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21 hours to Calama and we then hope to be able to change buses and go straight to San Pedro, so as not to waste a night, we are heading to meet up with Steve so we can do the 4x4 tour into Bolivia together. We arrive in Calama to find that it's a 5 hour wait for the next bus to San Pedro, but thanks to the lonely planet we know of another bus station that may have more frequent buses and we are in luck, 4pm and we finally arrive.
San Pedro, is a very dusty little town in the Atacama desert, ridiculously windy, tiny little streets with 6ft tall buildings made out of dusty bricks and corregated metal roofs. If it's not bolted down then it's flying down the road, loads of tourists for target practise and quite expensive in Chile terms. Still I quite like it.
That evening we head out to dinner with Steve and get the best pizza we have had since being in SA, then dress up like crazy people in layers so as not to freeze during the night. We survive and the next day we all enjoy a lazy day around town. Well I do, Sharon and Steve are bored by lunchtime as with a powercut there isn't much to do, I'm quite content writing my diary and learning more spanish but head out to lunch with them to play cards and keep them entertained. This turns into an early evening game of drinking UNO, so we play and cook a group dinner until it's time for me and Shazza to go star gazing. Random fact - over here they don't have tin openers so there is a dodgy moment when a local is stabbing at our tin of peas with a knife to open it, whilst I hold it and try to look away hoping that I will keep all of my fingers intact, luckily they are well practised and I still have all of my fingers.
So star gazing..... Our guide for the evening was french and really brought the sky to life, both in a hilarious way and he was also very knowledgable. We got taught how to read sky maps, bascially treat it like a new city and learn bits at at time. Learn basic constellations, how to find them and how to locate south and you should be half way there. I'm not so sure, a lot of the stars look the same to me and some of the shapes the astronomers have come up with are a little far fetched. Still it was fascinating. The universe is ridiculously huge and we are so tiny, the craziest point we learnt was that other planets see us but back in time and it's the same when we look at stars, so it is possible that other stars, planets etc can see us but we are still inhabited by dinosaurs. We can see some stars today that may have existed years ago, but have now actually blown up/disappeared. After some enhanced gazing at stars through massive telescopes, it was enough mind boggling facts for one night and I was off in to enjoy my much needed chocolate caliente as it had been -7.3 degrees the whole time we had been stood outside and I could no longer feel my feet.
Tomorrow we leave Chile behind for the last time this trip and head into Bolivia.
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