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Greetings from Chile for the last time.
After finishing the awesome Antarctica trip it was onto the plane and up to Santiago to join Dragoman for overland truck adventures.
The first day involved us driving up to the beach side city of La Serena. Here we didnt get up to too much except for chilling out on the beach and starting the truck chores such as shopping for meals for 24 people. The beach at La Serena was very beautiful, with a good size surf for bodysurfing pumping through. In a rather silly moment of feeling active James and I decided to go for a run and then a surf. The run was hard going, with the body putting out lots of reminders that it has been a long time since it was last active. Following the run it was into the water for a quick surf, however didnt realise that the water temperature was actually around 17 degrees. After quickly cooling down and then attempting to warm up by doing some body surfing it was back to the campsite for a cold shower.
From La Serena, we headed up into the mountains to go to an observatory. As we were leaving the camp grounds James noticed a guy behaving in an odd manner by sticking his head through the reeds on the river bank and looking into our camp site. As some people still had some valuables in their tents we walked back only to find the guys half way back across the river with some gear from the tent. As our tour leader Vernon shouted at them, they panicked and thankfully dropped the bags they had stolen. The chase was then on, as Vernon and James jumped the fence and went after them. The rest of the guys then fetched the stolen bags, before catching up with James and Vernon, who had by this stage caught one of the culprits and locked him in a portoloo on the property. Thankfully everything that was stolen was recovered, however in the chase James lost his precious flip flops and sunglasses. It was then off to the observatory for another attempt at star gazzing, however not until we had fully packed the truck with just about all our stuff again. The observatory was amazing with the milky way in fine form. Our guide started to point out many of the constellations, however I was still only able to remember the southern cross. After looking at a few stars through the outdoor telescopes, in was then inside to the very technically named VLT (very large telescope). From the VLT we had sensational views of the moon and then Saturn and its rings.
From here we had two long days of driving as we headed to San Pedro de Atacama. Along the way we had another camp on a desolate beach, and a bush camp high in the mountains. The scenery along the drive was one of dry, arid mountains with no plants visible, even though the ocean was on the other side of the road. As we headed into the moutains there was still no signs of animals or vegetation, however you would come across some small mining towns. Eventually we arrived at our main stop which was San Pedro de Atacama, where we have had a number of days to relax and chill out. We headed to the Salt lakes just outside of San Pedro, which had some lagoons with flamingoes in to top it all off. It was then up into the moutains to enjoy the spectacular scenery of mountains with dry yellow grass, and deep blue lagoons. Our last experience in Chile was to visit the lunar valley which was also just outside of San Pedro de Atacama. We headed out to enjoy the sunset, over amazing shaped sand dunes and mountains. From what we can tell the lunar valley is so called because it´s surface actually does closely resemble the surface of the moon. There were some more salt mines out here for us to have an explore of also. It was a great way to finish our Chile experience with such stunning views. Now we are heading off to explore the strange mountain shapes that are in the moon valley section of the Atacama desert. It was a sensational way to finish our tour of Chile and look forward to Bolivia.
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