Chile: San Pedro de Atacama - 10th and 11th December (Days 29 and 30)

We woke up at Paso de Jama, the border between Argentina and Chile. We had to get off the bus and get into the immigration office for the passport control and baggage check. There was like 5 different windows where we had to queue for different procedures. In the last one, the baggage check, we were asked if we were bringing any fruits or vegetables. In the form that we were given we chose NO, as we were just had a couple of oranges that we wanted to eat before arriving at the border. However, we fell asleep during the whole journey and completely forgot about the oranges. So when we were asked Ari remembered about them and answered affirmatively. When the border officer checked our form and saw that we marked NO, he said that we lied to him and we should pay a 300$ fine. Obviously he just wanted to scare us and I just filled another form saying YES and he threw the oranges away.

We finally arrived at San Pedro de Atacama around 11am and started looking for a hostel to stay the next two days. We were shocked by the prices as it was much more expensive than Argentina. We decided to stay at Hostel Pangea which was one of the cheapest options but we had to share the room with four more people. We didn't have any food with us (not even oranges...) so we decided to go to have lunch at a local restaurant close to the hostel. I ordered the menu (ceviche as starter and chicken as a main) and Ari ordered 4 empanadas. She wasn't feeling very hungry and she thought that four empanadas would be enough as we had the small Argentinian ones as a reference. However, in Chile the size of empanadas is huge, so Ari could hardly finish one of them for lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for ATMs to get Chilean pesos (all of them charge for withdrawals) and tour agencies for trips around San Pedro and Uyuni. We finally chose one between the hundreds of agencies because they told us that they work directly with a Bolivian agency. Only Bolivian agencies can sell tours to Uyuni, so what Chilean agencies do is just relocate people to random agencies in the border with Bolivia. We also hired the tours around San Pedro with them for the next day, Geysers del Tatio and Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley).

For dinner we stayed at the hostel, and ate Ari's leftover empanadas.

Next day we had to wake up very early at 4.30 to start the tour to Geisers del Tatio. We met two Spanish guys that were also staying at our hostel and going to the same tour. We got the entrance to the Geysers Park for free (10.000 pesos each) as the guide asked us to translate all his explanations to English for the people who didn't speak Spanish in the tour (finally it was just one American girl). After a couple of hours drive we arrived at the Geysers park entrance. The temperature was -3C degrees! The guide prepared a table with breakfast for all the people in the tour which we enjoyed while trying to keep ourselves warm. When we finished breakfast we walked around the geysers. Most of them had boiling water and steam and some of them erupted every couple of minutes 

Esteve had a bath in the hot springs just with his underwear as we didn't bring any swimming suit. The water was very hot (around 40C degrees) but outside was terribly cold, so Ari was not brave enough to have a bath as well!

After the bath we exited the Geysers park and continued our tour. In the next stop we visited the Machuca wetlands, where we could see different kind of birds and a lake with flamingos. Following our way back to San Pedro we stopped at eagle's head rock and the valley of the cactus.  Also the driver suddenly stopped the van and the guide pretended that it broke down. It was in the middle of the road in a slope and with the engine off the van went up the slope. This was due to the existing magnetic field in that place, which attracts the vehicles even uphill. During the journey we loved a song from Calle 13 called "La vuelta al mundo".

Back to San Pedro we had empanadas leftovers again and some fruit. In our way to the agency for the afternoon tour we met Paolo, the guy that we met in Humahuaca, who just arrived at the village and told us about his adventures to get there from Argentina and crossing the border to Chile just hitchhiking.

At 16h we started the next tour to the Moon Valley (Valle de la Luna). It was a short drive of about 15 minutes to the entrance of the park. Inside the park we first visited the salt caves, which were very narrow and we had to crouch and crawl to get throguh them. The guide was in the front and we could not listen to his explanations. After the caves we visited other places in the valley like las Tres Marias, the Great Dune and Mirador del Coyote, where we enjoyed the sunset with amazing views over Atacama Salt flats. The guide of the tour was terrible but the valley was amazing.

We came back to San Pedro late, around 20h. In the way back to the hostel we saw some traditional dances in the main square. It was a long day, and for the next one we also had to wake up early to start our 3 days trip to Uyuni, so when we arrived back at the hostel just prepared our bags and went straight to sleep.