We rocked up to San Pedro with nowhere to call home so after a quick feed at the small, leafy plaza we started looking for somewhere to lay our heads. Seen as we were both feeling a little… delicate, we decided to splash out on a gaff with a lovely pool so we could just chill out there for the rest of the day as it was already baking hot.
San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert, said to be the driest places on earth. It centres around the plaza and main street filled with small rustic buildings, a sweet little place but easily the most touristy place we have been so far.
Our second day was also spent round the pool and taking advantage of the decent wifi, so it was reluctantly that we moved to a dorm in a nearby hostel. The next day we wandered around the town and went to the local museum which gives a history of civilisation in the area, unfortunately the mummies Dan was keen to see had been moved. The rest of the afternoon was spent sinking cold Coronas in one of the bars. There are quite a few nice restaurants although a bit more expensive than we have been used to! We picked a busy open air place with a big fire in the centre and live Chilean music and sat down with a nice bottle of wine and the BIGGEST plate of chips you have ever seen.
After a brief scare about the weather, we embarked on our star gazing tour.
The bus took us a little out of town to avoid any light pollution and even to the naked eye the stars are just epic. Our guide Les spent an hour or 2 talking us through the various constellations, planets and galaxies we could see, a different view from our usual Northern hemisphere perspective. We also spotted a few shooting stars, which it turns out are just grains of sand left over from the Big Bang burning up in our atmosphere! You also got a sense of the Earth rotating as new stars appeared on the horizon.
We then moved over to the huge telescopes all pointing at something amazing, most notably Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky which you can see burning with a bright blue glow and Betelgeuse, which will be one of the next stars to supernova, you can it see burning red and orange, unreal.
Then over hot chocolate we debated the meaning of life, or at least if there is other life out there somewhere… One of my favourite things from the trip so far, if not ever.
Last day was fairly chilled and after fresh empanadas we headed to Lake Cejar which is so salty you can float on the surface which is pretty cool if a little chilly at 40m deep. We also visited a couple of deep pools in the middle of the desert where we watched some boys show off their diving skills and then saw the sunset over a pisco sour.
That’s it for San Pedro and Chile… On to Argentina!
If you like Piña Coladas... 