Forrest and Meryl do Southie: San Pedro de Atacama

I spent 4 days relaxing in the tourist mecca of San Pedro de Atacama, by far the most touristy location that I have been to. It is literally an oasis in the middle of the Atacama desert. When we drove up to it, it was the first green area that I had seen in quite some time. The town itself consists of dusty streets, lined with hostels, fancy restaurants, bars and a ton of tour agencies. I spent the first day sitting in a hammock drinking fruit juice and eating empanadas. That evening I ran into a girl who Forrest and I met in Puerto Natales. Kat worked at the hostel that we stayed in while we where there. That evening we headed out to watch the sunset over the Vally de la Luna (valley of the moon), which was beautiful. The valley is quite beautiful and reminded me a lot of the desert in southern Utah, but it is even more amazing because the valley is surrounded by volcanoes! The next day Kat and I went on a Tour to Laguna Cejar. A salty spring in the middle of the Salar (salt flat) of Atacama. The spring is over 150ft deep, with water that is 4 times saltier than the Mediterranean Sea. We all got in, but you can really swim… you just float, it was a really bizarre sensation, because you couldn’t put your legs down the salt would float them back up and you would flop over in the water. Afterwards we went to the Ojos del Salar (eyes of the salt flat) which were 2 agua dulce (fresh water or literally “sweet water”) springs in the middle of the desert, aerial photos make them look like eyes. Afterwards we drove further on the salar to a nice spot where we drank Pisco Sours and watched the sun set. The following day we got up at 4am!!!! To go and visit the geysers of the Tatio Volcano. It was a 2 hr drive on bumpy dirt roads. When we got out of our massive tourist bus thing (check out the photo). We were at an elevation over 14,000ft and it was cold. The geysers were cool, but not much compared to Yellowstone. There were also hot spring that some people went into, and then we had a nice pancake breakfast cooked on the stove that folded out of the side of our vehicle. On the way back to town we stopped by a small village, where I got to bottle feed an 18day old llama (yes I caved and paid to do it… it was sooo cute and soft). We also stopped to check out 400-700 year old cactus which were huge (4-7m tall, they grow 1cm per year). I spent the rest of my afternoon being sleepy. The fallowing day Kat and I boarded a bus to head to Bolivia where we would begin a 3 day jeep tour through the high Andes and Salars to Uyuni.