Chill life in San Pedro and more tours

So 1st of January we had a involuntary break from everything. Although after the day before we were glad to sleep a bit longer and have an easy day without a tight schedule. So we spent the day in town, getting to know San Pedro a bit more. We walked around dossins of similar shops, haggled and bought fresh fruit. I introduced J to maracuya which unfortunately wasn't the success I hoped for although he did like it. So far it's his favorite Pisco flavour though. 

The shops selled a lot of stuff that reminded me of Peru and on some stuff you could actually read that it was from Cusco or Lima. But with a very different price. Why are you so pricy Chile??? 

For lunch I chose pasta since I craved something different for once. Regular Bolognese but oh my so good when having similar dishes for the last weeks.

The restaurant where we had lunch at the 1st

Always this kind of roof as protection from the sun

Anyhows a well needed break and a good rest for the upcoming early tour. You see the following day we had our first tour scheduled to 04:30. This time Geyser del Tatio for the morning and Laguna Cejar for the afternoon. 

For the first time we got picked up with a sort of modern van, the driver used a head set and spoke a lot. I immediately liked him but changed my mind during the day since he was so stressed all the time! And probably suffered from slight ADHD. Anyhows he suggested we sleep for the can drive since this would facilitate us handling the height. Don't know if true or not but the bumpy road would usually make a good cradle but for some reason me and J stayed wide awake for the entire journey. Me maybe since I sat in the front (motion sickness) and worried about our guides driving. 

We arrived early morning to a different landscape. Smoke arised from little geysers around us. In front there was high mountains covered by snow, the highest one measuring around 6 000 m. We were both surprised that it didn't smell more when we jumped out of the car. I'd expect something like NZ with the characteristic smell in Rotorua (sulphur) but you could only smell this if you got really close.

At first our guide showed us some different geysers. Constantly erupting, timed eruption (where hot and cold water mix until the warmth takes over) and some bigger ones. Then he left us to experience this place by ourselves while he prepared the breakfast. I walked around carefully since this place was located at 4321 msnm. What a huge difference it makes in comparison to 4200 msnm at the 31st! This was so much heavier. J on the other hand handled it quite well once again. Another thing to handle was the cold, they warned us about 10-15 degrees below zero but it was "only" 2 degrees below zero. And raining. This was the worst part, I think we would have managed the cold pretty well in our hiking gear otherwise. But somehow it matched the surroundings quite well.

Offered in the tour was also a swim in a hot pool from the geysers. I passed just thinking about getting out of all my clothes and then trying to get them back on semi-dry. And to my defence I tried something similar before. J was the brave one and went in. He did however complain about the temperature, saying it was probably around 30 degrees and closer to 40 would be nicer and more like a hot tub. And the ground was rocky and not too fresh. Sitting closer to the water arising from the geysers did bring more heat though and in some places he almost burned himself when sitting down. A mixture of temperatures. Unfortunately no picture of evidence since I was occupied carrying clothes and being a supportive fan ;-)

It's a lesser rhea in the distance!

After this we went to see some lagoons and animals. We were lucky enough to once again see the lesser rhea! This time with babies! So sweet, unfortunately no good pictures since we just caught a glimpse (see above). The babies really just look like miniature forms of the adult, so tiny! J also caught a glimpse of a little lizard that I couldn't see despite us staring at rocks for 5 minutes in the car. Very small creatures. All in all a good tour but with a very unnecessary stop at a small almost abandoned village. We stayed here 30-45 min probably just so that we would buy something. You could walk around town in less than 5 minutes. Well what to expect. One of my favourite parts was actually when we went down again with the van. The landscape! Enormous! So wide! Talk about a view. I was stunned and tried to film a lot, challenging my motion sickness.

Lots of birdlife

The town. Where one person stayed to look after the animals after the others abandoned it. Now with the tourists it's a little bit more people here.

So hard to capture the depth

Amazing views

This is getting long but so was this day since we also had an afternoon tour. This time with a bit more time between tours, enough to rest but we did a stupid mistake thinking our lunch pack would suffice as lunch. Thankfully this tour ended with snacks and Pisco and very good snacks. A variety of meat, chips, crackers and such. Very surprising. But the tour first.

We went out in the afternoon to a very salty lagoon were we could swim. Not that you needed to, floating was extremely easy. Unfortunately the temperature wasn't that thrilling, ~ 16 °C. And the sun was covered by clouds. Our luck (weather wise) from Patagonia had definitely turned in this desert. They're supposed to have amazing starry skies here but we could never see it since it was cloudy all the time. Anyhows it was really funny to swim, jump and such in this kind of water. Makes me curious about the dead sea, that also is so much warmer. We also have to give some credit to J who did actually enter the water, first time in so cold water abroad. You know he refused the sea in Easter island right?

Pause at hostel

Salt

Not where we swam but a pool close to it

Swimming lagoon up front, hard to see though

During this tour we met another Swedish couple that were really nice to talk to. They'd been traveling for a really long time in South America and seemed to have had a blast despite a car accident. As I said, people don't drive good around here.

Despite the salty lagoon we also watched some other lagoons and finished of with a really nice sunset. They're so beautiful around here, and so hard to capture!

Here you could also swim but it's very cold and we didn't find the need to do it :p

Does one ever tire of sunsets?

Arriving back in town we tried to see if a merino wool shirt I had lost from a previous tour (fallen from the seat) had been relocated but no luck. Disappointed in myself about this but also a bit sad about losing one of my warm clothes that I had counted on when returning to Sweden. Well well. We had dinner with our Swedish friends and then made an early evening after such an early rise. 

So 4 tours later we had seen beautiful things and had good experiences. We felt like we had 2 favourites that was a bit more worth than the others and I was a bit disappointed we didn't get to take those mirror photos in the salt. Seems to be more of that on the Bolivian side. Talking about Bolivia, all the mountains and volcanoes we had seen was the actual border so we were pretty close to this country. Cool. And Chile is definitely cool, so vast! 

Well we really need to end this text now. Ciao,

S