November 1st- November 2nd, 2015
San Pedro, my first Chilean city, was a desert dream. Coming out of a three day desert tour, exhausted from a night of food sickness and a nit-picky border crossing, I made it to a cafe and arranged a ride with my hostel to come get me. Within ten minutes, the building started shaking. It stopped within seconds, but apparently it was around a 6.6.
The hostel owner came to get me a couple moments later, and told me to change my ticket so I could stay for longer, saying "it's not my fault you changed your reservation". He took me to exchange money, get money etc. and then we drove to the hostel, situated on the outskirts of town with vivid desert views of volcanos that erupted the day before and sandy planes.
A couple hours later, after discovering Chilean electrical outlets don't work with my phone (or computer), I went swimming with a whole bunch of guys from the hostel where we played like fifteen year old boys. When we got back, I wrote a lot, and after dinner and plenty of wine, my new friend Franco and I ran as fast as we could into the desert so we could watch the famous sunset, with some more wine. Our conversation was a lovely concoction of English and Spanish, and we told each other about the various skies we've seen. The desert skies are like the skies in Saskatchewan- living.
Once the sun set, it was bloody cold, so we walked back accompanied by a dog that found us in the desert. At the hostel I found three Australian boys who were going out for drinks, and they asked me to come along. We went to an amazing bar with live Chilean music, aka the most bad ass flute playing I've ever seen. After pisco sours, beer, wine,and crazy amounts of Chilean-poutine, we made our way back to the hostel and sat around a fire with some others and talked until 2 in the morning. Since I got up at 4 am, I had to go to bed relatively early. I wanted to stay up forever.
And I'm happy I didn't stay up forever, because the next day was unbelievable. After a three day tour, I was toured out, and I wanted to do a solo mountain bike trip in the desert. I woke up early, caught a ride into town, rented a bike and got a hand drawn map to Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). It was an easy ride there, and I had that same 'oh my god I miss my bike' feeling that I had when I did Death Road. I think a more accurate name for the park would be Valle de Marte, or Valley of Mars. It is red sand, white salt and blue sky. I basically felt like a human ROVER cycling my way through the desert when my the roads would allow, and dragging my bike through sand dunes to get good views. I explored for 4.5 hours, and tried to go caving but I was embarrassingly too scared to do it by myself without a bright light. Regrets!
I made my way back to the bike shop, and since no one was there I grabbed a beer and wrote some more at a rock bar. I think I fit in because I had a bandana on? Since I forgot my phone, I couldn't call the hostel for a ride, and the bike shop owner who said he'd call for me wasn't there. After about an hour they came to get me, and while I waited I talked to the other guy working at the shop, about cigarettes and Southern Chile. I only had two hours left, so I quickly ate supper, and gave all the guys hugs goodbye when the shuttle came to gather me for the airport. This was my favourite hostel I stayed in during my four month trip- the staff is the loveliest of the lovely.
Over my desert tour through Bolivia and San Pedro were amongst the most exotic landscapes I've seen in my life. San Pedro is at the top of my list to go back to, because of the amazing little town and the insane landscapes. It was a geological wonderland. And considering I was only there for 35 hours, the amount of time it lazily occupies my memories makes it seem like I was there for a lot longer.
