After riding bikes we headed to the Internet cafe to print off our boarding passes so we would not make the same mistake twice by going to the wrong airline.
For lunch we stopped at a local store that was selling Empanadas and grabbed two pollo, pimiento y queso, also know as chicken, pepper and queso that were incredible. I am not sure what they did but they were delicious. We took the food back to the hostel, where there was a nice covered table.
After a late lunch we got ready for the tour and headed back up to the tour office. There we met up with our guide and the rest of the group and headed to the same bus again. It blows my mind how we ended up on the same bus three times. Our first stop was a natural salt spring. I have always heard of water being so salty that you can just float on the top but I have never gotten to experience it for myself, so this was a lot of fun.
Chase about to get in!
It was the strangest sensation not doing anything but floating, the water was so weird because it had really cold spots and really hot spots, I was constantly looking for the hot spots!
After you get out there is so much salt in the water that you have to get rinsed off with fresh water. Our guide rinsing Chase off.
Even though we got rinsed off we were still covered in salt so the next spot was a fresh water pond for everyone to rinse off. Actually while we were driving to the next stop we saw our guide on the phone and he looked really flustered. I might mention here that he might possible be the worst guide that I have ever had and he actually forgot two people at the salt water spring. By the time he got the call we were already 20 minutes away. Luckily another tour promised to bring them to us. At one we looked over and saw our guide talking to one of the other tour groups smoking cigarettes.
There were two fresh water ponds literally in the middle of the dessert. Just two big holes about 100 yards a part it was the weirdest things. I think if you were walking through the dessert looking for water you would think they were a mirage.
The biggest problem here was that we got the ponds around 5:30 so the temperature was dropping, it was a bit cloudy and the wind was picking up so it was getting cold fast. Chase jumped in first and I really did not want to get it but he finally talked me into it. As soon as I hit the water all the air in me was knocked out because it was so cold.
Trying to warm up after my swim
After waiting about 1 and 1/2 hours at the ponds in the middle of the dessert we finally got back in the bus and headed to the salt flats. When we drove up and it looked like we had come upon snow in the dessert because there was so much salt.
Chase and I on the salt flat
Walking around it even feels a bit like snow because it is really wet and crunchy
The dessert with the salt flats
watching the sunset
Here we got to watch the sun go down again and have a typical Chilean snack provided by the tour company of pisco sours and lays potato chips. After watching the sun we finally got back into the van and headed back to San Pedro. Chase and I were in a bit of a hurry because we had booked a star gazing tour for the same night leaving at 12:00 and we had to get back, shower and eat dinner before then. The tour ended up running about 45 minutes late so we did not get back till 9:45. Chase and I decided to hurry back to the hostel and Chase would run get another pizza, yes we eat a ton a pizza. On his way back we found out that the star gazing tour was canceled because of cloud cover. We were both disappointed but I was so tired that I was glad to go to bed.
Tuesday Morning we took the morning easy barley making it to breakfast before 10:00. Since our flight was not leaving till 9:30 that night we had tried to get a later check out but we could only get her to push it back till 1:00, which was still better than nothing. She did say we could leave our bags with her which was great so we did not have to lug them around.
Enjoying our Chilean breakfast of cheese and bread
After breakfast we headed back to our little room and started to pack. Our stuff by this time was everywhere so it took us quit a while to get it all packed up.
Chase's bathing suit still had so much salt in it that it could stand up on its own.
After checking out we walked to the little museum we had seen and went to look around. We were hoping it would take us an hour but it only took us about 30 minutes, it was very similar to the pre-columbian museum we had visited in Santiago.
The main street in San Pedro you can barley make out the active volcano in the back!
After that we walked around all the little stores for one last time, then headed back to the empanada shop. Again we took them back to hostel and just hung out there till the shuttle came to pick us up at 5:00. We thought we would go walk around again but it was just too hot! Instead we both relaxed and read our books!
waiting outside the hostel for the airport shuttle
The shuttle to the airport took much less time than we expected so we ended up sitting in this tiny little airport in Calama for 3 hours. While we were waiting we did get to see one of the most beautiful sunsets. I have decided that the sunsets in the dessert are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen!
We then had the same flight plan that we had on the way to Iquique to land and take off every town between Calama and Santiago. I am exaggerating a little we only had to stop once this time and we arrived in Santiago by 12:15 and had our bags by 12:20. Since the metro was closed we decided to take a taxi home and hired a radio taxi and negotiated our rate before getting in. We did not want to be taken advantage of again. We got very lucky and had the nicest cab driver. Chase and I have found that talking cab driver is almost like a free Spanish lesson when you get a nice driver. We made it home by 1:00, and were so glad to be home. We had a great trip but were ready to relax and sleep before getting back to work.
great pictures merrill! i loved the salt field ones..
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