The desert...

AFter catching a bus from Calama we finally made it to San Pedro de Atacama. The light at the end of the tunnel was our beautiful hotel, Altiplanico. google it, it´s gorgeous!! we like to call this back end of our trip the luxury end. Meaning we actually stay in a hotel for more than a night. Trust us, after almost 2 weeks on the road this is a luxury. WE had just enough time to shower and book our tours for the next 3 days. ´We´re usuallynot the tour type, but this is probably the biggest tour town ever. And so far the tours have proved to be fantastic! So yesterday we did our first one, the Valle de la Luna and Valle de la Muerte. We started off with Death Valley. Our tour guide was pretty funny, and spoke amazing English and was a riot. It actually started to rain, yes RAIN, in the Atacama desert. We are now fully convinced we are the rain barers, bringing it with us wherever we go, even to a desert. But fortunately it only drizzled and subsided quickly. Our group turned out to be probably the highlight of the tour, well in addition to an amazing sunset or running down the sand dunes, but i´ll get to that. WE had 2 great couples, the kind of couples that you love to hang out with and want to be. Guy and Fiona from New Zealand (though Guy is from Liverpool, some place that i suppose has good music haha) and Shelly and Stewart who live in London. We knew we loved Guy the second I took off down a massive sand dune and he yelled ´yeah New York!!´to which i screamed ´LIVERPOOL!´ actually that´s not true, we loved Guy when he put up with Fiona, Steph and I swapping Madonna concerts at our first photo op, such a good sport. This is also when we first loved Fiona. Like a virgin!! ah...madonna. Anywayw, running down the sand dunes in death valley was awesome! I had so much sand in my shoes, it was nuts. I was kind of hoping someone would fall (a la Paul Horner, though everyone thought i was mean by saying that, but obviuosly if theyhad seen the infamous JOckey´s Ridge wipe outs they´d understand). But anyways, from there we went to the Valle de la Luna to walk around and then see sunset. IT really was a cool and bizarre place. A lot of the ground did look like whta you´d imagine the surface of the moon to be. words can´t do it justice, but when i get back my photos will. (esp. the alien one of me, thanks Guy!) So the 6 of us hiked to the end of these rocks to settle in and watch the sun set, or ´get the money shot´as Fiona would say. :) We were afraid due to the clouds we wouldn´t get a sunset, but just our luck, we did. And the real magic didn´t happen until after the sun set and the colors went wild in the canyons and dunes. One side looked like another planet, all purple and dark looking. And the other side with the canyons was a beautiful red and orange. WE couldn´t stop taking pictures! in reality the boys couldn´t, i mean Stewart and Guy just couldn´t stop striking a pose, a la Madonna. :) don´t worry boys, you´ll DEFINITELY be getting those pics when we get back. So after literally having to drag ourselves off the rocks (also out of fear of complete darkness and being stuck up on a cliff with no lights) we returned to teh bus. ONly to find out we were the 6 delinquents who were 20 minutes late. yes, we were all scolded, but it was worth it in the end to get the ´money shot.´
Back from our tour the 6 of us plus 2 lovely Austrians, whom i´m horrified to say i can´t remember their names, all had dinner and drinks at Adobe. A fun bar-restaurant that has a huge opening in the middle with a fire pit and apparently some dancing with glow in the dark balls? if i recall correctly. :) so once again, another fantastic day.
we have to thank Guy, Fiona, Shelly and Stewart though who kept us laughing and were fantastic drinking-dinner company. YOu guys better come to New York! Fiona, it´s better than Buenos Aires ;) and Shelly we know you love it!
so off to bed we went for a 340 am wake up call. brutal.