We took a flight from Santiago to Calama then an hour and a half bus to San Pedro. The first night we stayed in a hostel called Hostal Florida. In Jeffrey´s words, ¨the worst hostel I´ve ever stayed in.¨ Not quite my worst. Puntarenas, Costa Rica was pretty sketchy. But after the first night we moved to Hostal Rural, which was way better. We went sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte with a group of people. They gave me a 130 board that had Bear Mtn. Resort engraved in it. That was pretty crazy. We hiked up this huge sand dune and rode down SO easily. Actually, not so much. The sand is super sticky and you have to put ALL your weight on your back foot in order to go anywhere. Then once you´re going really fast its hard to turn or stop without eating crap. At least for me.... So I kept trying to hit this little jumpito on the bottom but i´d either go too fast and fall before I got to the jump or I wouldn´t be going fast enough and wouldn´t make it to the jump. It was super fun though. I´d definitely go again. It´s just a lot of hard work climbing back up the hill every time. After sandboarding we went to see the sunset in Valle de la Luna. We´re so used to literally watching the sun disappear behind the ocean, but in the desert, the sun casts these crazy colors on the mountains. Entonces, we looked east for the view. After the sunset, we walked through some caves. I dunno, not much to say about the caves. They were cool. Filled with salt. Actually, there was a part that reminded me of the pancake room in Malibu. It was nice meeting all the people in our group, talking, socializing. We had dinner with a dutch couple, two girls from germany, two girls from portland, and our tour guide. Definitely one of my favorite days/nights.
The second day in San Pedro we just relaxed in town. Did some laundry. Went on a run. That probably looked really weird. Two asians running around a small tourist town in the chilean desert. The last two days we did two tours. One to laguna cejar, a lake that is so salty you can float. The top layer of water is freezing cold but below that it´s warm. My whole body was basically warm, except I couldn´t feel my neck. Our other tour was to the Geysers del Tatio. Left at 4 am. It was SO cold. Colder than it is now in Patagonia. But thats good cuz then the geysers are more active. We ate llama. Tasted good, but super tough. Then we went to a natural hot spring, which was more lukewarm with spots of really cold and really hot. Jeff couldnt go in cuz hes allergic to sulfur. So I talked earthquakes with a canadian woman. Oh also, one of those days we rented bikes with some Aussies and rode out to Tulor, these old ruins dating back to like 400 B.C. But really, there were two huts that were probably replicated after what actually used to be there. You could see a little bit of the remains of the actual pueblo from that time. But yeah, it wasn´t as exciting as I hoped for it to be. We then rode our bikes to valle de la muerte and just scrambled around until the sunset. Note to self and others: mountain biking in the dark without a headlamp is not fun.
That pretty much wraps up San Pedro. We flew back to Santiago. Our flight got in at 1 am so we planned on just sleeping in the airport. Then when we got our bags we decided we might actually want to go to a hostel. But it was too late and there werent any buses going into the city. As we were walking back to the gates to find a place to sleep, two cops stopped us with drug dogs. Asked for our passports and if we had any drogas. I kept saying si. I dont know why. But obviously we didnt have any drugs so they let us go and we slept on the benches at gate 23b. We spent the day in Santiago. Went to the hostel we stayed at before and paid half price to shower and leave our bags there for the day. We took the metro to Las Condes, a trendy district in Santiago that seemed to be a financial district. Lots of suits. And English actually. We went to Cafe Melba for brunch and there seemed to be a lot of business lunches going on, with English being spoken between Chileans and non-Chileans. Our food was SO good. Well, at least mine was. Jeff wasn´t crazy about his. I had a veggie omelette and he had french toast. Best meal I´ve had. They also had giant white bowls filled with cafe latte. Also very delicious. Thumbs up for Cafe Melba.
13 hour bus ride to Puerto Montt--2 hour flight to Punta Arenas--3 hour bus ride to Puerto Natales. Patagonia!
