SATURDAY JULY 6, 2013
Made it safely to the Atacama desert, warm in the sun, very cool in the shade. Searching for a tour to Uyuni to book today. Let it be known: a 24 hour bus is a LONG time to be sitting/reclining. Not too excited for the 30 hr one in a few weeks...
I'll put up the Uyuni posts in advance because I doubt well have wifi out on the salt flats.
We got into San Pedro de Atacama around 9am, and had to walk to the hostel because there were no taxis in the town. Interestingly, there were no street names either. We used the 2in by 2in map on our hostel reservations and it took about 15-20 minutes to find. Once we made it, we walked around a bit to explore. Then Jess and I went to exchange money and buy some souvenirs. There was a lovely handicraft market in the middle of town. The streets, houses, dogs, and dirt were all the same color; I guess that's what living in a desert does to you. Good for the atacameños (people who live in the Atacama) being so brave, but I'd never live in a place that hot! We went to Café Antoine for lunch. It was terrible! They literally ignored us for 30 minutes until we left and they came out to our table to wipe it down again. Don't waste your time!! Instead, go to Adobe, where we went after this disaster. Jess and I stopped back at the hostel to check in our bags and into our rooms, then we went back out again, ravenous and searching for food!
We went to a restaurant called Adobe, where we both had salmon, our favorite! Jess got hers with mushroom tomato risotto, and I got mine with lettuce and baked potato. Later we got ice cream (limón gingibre) that was the strangest ice cream I've tasted! It was very viscous, thick and sticky, nothing like ice cream at home. Next we walked around a bit more, stopped in the plaza central for a bit of wifi, and found an archeological museum. Always up for new things, we bought our tickets and went in. It was pretty straightforward and boring, just a bunch of pottery. They removed any mummies to protect them from sun damage.
Finally, we went home, showered, napped, and checked on the Uyuni-La Paz tour bus. We were still waiting to hear back that we could go. We got our bags ready for the salt flat tour (we needed to buy TP, water and bread) and had our 5 gallon water jugs nearby. We went to sleep early so we would be well-rested for our early morning foray into the desert.
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