Valparaiso and San Pedro de Atacama

I go to bed at night, close my eyes, and just seconds later its the morning. I must be working hard.

I had a great final couple of days in Valparaiso. Tom, Pablo, Sarah, Anna and I scaled Valparaiso's steep streets, ate it's Chilean food, and visited the former house of poet Pablo Neruda. But before long the crowd was moving on, and after a little deliberation I opted to buy a bus ticket north towards the border town of San Pedro de Atacama.

The journey north was 24 hours long, but Chilean buses are of good quality, and my seat reclined to near horizontal. As we made our first on-route stop I met Julian from Denmark, my new instant best friend until the next one! Julian helped further my basic Spanish on the bus, and proved a great aid when language barriers arose.

San Pedro de Atacama is a small rural looking town on the Bolivian border. It's rustic feel still persists somewhat, but it has naturally morphed into a tourist hotspot full of hostels, international restaurants, and most notably, tours to its scenic desert surroundings.

On my first evening in San Pedro I embarked on a tour of Valle de la Lunar, a good tour of the rocky desert, culminating in a seemingly lunar landscape. The following day I joined Julian on a tour of various lagoons and salt lakes. I found this tour less interesting, and I was certainly less excited than the South Americans on the return journey who frantically danced and sung along to the grating Spanish pop songs blurting out through the minibus speakers.

That night, however, I felt uneasy. I wasn't 100% why, but it was possibly because I had been a little out of control lately. I had been joining San Pedro tours almost by default, riding on the tourist line. In addition to that, I have been constantly niggled by the fact that I didn't purchase flight tickets in which the date is movable, meaning that if I were to reach my final destination in June too soon, an early return to England would not be an option without purchasing a new flight ticket. For the first time on my travels, I didn't close my eyes at midnight and immediately awake to the morning sun.

The next day I chose to explore alone. I visited the few corners of tiny San Pedro I'd yet to see, booked myself onto a unique sounding evening astronomy outing, and researched for myself exactly how and when I wished to proceed. The most obvious next step was to take a three day trip across the salt flats to Bolivia, but with many horror stories about the journey on the internet, including fatal road crashes, I was insistent on ensuring I chose the right company and the right departure date. After much deliberation, I booked my journey for a couple of days time, leaving the rest of the afternoon plus all of the following day to relax and recharge. And that afternoon I did just did that, and in my laid back state, unrushed and untroubled, I felt right again.

Just one hour later I found myself rushing through the streets of San Pedro! As fast as I could I scampered to find an ATM, a money exchange place, and the agency for my tour. My few hours of relaxation had almost worked too well, and all of a sudden I knew no less than seven people who were doing the tour with my company the following day; one day before me! I was now ready for it and wanting to join my friends. And so a few hours of downtime was followed by a madcap rush to rearrange my plans and get myself sorted for the next day's big journey.

I just had enough time to prepare my things and join Julian for a meal before we attended our nighttime astronomy tour. Being our last day in Chile, we had some spare pesos to use up, and so we opted for a three course meal. Time was short, but in the heat of my recent rush I failed to recognise the error of our ways. What Julian's excuse was, I don't know. After making our order we realised we had set the clock too tight, and what resulted was a last minute madcap shovelling food race! Never before has fish, potato and mushrooms been devoured so quickly! After a small sprint to the tour bus there was little else for us to do but laugh!

Space, a night lit evening with French astronomer Alain, was well worth the fast scoffing and short sprint. Not only was it a totally original experience compared to the usual tourist fare, but Alain clearly had a great passion for his subject. At his small observatory in nearby Solor, Alain introduced his crowd to the basics of astronomy, before aligning his telescopes to various planets, stars and constellations in the night sky. The telescopic views of the moon particularly, in which he kindly took pictures of with our own cameras, were really stunning.

Later that night, and with little rest, I prepared to cross into Bolivia on a three day journey through Salar de Uyuni. It is there where my next blog entry will continue.