So with a heavy heart it was time to leave Argentina, with our next destination San Pedro de Atacama in Northern Chile, the gateway to the famous Salar de Uyuni.

Like pretty much everywhere else in South America, our trip from Salta required a spectacular ten hour bus journey across the Andes, made more interesting by the fact that the bus toilet broke down about an hour in to the trip. But we survived, crossed the Argentine border, and, after a couple of hours driving through no-man´s land, we were in San Pedro, waiting to complete the ridculously long and complicated Chilean border crossing formalities (including lining up in the order of our bus seats to get our passports stamped).

After checking into our hostel and discovering we had an amazing little hut to ourselves with our bed up on a mezzanine and even a guest bed we met up with friends from Salta who had braved the journey the day before and set about to find out what the pretty little desert town had to offer.

Despite being completely set up for for tourists it still retained a really cool, oasis-like feel, helped by the fact every bar and restaurant had an open fire pit under the stars and the very slow pace of life.

Having done very little for the past few days, we decided to try and reintroduce some activity into our trip and so the next day we hired bikes and set off to Valle de la Luna (the Moon Valley) for what we hoped we be a fairly relaxing ride. Despite leaving it until after the worst of the midday heat had passed, it was pretty warm and dusty, probably not that surprising for the driest desert in the world! But it was a beautiful ride through the lunar landscape and we got some great views (and a pretty good workout!). Then there was just time for a quick shower to recover and we set off for a stargazing expedition just outside the town. Northern Chile has 360 cloud-free nights per year so is perfect for astronomy and a French astronomer has set himself up just outside San Pedro offering tours. We had an amazing few hours outside in the pitch dark where he and his wife pointed out various constellations and explained to us how the stars move throughout the night and according to your location. Then we got to have a look through the various telescopes they have set up in the garden and saw Mars and Saturn, galaxies and other sights from the night sky before retiring back insde for a hot chocolate to warm up.

Unfortunately I (Liz) then had to head back for an early night as I had booked myself onto a trip to visit the geysers, leaving at 4am. As it turned out, the early night was pretty useless thanks to the disco next door to our hostel but I struggled out of bed, wrapped up and made it onto the bus for the two hour drive. It was just starting to get light when we arrived at the thermal fields and we went wandering around with our guide learning about the area and looking at all the different geysers. The most spectacular was definitely the "Killer" which only errupts every 15 minutes or so and provides a five minute spurt of boiling hot water. Our next stop was the thermal springs which weren´t actually quite as warm as we had been expecting, particularly when it was still freezing outside as the sun hadn´t yet come over the mountains. So after a quick soak and an even quicker change outside in the cold it was time for a very welcome breakfast eaten by the side of the thermal pools. Our jounrey back to San Pedro then took us through various local villages and a huge cactus field befre getting back to the hostel for a well earned sleep...

The rest of the day was spent preparing for a our 3 day trip into the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats). By this time our group of friends had expanded so that we knew all twelve people in the two jeeps making up our tour before setting off...

Details of the trip coming soon!