and all houses are made of clay (adobe houses). Another thing we realized was how touristic this place was. Right away we got attacked by people trying to get us to their hostels, backpacker bars and restaurants everywhere and hundreds of travel agencies also shouting to you if you wish to go sandboarding, watch the salt dessert, geysers etc. whenever you passed.
Still the place has a nice sort of charm to it. It is very laidback type of atmosphere sort of like Ko Pangang in Thailand with scruffy looking backpackers wonder around, bonfires in many hostels and restaurants, all in all which made the village quite nice to hangout in. It is definitively a place that all backpackers go to. During our four days in San Pedro we ran into pretty much every person we had met travelling...really crazy. In addition we met quite a few new ones, like friendly two French journalist living in San Paulo.
Most people had warned us that when we´re in San Pedro we will go on tours which are expensive. However, we managed to do most things nearby just by renting mountainbikes....oh and what bikes these where. Best bikes I have ever ridden made the trips so much more fun. Ended up renting bikes three days in the row from the same place.
We went one day to Valle De la Luna, which is basically a old volcano area that with a moonlandscapie feeling. Really cool, went through some caves, climbed so huge sand dunes (running down was more fun though), and so saw some weird rock formations created by sandstorms. All in all a wicked place to go.
Another day we renting sandboards and cycled to the even bigger sand dunes. Loads of tour companies went there with people so we had to share the dunes, but we ran into Stina a nice German girl we met before, who by the way kicked ass on sandboard, other instructors even asked if she was an instructor….they never asked me though Sandboarding is ok fun, but its very slow and you cannot do anything except simply try to ride straight down without falling. Definitely prefer snowboarding, but I think was more fun for Laura who never been on a snowboard...in the end she got some distance without falling over.
The issue we have had with not being able to take out money finally worked in our advantage, our hostel made a mistake saying that they could accept card payments, so in the end we only had to pay half price for our hostel. Also we finally managed to get the laptop fixed. Hurray for us!