How are you? Today is the english day ok!!! Because there are people who dont understand spanish so...

Here we are in Iquique!! in the first region of Chile, in the north. After Antofagasta we went to San Pedro de Atacama, thorugh the driest desert in the world, is as dry as there are only a small insect living in the sand. there are no spiders, no lizards, no scorpions. We stayed there for 4 days in a nice hostel :Eden Atacameño for 10000 pesos per  night ( 14 euros between two) and we ate for 3 days pasta with tomato and egg, just to make something cheap because San Pedro is very touristic and expensive!! It is a small village in a big big plain land, in the west you can see the Domeyko mountain range, in the east the Andes with the extinct Licancabur volcano (up to 5000 meters). Behind the volcano to the south is the border with Argentina and to the north with Bolivia. To the south of the village there is the Atacama Salt lake, where you can see flamingos and lot of other birds in a strange landscape, the land is 30% of clay plus plaster  and 70% of salt. There was aswell a small percentage of Litium, there was mines of extraction of this metal (I remember the quantity of litium batteries we have in mobile phones), this extraction was making damage to the salt lake. You can see San Pedro in this link http://www.sanpedroatacama.com/

In the village you can find lot of restaurants, hostels and tourist agencies. If you walk in the street you only see tourist, and some chilean people form all over Chile who are working there, you dont see lot of Atacameños people. There are plenty of excursion to do, but it was expensive for our budget, but still we did three of them. One of them it was horse riding!!! it was really good, we enjoyed for three hours ( 15000 pesos, 21 euros) , after that we have really sore in our as, legs and back, we were in  trot and gallop, it was exciting!!! you can see pictures when will down load from the camera, soon!!

WE went to visit the Moon VAlley with the agency Cosmo Andino, we look for this agency because there are two Nora´s brothers (from Illapel) working there as a tour´s drivers!! We met the younger in the first excursion to moon Valley and the other brother to the second excursion to Altiplanic Lagoons.  We didnt like at all to do tours to visit the places, but there was no other way to visit them. In the moon valley you visit even the death valley where all is desert dunes, big big ones, where we enjoy going down in two of them!! it was exciting aswell, we where luckky because the guide smoke as we do, so we enjoyed more even!!!

The moon valley is all salt!!! salt in rock, we where in a salt stream, and you can see the bloom of salt as it was flowers, when you stopped to listen the place, youcan listen the craks of the salt when the temperature is coming down, the salt do as the wood with the temperature. For the end of the tour we saw the sunset in a big dune, with the colours fo the sun in the andes, and in the valley, it was lot of colours!! violet, orange, blu, yellow, red!!! amazing!!!!! and stone!!jejejejej

The second tour it was more busy, with 17 persons we went to the Atacama Salt Lade, then we went to the altiplanic laggons (Miñiques and Miscanti) at 4.500 meters, we find ourselves with less oxigen, but it was all right, we went through a lava land, it was strange because I used to think about lava as dark and this lava was red because of the clay. In the lagoons we saw Vicuñas (http://www.clinamen.cl/Nortegrande/Camelidos/Vicuna.htm ) and fox, in one of the lagoons it was  nesting the

crested coot (it was not possible to access to the lagoon because of this).

After the lagoons we went to the Jerez Valley  close to the village Toconao, (http://www.turismochile.com/guia/san_pedro_de_atacama/articulos/224) here in the middle of desert land you can see in a stream lot of fruit trees and a small river, it was nice after the 30 degrees out go inside the stream and relax with the shadow of the trees!!! After this went to the village to see some artcrafts and a Llama (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_glama) and we bought a kind of cactus!!!! jejeje to try it in Arica!!In the village when we were almost going away two spanish girls from the tour come to say that there was a dancing in ten minutes, so we wait to see it. We didnt feel that good in that village, you could feel that the people from there didnt want all of this tourist making pictures at everything they can see, some people was making ten pictures in front of the same girl like she was a model and they didnt even ask for it. In the lagoon with the vicuñas, the people was getting reallly close to the vicuñas, almost surround one of them and getting it isolated. It was horrible to realise how tourism could be such a difficult to the people who dont understand the "developed" world. We were dissapointed but at the same time we were there making the same (little different but the same).

The first day we arrived in San Pedro we saw an advertisement about a job in a restaurant, we ask by night about the job for a small time untill they find another person, but in the morning with our curriculms in hand they said to us "No, we dont give work if you dont have experience in Chile", what a pity because we were all night before thinking about 15 days in San Pedro knowing exactly how it was the tourist  invasion.

Well, the desert was nice to see it, and the andes aswell, we had in there experiences that we may not have in our lives out of there, so we did it to try it, and everthing was cheaper than in europe, expensive for us because of the longer of our travel.

Lot of people, after San Pedro go to Bolivia thorugh the Uyuni salt Lake, but for us it was to expensive do it to come back to San Pedro after, if you go directly to Bolivia is nice that excursion and cheap!!! In the second tour we made after we had a beer witha couple of spanish (vasc country) and a couple fo belgium people. It was nice to meet other european, it was first time in all Chile!!!

After SAn Pedro we came in Iquique, city by the sea, all way from San Pedro to here is desert, and  according to come to the sea is all dunes, big big dunes, like maybe 600-800 metres. Iquique is small city between the sea and the dunes!!! all is sand!!! is like a big big big beach!!! We are in a hostel for 4.500 pesos with breakfast (6euros) We saw the......

We have to go!!! sorry, i didnt see the time, we have a bus in half an hour!! to Pica an oasis in the middle of the desert, camping and a natural swing pool warm (thermas)!!! i will write from there!!

kisses and big hug for everybody!!!!! especially in dublin!! take care and write us!!!!

bye bye