San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Hello! Ellen here! Not sure how or why but it has been decided it is my turn to write a post.. sorry in advance it will not meet Justin’s standards.

Day 49

A scenic travel day.

We woke up bright and early to make it to our 7am bus which would take us to San Pedro de Atacama. We booked this bus a few weeks in advance so we got seats in the front of the top level of the bus which had top notch views throughout the journey. The bus provided us with small food packs throughout the day and at the start they gave us a cup with hot water, a tea bag and a couple of sachets of mystery powders. I just had a plain black tea. Justin thought one of them might be coffee and proceeded to blindly pour them into his hot water (like very blindly as the powders were white and coffee is brown…) they both turned out to be sugar / a sweetener and not coffee. Not wanting his cup of sugary hot water he added the tea and had to force himself to drink it as there weren’t any bins.

The bus went north through the Jujuy Province, turned west through Purmamarca (the town we went to on our road trip with the colourful hills), further west through the Salinas Grande (salt flats) and then on through the mountains to Chile. The mountains were very beautiful and very high – Justin’s Garmin said we reached our highest altitude at around 4940 meters! Salta is at 1152 m so that is a lot of vertical gains!! After we reached the peak we then had to head down to San Pedro which is at around 2800 m. Along the mountain range there were many snow capped volcanoes / mountains.

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On the bus we met a few people again who we had seen throughout our trip which was nice. We organised to do the tour from San Pedro to Uyuni with 2 Germans who were planning on leaving the same day as us. There was also an Argentinian lady across the aisle from Justin who chewed his ear off all trip – she was approx. 50 and a freelance photographer. That is the life!

We arrived in San Pedro around 4:30 pm and checked in to our accommodation. The guy that checked us in had a rats tail and I don’t think he was wearing any undies… it was very confronting. But we got in no worries! The buildings in San Pedro are mostly constructed from mud bricks and the roads were mostly unpaved making it a very dusty place. The main street was buzzing with tourists. There are so many different tour companies all trying to get you to go with them on different attractions across the desert. It is very hectic, we haven’t seen this many tourists in the one place since we left Australia!

Day 50

We decided that we weren’t going to book any of the tours to the Geysers, lagunas with flamingos or salt flats because a) they were very expensive, b) were heard all the tours go at the same time making all the sites at those times busy, and c) we have a tour booked in a few days to Uyuni, Bolivia where we will get to see many similar things. Instead we decided we would hire bikes each day and see the things closer to town, and maybe burn a few extra calories so we can eat guilt free burgers 🙂

We ended up hiring our bikes off our accommodation (thanks rats tail guy!). They looked to be in good condition so we were happy. We rode north to the Catarpe area which was a valley with a small river and mountainous areas either side.

First we rode to the Chulakao Ravine which is referred to as the Devils Throat. You could ride you bike through the ravine for a few k’s and then do a short hike to a view point. We felt very small. The ride / walk was very tiring, we blamed our high heart rates and puffing because of the altitude of approximately 2800m.

We then rode on to Tambo de Catarpe which is a pre Inca fortress, built in 1450. These were located on top a cliff – the walk up there got us puffing again. They were very interesting to walk around.

We then headed back to towards the entrance to check out a Tunnel. The Tunnel was built in 1930 and was the only rural route connecting Calama and San Pedro de Atacama. Due to constant rains and floods of the San Pedro River it was closed in the 1950. I didn’t realise that the tunnel was located near the top of the cliff! We started cycling up but when I got too tired I walked the bike. Apparently we were meant to park our bikes down the bottom and walk up. As we went up I understood why, there were very sandy sections, lots of rocks and huge holes in the road! Anyway, as I said we rode / wheeled our bikes up which meant we also had to ride down. I found it very scary, I am not super confident with my mountain bike riding. We successfully dodged the holes and rocks and managed not to skid on the sand or ride off the edge 🙂 If Justin was writing this he would have said it was the sickest thing ever. I think that maybe we don’t need to do Death Road in Bolivia now. The Tunnel was also pretty cool 🙂

Not sure on the actual distance travel but we think around 30km, we were very tired. Our heart rates didn’t drop below 100 BPM for the 6 hours we were on the bikes! We loved it though, we only ran into maybe 5 other bike riders for the entire day. Completely dodged the tourists!

Day 51

Ambitiously we paid for 3 days worth of bikes the day before so today (day 2/3) we headed off to Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) on our bikes. We did not think about how sore our bums would be after the first day of cycling, boy oh boy was it painful. We felt every single bump but pushed on and cycled out anyway. We were both saying “I’m going to have to ride standing the entire day”, but that proved to be impossible.

At the visitors centre for Valle de la Luna we ran into the German couple we organised to do the Uyuni tour with in a few days. We need to ask the girls name again (It is awkward now because we have seen them so many times!) but the guys name is Sasha. They are pretty funny, Sasha is a bit of a smart ass. German girl “my bike sucks”, Sasha “mine is perfect” with a big smile. We were thankful ours were okay.

Once in the valley the roads were dirt and very bumpy (ouch!) or sandy in places. So it was very challenging especially on the way in. Along the road there were places to park and different lookouts to walk to – the landscapes were pretty spectacular! Very moon like 😉 A lot of salt, sand and sun! The ride back seemed to be easier – less step inclines and more step declines 🙂 and we both had fun zooming down the straight at the bottom of a hill.

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We ended up cycling a total of 35.2km and were totally exhausted. This national park was a little busier but we still beat the tour group rush which comes through at around 3pm. We are stoked we have missed the crowds! Definitely the way to do it!

We were going to go watch the sunset at a viewpoint later in the afternoon but we were just tooo pooped. We instead had a guilt free burger and watched a Marvel movie called Ant Man instead 🙂 Totally stoked with what we have seen so far.

Day 52

We woke up and were still tired from all our cycling efforts the two previous days and I felt a bit sick when we went for a walk to the main street so we decided to have a chill and make sure we are okay for the Uyuni tour day.

In the morning we went to the street and got the few things we needed for the tour the next day (Boliviano’s and water) and then we started a new Netflix show!

In the evening we rode our bikes to a place called Valle de Marte (also known as Death Valley) for sunset. Turned out to be a tougher ride and walk than we originally thought but it was very beautiful! We then had to ride back to town in the dark (we had fluoro reflective vests on but no lights so was a bit dodgy). Good news was it was all down hill! so it was fast and fun 🙂

When we got back to town we had burgers for dinner. This was our third night having dinner at the same burger place.. they were quite tasty.

More photos are here.