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As I mentioned in my last blog, the journey from Salta to San Pedro was to be a dodgy one, due to the 07.00 departure time and my lack of sleep, which was entirely due to the fact it was Sunday morning and the BBQ only finished two hours ago.
Fear not, I sat with an Austrailian called Felix who I had bought the bus tickets with. Aside from my physical state, the journey was quite remarkable. A long climb into the Andean Altiplano and the boarder crossing with Argentina and Chile. It was here at this crossing in the high Andes that I got chatting to a couple of English lads on a different bus. Turns out they are both actors and know my good acting buddy Lex from Brighton, they had met him at the Edinbrugh festvial this year. Small world eh?!
Our gang was now taking shape. In addition to Felix and myself, we had Natalia and Fiona from England, an Irish lad called Michael with Laila the German chick, plus an Israeli, Geva, and another German, Joseph. This was to be our team for San Pedro and, for some, beyond!
San Pedro itself is a small oasis town in the middle of the Atacama desert, one of the driest regions on earth. This town now subsists entirely on tourism, though charm is retained despite the number of adventure tour operators and hostels clambering for your business. We all stayed at the same hostel, which was the first of seven that we had looked at, thus we wasted an hour with our packs on looking at some substandard accommodation.
The following day was a cracker, we booked ourselves onto a sandboarding trip to Valle de Muerte (Death Valley) in the desert. What a blast! Think taking a snowboard, attaching it to your feet and hurling yourself down a high sand dune. Woo hoo! It's just a shame that I didn't quite have time to get it cracked, a couple more runs and I would of got the hang, but alas there's only a few hours in the late afternoon you can practice due to the extreme desert heat. The trip also included sunset at the Valle De Luna (Moon Valley), where we climbed onto an outcrop of rock laden with wine and beers to watch the sunset and, surrealy, the full moon rise from behind a high volcano. Got some increadible pictures! That night we arrived back in town and straight out to a couple of bars, with some additional personas that had also been on our excursion and a couple of local tourist agency folk who Felix had bought a climbing tour with.
The next day there were some very fuzzy heads, so only Felix and I were up for doing anything adventerous. We considered the sandboard trip again, but instead opted to hire a couple of mountain bikes for the afternoon. We set off for the area we had been in the day before, parked the bikes and took a hike around the hills and canyons. The best part was running down sand dunes barefoot, nearly as much fun as the sandboarding! My luck ran out on the way back into town though, hit a patch of sand which sent me off the bike, a few scrapes down my left hand side but luckily no damage to the bike and thus my walltet!
The follwing day, we set off for Bolivia on a three day crossing by jeep. I'll tell you about that later in the week...
Nick x
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