Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Couch surfing in San Pedro de Atacama
After a bus ride through beautiful scenery in the mountains from Argentina to Chile including a small motor stop, we arrived to San Pedro de Atacama, a very small village in the desert. Here Luis - our host for coming days - greeted us on the bus station. We found Luis through Couch surfing, which is a concept where people open up there home and offer you to stay on their couch or guest bed for free. It was our first time as couch surfers so it was hard to know what to expect, and now I'm on the other side I feel this was a very special couch surfing experience.
Luis lives in a small cosy house with his two dogs Billy and Lupa and his passion of mountain biking all around him! In the back of the house he had a stunning view to the mountains and volcanos, where he enjoyed his evening mata (tea) while the sun sets, the moon rises up and the dogs would happily run around him. Both dogs he found on the street when they were puppies and he took them in and trained them. Kind and happy dogs, but not my friends when they would lick my face in the middle of the night while I was sleeping or even jump on top of me, wanted to play, then a 1,5 year old labrador is quite heavy!
He works as an architect, drawing construction plans for private houses and big hotels in the very same program I have been working with in IKEA, AutoCadd. He works from home and preferable during night as it's calm and a good temperature, and gives him the opportunity to mountain bike during the day with friends - or with his couch surfers, just like he took us out to try. We were on the bike for almost 5 hours and drove through amazing landscape. He took us places not many tourists can go themselves, even visited a hidden Inka ruin and we appreciated it all a lot.
We also went on a day trip to see geysers and there was 80 in the same location which is the most in one place in the world. Because of the arc tectonics plates are meeting under Chile they have many volcanos, geysers, hot springs and even earthquakes and tsunamis. After looking at geysers at 6am at 0 degrees we were cold and tired, and the only thing we didn't wanted was to get undressed. We found some inner strength and my logic was I couldn't get more cold, so we jumped into a natural hot spring and got warm again. The water coming into the pond was boiling and could even burn, but we enjoyed getting defrosted.
We took our host out for lunch to thank him for everything during the three days we stayed at his home. Sitting in the local cafe the news was running on a television, and it didn't take long for us to translate from Spanish that there has been a terror attack in Bruxelles. It was a bit weird being so far away the actual action and still feeling under attack. And then looking through the eyes of South America it seems really far away! After the lunch we hurried to a cafe with wifi connection to read the news and more importantly to see everyone we know was okay.
This happening gave us some good conversations and reflections afterwards that I find healthy for me, being away from Denmark and Europe for so long.
Next stop is the coast of Chile and we couldn't wait to get out of the dry air and dusty desert.
- comments