Sandy San Pedro

More catching up...

After our excursion to Putre I returned to Arica for about two hours...and then jumped on a bus with 7 other girls from the program for an inpromtu trip to San Pedro. (Jumped being a loose term as we had some dificulties in the bus station with ladrones and passports and such :p). The bus left at 10:00pm from Arica and we arrived in San Pedro at 10:00am the next morning. I really really need to learn how to sleep on long bus rides like that.

San Pedro is probably the most incredible place I have ever seen in my life. The actual town of San Pedro is very small and really only consists of two streets full of resturants, shops, and hostels. But the area around it is so amazing. It´s in the middle of the altacama desert like Arica but it is very different landscape-wise.

One of the coolest things we did was swim in a salt lake in the middle of the desert. The salt in this lake is more concentrated than the salt in the Dead Sea. It was the weirdest thing to swim. You really couldn´t put your feet down onto the lake floor if you tried...we just floated. When we got out the sun dried us really quickly and we had salt caked onto our skin and hair. It was very uncomfortable in the coolest was possible.

We were kind of nuts. The first day we got to San Pedro (after the 12 hour bus trip without sleep) we jumped right into things. The second day we got up at 3:00am to take a bus up into the altiplano to watch the sun rise around these really cool, really active geisers. They were shooting off all around us (really close!!). There were also areas where steam was just continually pouring out of the ground. We had cheese sandwiches and coffee as the sun came up around all the steam and water coming out of the ground. It really was like being on a completely other planet.

Other highlights of San Pedro...

- Visiting salt flats (just flat... forever... of salt!! So cool)
- Having avacado sandwiches and strawberry wine and watching the sun set in the Valle de la Luna
-Hiking up among Incan Ruinas from the 13th century
-Listening to tradicional stories from an Incan desendent tour guy on a bus hurtling across the desert without roads
-Meeting other really awesome people in the hostel and sleeping on triple-decker bunkbeds
-Riding on a bus with a llama!!
-Reading in "El Centrito" and meeting a guy who showed us where he living by referring to the tattoo of Chile he had on his leg
-Leaving on the 10:00pm bus Sunday night...not sleeping and arriving again in Arica Mon Morning at 6:00am in time for class at 9:00am!!

Was. Amazing. I literally loved every second of this trip.

Next time on catching up...back in Arica!!
Ciao,
Laura

And sorry if there are misspellings...but since I am using a Chilean computer...my spell check tells me that every word is spelled wrong. ;D