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So after our boozy session in Santiago we had one more day there and then took a bus to La Serena. This is a seaside resort further north in Chile. It wasnt quite what we expected and to be honest there wasnt a lot to see in the town itself. It was a lot poorer than the other areas of Chile we had visited and there werent many tourist attractions. However on one night we did go to an observatory to learn about the stars. La Serena is on the edge of the Atacama Desert so there is little light pollution which means you can get great views of the stars of the southern hemisphere. We got there at about 8pm and we were shown Orions Belt, the Southern Cross, the Milky Way and took some great photos of the moon through the telescope, you could see the craters really easily! We were told about the horoscope stars and shown where they are in the sky. It was pretty hard to imagine the shapes of a crab, bull, fish etc but we could understand how the greeks recognised them. We also saw our very first shooting star, yay! It was a really good night even if some of the information given to us was a bit complex and detailed!
The next day we visited the Elqui Valley which is really beautiful and is the start of the Andes. We visited a Pisco factory and tried some of their best stuff but it was s strong we were all choking, no one bought any! That night we took a nightbus to San Pedro de Atacama.
San Pedro is in the Atacama Desert and is a very strange place. It is the 2nd driest place on earth apart from Antarctica. It is basically in the middle of nowhere and all of the buildings were made out of mud and the streets were dusty and dark. We stayed in a really nice hostel though called Don Raul which had hammocks. On our onyl full day there some of us decided to go for a bike ride to visit the Valley of the Moon. We cycled for about 4 hours with hardly any cars on the roads and in the boiling hot sun. We got to the Valley and it was incredible, it really did look like the moon - funny rocky outcrops and no vegetation to speak of at all. It was quite creepy, just because there was no one else around and no living creatures. We cycled for about 6 hours in total and saw some amazing scenery, including a huge volcano that seemed to be watching over us wherever we were!
Matt didnt go cycling in the morning, he had his first go at horse riding! He went to the Valley of Death instead and climbed some sand dunes. He really looked the part in his hat, sunglasses and chaps but his bum definitely felt it later on. This didnt stop him from cycling to the Valley of the Moon in the evening to see the sunset over the sand dunes. This turned out to be a bit of a hairy experience with nothing but head torches to show them the way back. Unfortunately one of our friends had a bit of an accident and hit a barrier and ended up with stitches in his head and a broken wrist. Luckily Matt was safe and sound though.
The next day we got up early ready to cross the border into Bolivia......
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