A post from the middle of nowhere...

San Pedro de Atacama - is the name of the place we're in now.
The date is 20th of August and it's a Wednesday, I think. It's evening now (7 PM) and we wake up at 3:30 for a morning trip to the nearby geysers. So I'll try not to be too long ;)

I'm a bit lost in space and time at the moment, so ignore the weirdness in the post if there will be any. It's a weird place we are in :)

Anyway, San Pedro de Atacama. It's a village near the meeting point of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, on the Chilean side. It is literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by deserts, and full of fun facts like the following:
- it's 25-30 degrees celsius during the day, and you scorch in the sun... it's below zero in the night, with a constant chilling desert wind
- sand is EVERYWHERE... village has no roads of course, just sand paths, so everything that passes raises even more sand
- power generator (the only one of course) died last week, so we have no electricity between midnight and 8AM
- there is warm water sometimes, if you're lucky
- no heaters in the hostel, just lots of layers and you hope not to move to the cold part of the bed
- two ATMs in "town", one of which never has any cash, the other had some yesterday
- dozens of internet cafes (this seems like the business of the moment in these parts), along with as many tourist agencies for doing mini-trips to nearby places of interest...
...and there ARE places of interest, and that is why we are here!

But first, the view from our hostel:

and the main street of S.P. de Atacama:


We arrived late yesterday and booked some tours for the two days that we're here.
Tomorrow we will go to the geysers till lunch, and to the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) in the afternoon, and sit on a bus to Arica right after that (another 12 hour ride I think, but at least overnight... sleeping on buses is becoming a common thing here)

But anyway, back to today. After waking up at 5:30 we went to the nearby salt flats. Seeing the mirage in the desert as the sun was rising was an amazing sight indeed. Walls of heated air were formed around us and gave hope to a warmer outside after leaving the bus at the destination. Still, my fingers were freezing as I was trying to take photos. I see gloves coming up tomorrow, and even more layers! (they say it's -15 celsius at the geysers, at 4300m altitude)
In the salt flats there were the pink flamingos:

and later on we moved to a few lagoons (whose names I can't remember now but I will later :p) high up in the mountains:


This was accompanied by a walk down a canyon:


On the way back, we stopped at the spot marking the ancient Inka trail, which is a straight path connecting Cusco, Peru and Santiago, Chile:

and the new road beside it:


There were a few more cool events but we have no time to write about everything (and gotta leave some stories to tell for when we get back home now don't we :))

Almost 10PM here now, so sleep time. Wake up at 3:30AM and off to the coldness.
We're on a quite tight schedule in the next 2-3 days, in an attempt to reach Cusco as fast as possible, so expect more when we get there...

Adios!