There is no city, just desert for miles around, Chile
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Having hung out with Claire and Jane and bonded over the near-death of the dog and several bottles of Chilean, we agreed to meet them in
San Pedro de Atacama - the northern desert of Chile where they had a 4WD waiting. It was real desert. There has never been a record of any rain here ever. San Pedro was a small oasis of adobe clay huts and basic tourist amenities. It was hot in the day and cold at night. The landscapes change dramatically from salt flats that look like the moon - all white and crusty, to vast salt lakes that look like sheets of blue ice, to volcanoes, mountains and sand. There was flamingoes, alpacas, donkeys and plenty of dogs - strangely enough a lot of them were pedigrees. We made friends with a young black one that was being terrorised by an older gay dog (it was like `Prison Break`) and it followed us around like..well, like a puppy dog all day. It even ran 5 kms with us when we cycled to the local Inca ruins and ate our old raisins just to be sociable.
