The bus pulled into a dusty small car park and people started to get off. Like all of our bus trips in South America we never actually know if we are at our destination or not and this place definitely did not look like the tourist hub of San Pedro I had heard so much about. But sure enough everyone started to exit the bus, we followed them collected our bags and looked around as the hostel were meant to send a driver to collect us. As people started to disappear into the dusk we were left standing there realising we were not going to be collected. A nice local offer to call the hostel from his mobile phone, however no one picked up. This local man offered to walk us to the hostel which was about 15 minutes away which was extremely kind. Upon arrival at the hostel some other guests let us in but no one was around to show us our room, after about 10 minutes a lady turned up.
The Iquisa hostel was nice for 3 nights as it had a cool outdoor area with hammocks and a kitchen to cook in which Nathan and I used every night as it was too expensive to eat out in San Pedro.
San Pedro is in the middle of the Atacama desert 2407 metres above sea level and overlooks the Licancabur volcano.
San Pedro itself is a one story town with shops, markets, restaurants and a community of around 4000 residents. (Still no tampons!)
The town offers many activities for travellers. Nathan and I choose 3. We went into Sol Andino travel company and booked Valle de la Luna (Valley of the moon) for 9000 Chilean peso (£9) each. We booked the trip to see the Geysers for 20000 Chilean peso (£20) each and the 3 day salt flat tour in the desert for 80000 Chilean peso (£80) each. We also got him to give us the Valle de la Luna for free as we booked so many tours with their company. We were really impressed with the company and all the tours and would highly recommend them.
Valle de la Luna started at 4pm in the afternoon and it was still extremely hot walking through the desert at this time. We went into some caves and saw the salt crystals.
We walked across the desert
Finally we watched the sunset before being taken back to San Pedro centre.
The next morning we had to wake up at 4am and it was freezing! We got into a minibus and were driven 1 hour and 50 minutes to the Geysers of El Tatio
El Tatio is a geyser field located within the Andes Mountains of northern Chile. It is 4320 meters above sea level. It is among the highest-elevation geyser fields in the world.
El Tatio has over 80 active geysers, making it the largest geyser field in the southern hemisphere and the third largest in the world.
It was well worth getting up so early for because they erupt a lot more at sunrise. The geysers erupt to an average height of about 75 centimetres, with the highest eruption observed being around 6 metres.
It was definitely a pretty cool trip and well worth it if you are visiting San Pedro de Atacama.
This leaves the final trip we booked from San Pedro the trip to the salt flats which would finish in Bolivia. We were picked up at 8.30am and driven to the edge of the town where we had to line up and get our exit stamp from Chile. In the line I had a panic as I thought we had over stayed in Chile by 1 day but realised I had done my calculations wrong but for a good few minutes being thrown into a Chilean jail seemed very possible.
After getting our exit stamp we were back on the bus and driven up, up, up and up into the desert mountain range. I guess for this hour we were in no country at all, having received our exit stamp from Chile and not yet receiving a new stamp for Bolivia.