San Pedro de Atacama

We left Bolivia and it was literally one straight road down several thousand metres to desert, stretching out in shades of purple and orange in front of us.

The town of San Pedro was lovely, like many adventure-based towns it had a cosy wooden theme. All the buildings were made of adobe, painted white and one storey high. They all had the same wooden signs for pharmacy, bank, souvenir shop. Many had doors made of distinctive cactus wood.

We watched the football in one of these bars with matching signs. The waitresses were very alternative, they had pink-tinted round glasses or ironic 90s video game tattooes and big eyeliner.

We had some free time but I really wasn’t feeling well now, and almost didn’t go stargazing at 8pm. A man came to pick us up, but then disappeared as we got into another white van. They took us to out of town where some telescopes were set up. But I’m glad I went, we got to see so many star clusters (some with the naked eye), Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, the twin stars at the point of the Southern Cross. Some hot coca tea managed to settle my stomach slightly. Poor Richella was hit with the same stomach problem as me and had to be driven home.

The next day we slept in until almost 10am, missing the breakfast. I had woken up with nausea which really wasn’t a nice feeling. When we saw Neil sitting outside I burst into tears because I was so run down, he kindly went to talk to the ladies in the kitchen and they let me eat the leftovers. I managed one dry bread bun, a coffee and some orange.

I then went and had a lie down. Susie bought me some more water and cup noodles – what I was craving to eat. I lounged around the room, editing photos, washing socks, until 1pm. Then I went to the pharmacy and bought some probiotics. Richella also went and had a long confusing conversation with several people who tried to translate mouth ulcer gel to the pharmacist.

I met the others for our Valley of the Moon tour just before 3pm. A good-looking but short man called JP or Juan Pablo, a geologist, was the tour guide. He explained a lot of rock formations in depth as we drove into the dusky pink desert. We then had a nice walk up to a viewpoint above the canyons. We saw the three widows rock formation, and sunset over the valley. It was an amazing landscape, the moon was a good name for it! Huge crators, canyons, sand dunes and strange pointy rock walls all blended together.

On the way back, we found out England had lost the soccor. We met Neil who seemed very sad that we weren’t going to drink with him. We were back at the pub at 7pm, but left Neil at 8pm because we were all starving and sick of waiting for him to finish his beer. He eventually joined us, we had dinner at this lovely restaurant with an open fire pit and panflute musicians playing. I was feeling much better and had an enormous steak, egg and fries with two glasses of red wine.