Out of Argentina

After one last day in Salta, we left Argentina and headed back to Chile over the Andes to San Pedro del Atacama.



The pass was ridiculous and was over 15,000 feet at the top.


There are a ton of high salt flats up there and a ton of wild donkeys:







Then we made it to San Pedro. It is a cool tourist town.


It pretty much never rains there. It is in the middle of the driest desert in the world. So, there are tons of cool restaurants with all outdoor eating areas. Most of them have fire pits going in the dining room. It is a nice setup.



Pisco sours are the specialty drink of the area. I liked the Chilean ones better than the Peru ones (sorry Oscar).
One morning we got up at 430am and took a tour to a 14,000 foot high geyser field at sunrise. It was fricking freezing up there until the sun came up.


There are just tons of little geysers up there.

The hill in the background is in Bolivia:

After the geyser field we went to a nice hotsprings.

There were weird rabbit/racoon things all over there but I think those pictures are on Naomi's camera.



Also tons of vicunas.


And ostrich things.


Then we took a hike down a canyon that was pretty cool.



Another day we took a tour to the Valley of the Moon.

There are some huge sand dunes you can sandsurf down or just sand bodysurf down.








Next we headed to Iquique on the Chilean coast. It is a long way through the desert. We were stuck in the crappy little town of Calama for half a day waiting to change busses.


I think most of the population goes to this street to take pisses. That's what it smelled like:


The bus driver put on a couple DVDs of the Chilean band Los Bukis for a couple hours. He really liked them. They are just brutal. This is a terrible recording, but try to check out how ridiculous the drummer is:



Iquique is an ok place. Parts of the town are pretty nice.




Some parts, not so much.

Iquique is at 20 degrees south latitude. Puerto Vallarta and Hawaii are around 20 degrees north latitude. But, the water there is as cold as Puget Sound due to the cold current coming straight up the coast from Antarctica, so that part kind of sucks.
But the air temperature was nice.



Our hostel was really nice and we ended up spending an extra day in Iquique hanging out by the beach.

Then we headed to Peru. We took a bus and a cab to Tacna and tried to make the last nice bus out of town to Aeraquipa.

There was a cool Holy Week parade going on.
In Tacna, they have their dentist offices with the operating rooms in windows so everyone can see you get your fillings:


But, by the time we got there it was sold out, so we had to take a late crappy bus to Aeraquipa.

We got in about 3am. That sucked quite a bit. Then, when we got to our $9 per night hotel, Naomi did not appreciate the bed bugs, so we moved to a different and nice place after the first night.