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We eventually arrived in San Pedro de Atacama at 3pm in the afternoon 17 hours after we boarded the bus! The whole time we were sat next to the stinky toilet. Plus i had to basically fight a man to let Tom and I sit together as the the seats we booked were separate as they were the only ones left! I woke up a few times during the journey and each time i looked out of the window there was a different landscape. We went through seaside towns, farmland, mountains, and then arrid desert for about 5 hours! The Atacama dessert is HUGE plus its quite high up (2500m) so we felt our ears popping all the way up. When we finally got there and jumped off the airconditioned bus the heat hit us pretty hard. The sun is so strong and there is no air. Anyway the hostel we had booked said they would pick us up from the bus stop, which was in the middle of nowhere it turned out! There were a acouple of people touting for their hostels at the stop and when i told them i was waiting for a pick up they were like "You had better find some shade!! They wont come!". Turned out they didnt and we had to lug our backpacks to a telephoen and call them and them wait another hour to get picked up! Not happy i tell you but thats how things go out here! We had no fan or anything in the room so it was stinking hot so we braved walking down to the main town instead. San pedro is a really nice place, even if it is in the middle of the desert with noting else around it for miles. It has spectacular views of the Andes. Most buildings seem to be built out of the earth that they sit on. We hunted around for some trips to go on and booked a trip to the Valle de La Luna (Moon Valley) and to the observatory for the next day. Food wise there isnt a fast food place in sight...yippee! We found a great place that made delicious empanandas (South American pasties kind of!) with lots of random fillings including Llama and also aplace that spit roasted chickens and gave you a quarter of it with home made chips all for under 2 pounds! The trip to the valley was great. We went through the salt mountains and went into salt mines as well as watched the sunset over the Andes from on top of a massive sand dune. At 10pm that evening was our trip to the observatory and we didn´t know but it was a lunar eclipse that evening too. Lucky eh!! I say observatory but its a french man´s house in the middle of the desert with about 6 huge telescopes outside. The guy was mental and made the trip fun. We had hot chocolate as we looked up at the stars and i have never seen so many in my life, especially since there was an eclipse so it was darker than usual. We looked at the lunar eclipse through the telscopes and he even managed to take a photo for me through the telescope. We looked at loads of different constellations, looked at Saturn which was amazing and at the milky way. We´ve both definaltely turned into astronomy geeks! On our last day we had to check out of room early again and wait around for another night bus to take us to the Peruvian border! We went to the museum which was pretty crap considering that San Pedro is one of Chile most famous archeological sites. We sat and chilled in the hostel for the rest of the day - too hot to do too much more! While we were sat outside reading a huge gust of wind started blowing, then we heard a window smash and the guy that ran our hostel shouted at us to run in. We were a little confused and then saw a twister whizz by! We couldn´t beieve it. When it passed us we ran outside and watched it rush out to the desert. Apparently they get them loads in the desert but never really in the town. Im going to get some new photos up soon but most of the computers are rubbish so it takes ages.
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