San Pedro de Attacama

  San Pedro de Attacama, Chile
Sunday, December 17, 2006

San Pedro de Attacama - The Bolivia trip finished in the small village of San Pedro de Attacama where I stayed a few days.  This is one of the very few villages in the area, as the Attacama desert is the driest place in the world, and unsurprisingly it is very hot.  The village itself was quite nice, but certainly dominated by tourism.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In the few days here I recovered from the Bolivia tour and did a couple of day excursions.  The first one being to the valley of the moon and death valley.  Death valley is named because of its lack of rain, think about 2cm a year, and moon valley is popular because of the sunsets.
   

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
My second trip was an a bike ride to two lakes that are really salty and you can float in them, in a similar way to the dead sea.  It was a 26km ride each way.  After two and a half hours to get there (as some of the track was sand) I was completely exhausted due to the desert heat.  Luckily I managed to hitch back with some Chileans, as the prospect of another 26km wasn´t appealing.

From San Pedro de Attacama I´m making my way down to Santiago for a day and a half, and then a flight to Australia (via New Zealand).