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Date: 23rd to 25th November 2006
Mel: So we were up really early again today packed up all our tents and were aboard Doris at 6 to hit the road, we had breakkie on the go in the truck as we had to get on our way out of Argentina, and to the border to cross into Chile. It was about a 6 hour drive to the border so most people just caught up with their sleep for this part of the journey, we stopped for lunch before eventually arriving at the border at around half 12ish which has to be one of the worst border crossings we had experienced so far! We waited about for ages queing to be seen with our passports in the heat was sooo hot, then after everyone had got their passport stamped we had to get all of our bags off the truck. The truck was searched by officers to make sure we weren't smuggling food or anything dodgy, and we all had to stand in line for our bags to be searched by an officer seperately, this took ages and was a bit of a nightmare. Especially for me as I had an extra bag made of alpaca containing all of my south american souvenirs hahaha, I suppose it was quite funny watching them rumaging through all my alpaca hats and jumpers and oh yes my hammock haha!! After this long border crossing we were eventually back on the road and before long we arrived into the small but very cool town of San Pedro! It was really hot when we arrived, and we were all abit troubled by our accomodation especially after the long day we'd had. Doris backed up into this drive way next to this house and we got all our stuff off and had to set our tents up in the garden area which was a largish field with overgrown weeds so there were lots of bugs yuk, but its all the experience so we didnt mind too much. We all set up our tenst which took ages as the ground was so tough the boys had to use the malletts hehe, think thats excuse for no muscle power haha!! We had a tour around of the town which didn't take long but it was such a cool place, my kind of place not too big and had a friendly atmosphere and had a local feeling, not keen on big cities so this place was one of my favourites in Chile. Matt and I had a walk about and I dragged him through a few little local markets hehe, from the main plaza which was tiny there was an amazing view of the active volcano in the distance had great scenery. After we had explored the town more we headed back for dinner and we actually got lost (no-one could understand in such a small place but we did haha, took a wrong road and didnt know where we were, luckily after about 20 mins we bumped into some people from our tour so managed to get back!!). Chilled out around the campsite and had an early night as the three of us had signed up to the tour to the natural wonder place in altitude to see the geysers, and we were getting picked up at 4, thats why no one else wanted to do it haha!
We were up very very early today got ready and waited to be picked up outside at 4, this was sooo early and was quite cold too. We had a over a 2 hour drive up to the geysers so were able to get a little bit of kip, was really bumpy at some points though so was hard to sleep. We got to the site at just after 6, got out of the van and the temp gauge read -8 degrees it was BALTIC!! our guide had told us it would be a little cold so brought a jumper but if he would have said it was below 0 would have worm me layers we were all freezing but thats the only annoying part becuase this site was amazing. We walked around the area and all around the ground is holes with boliing water and all you can see is lots of steam coming from the ground was such a cool thing to see, there was this one mound like a ball with liquid bubbling from the top and steam constantly coming off of it. As the sun started to come up there seemed to be more steam appearing, the geysers were really cool but the sulphur smell was everywhere and they say not to breath much of it in if you can avoid it. We got given breakkie up here at the geysers and our guide put the eggs and choc milk in one of the boiling water geyser holes, and bolied us eggs and made us hot choc which we were all impressed with def needed it as we were freezing! This geyser site was huge and all around far and close you can see steam blowing into the air was wicked. We got driven to another part where we saw the biggest geyser blowing out the most steam into the air was loads coming out. In this area was this naturally made mud pool that the 3 of us got into, this was a cool experience swimming in a mud pool, as you stepped in couls feel the sludgy mud bottom was weird haha. We swam about for a bit and sat near to where the hot water was flowing into it from other boiling holes so was really hot in some places and warm in others, was hard getting out as it was really cold haha tried to quickly get dressed to get warm and in my ruch my towel slipped luckily no one saw could have shocked some locals haha. After we had walked about all of the area and seen the geysers we were dropped off at this small village where we brought llama kebabs which were well yum and cheese samosas for our breakkie mmmm there was a cute girl at the house we brought the kebabs from but she was very shy, we drove back after this stop to our camp site saw lots of the rare type of alpacas on the drive back which were cool, they were running across the road and aroud the fields.
After this tour we arrived back at the camp site at lunchtime, the three of us went to grab some lunch from the town and took more a wander about and popped into the internet and just chilled out. We headed back to the campsite at 6ish where most people jumped onto to Doris as Steve and Mike took us to the famous Moon Valley which was an amazing national park, usually quite expensive but the costs were cut as steve drove us through it. Was a really scenic drive to the valley itself and as we drove through it was amazing to see all the different rock formations and colours etc was a cool place. We stopped at one area where the ground and parts of the rock were bright orange colours and other parts had salt effects to them as they were covered white, we all hiked to the top of one of the rocky hills to see the view which was amazing. Then we continued our drive through and stopped off in the middle of these rocky hills with a huge flat area where we watched the sunset was a cool place to see and will attach some photos of this place under San Pedro soon! After we got back to the camp site we had dinner and a group of us went to the liquor store to buy cheap beer & wine and me and matt sat up with the irish crew drinking at the camp site to save money (Chile not as cheap as previous places) having a good old chat and laugh, saw some cool fireworks too. Wasn't a very late one as matt and I signed up to another tour to the salt flats the next day.
We were picked up today at about 9 by a local lady as our guide who was really nice and told us a lot of info about San Pedro. She drove us to the salt flats which were another amazing natural wonder. They were alot different to the salt flats in Bolivia as they went flat they were all rocky and uneven but they had a cool effect to them and was good to see something different. On our way we saw the active volcano in the distance and it was smoking from the crater which was great to see although it wasn't good to know that it had last errupted in April 06 so not that long before ahh!! We took a walk around the salt flat area and saw wild flamingos in the distance, a few even flew over mine and matts heads!
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