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Once over the border crossing and some nervous moments trying desperately to hold onto some souvenirs, we got into a small town called San Pedro De Atacama and it was hot. We found a nice we hostel and explored town. It was a dusty small town but seemed to cater for tourists very well even though it was in the middle of no where. I knew very little about the place so had a wander and a check of my guidebook. Apparently you could do sand boarding there so we found a guy that could take us sand boarding and our timing could not be better as we could do it in the middle of the night as there was a full moon. So after watching one of my Danish friends engulf the largest pizza known to man we got ready to head out sand boarding. We met up at another hostel with the man who apparently was the local master of sand boarding. Another young boy joined us, he was american but was living in Santiago. The master took us all to a shop where he bought some candles, 'i have a torch' i said to myself. We all jumped in this 4x4 and he drove us up through moon valley(because it looks like the moon) and death valley. We all jumped out and he gave us a candle each and explained they were for waxing the boards. We set of up a small sand dune and i quickly realised a con of sandboard, Bloody walking up the dunes. The 'master' gave us a quick verbal instruction and sent us on our way down the dune. We all were doing ok, falling ALLOT but getting some distance. Then came the time for me to fall properly and i did with style but i forgot rule number one when rolling in sand, closing my eyes. For the next 20 min i sat rubbing the sand out of my eyes. A welcome break from walking up the dune but not why i was there. I enjoyed it but it was far to much effort for a few seconds of fun. After the couple of hours were done we headed home to the hostel. The next day we had organised horse riding. I have never been on a horse before so i was not nervous just unsure how it would go. Appon arrival i find out the guide does not speak a word of English. Not a Word. 's***' i think, how the hell is he going to teach me how to ride it. He basically put me on the back of the horse and we set off. My horse just followed which was great but made me feel pretty useless. We went up through the valleys we had been in a the following night, crossed a main highway which was fecking scary with me not in any way of control of my horse. Further up the the valley we stopped and it was then that my horse started to get cocky and take me on a a small ride so i remembered all the stuff i seen in movies on horse controlling and the bloody worked and i got it to stop, turn around ect. We had a really cool ride through this lunar landscape then through the desert place. The guy then took use down some really steep sand dunes which both me and the horse was scared of. Once at the bottom the horse picked up pace and basically worked up to a full out right sprint, i tried some of the stuff i learnt from the films but it didn't work. So while trying to hold on and put my camera away and hold on for dear life i had to try and stop the horse which did not work at all. The next time i seen the other people and horses, one of the horses didn't have the girl on the back of it. She had been thrown off. After finding her, she was fairly distressed but no serious injures. The guide then shouted at me in spanish then walked off, i think he was blaming me. The walk home was silent, no one said anything. Once back in town we jumped on a bus to Santiago which was great for our sore arses
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