San Pedro de Atacama and Iquique

The tiny tiny airport in Calama

Here we are in San(dy) Pedro de Atacama in the desert. It is soooo dry here we have used an entire tube of lotion trying to keep from our skin flaking off. One woman we met from Brasil felt like it was so arid her soul was drying up! Perhaps a bit dramatic but it gets the point across. We arrived here late on Thursday night and stumbled off the bus barely able to see the dirt road under our feet. We both wondered to ourselves, where the hell are we? We couldn´t see a damn thing and the night was so quiet. We picked a direction to walk in and as we came to a corner we practically walked on 2 teenagers making out on the curb which totally added to the strange feeling of not knowing what was going on. But finally in about 1 minute (because this town is so small) we made it to our hostal and brushed our teeth under the brightest southern hemisphere stars we´ve ever seen.


Being in the north is so different than Santiago. The presence of indigenous cultures is much more apparent here than it is in the big city. It´s also quite interesting because we´re both reading Isabelle Allende´s Inez of my Soul, a story about the Spanish conquering of Peru and Chile, right in the region we are right now. The fiction story parallels with the museum visits and stories we hear from the people we meet... it´s such a different story than the U.S. and its tales of conquering.

The main road in San Pedro

The north of Chile is famous for the architecture of its adobe churches

It´s a cute town. Sleepy but full of adventure. There is so much to do here but it is all hard to access without a car so we´ve resorted to taking tours. It's not our preferred way but how else would we get to the geysers when none of the "dirt roads" are marked?

Valle de la Muerte

The first day we went to Valle de la Luna and Valle de los Muertos. Miles and miles of salt encrusted rocks and dunes. It was so beautiful and gigantic and nothing like we've ever seen before.

The 2 best parts of the tour were taking our stinky shoes and socks off and running down a huge dune with the softest sand we´ve ever felt in between our toes.

And then we stopped to listen to the sounds of the rocks creaking and clicking due to the temperature change.

The next day we got up at 3:30 am to take another tour (look at us!) to the Tatio Geysers.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a waste of money... not because the tour was bad but because Gigi got ill. 20 minutes into the ride we had to shout for the driver to stop and Gigi rushed out of the van to throw up. We couldn't figure out what exactly was causing this... was it the elevation? Did she have the flu? Was she car sick? Was it something she ate? After it continued non-stop for 4 hours we concluded that it was probably something she ate or the flu.

After getting medicine from a woman in ski pants on the tour and some rest Gigi was feeling better and finally able to laugh at the situation and even has a comic brewing in her head. Just imagine: huge geysers exploding in the background and hot thermal baths steaming with Gigi not having a clue, hunched over throwing up.

After the geysers we went to visit an old cactus forest nestled next to a stream. The only green we had seen all day!

This is Gigi pretending like she saw the cacti forest and wasn´t asleep the whole time.

Finally we left San Pedro and decided to abandon our idea of Peru for a different trip altogether and head to the beaches of Iquique. We took a night bus and rode into the city just before sunrise.

It's quite a beautiful view coming into this city with the way it´s nestled between the cordillera (coastal mountain range) and the coast. We stayed at a hostal run by some really nice young Chileans and had an adventurous couple days!

Iquique is an excellent place for parapenting (paragliding) because the conditions make flying possible everyday. We drove up the mountain and took off from a cliff, flew over Iquique, and landed on the beach 30 minutes later. Originally Gigi wasn´t going to go. It was expensive and well....she is terrified of heights and gets motion sickness. However after Micah took off someone was looking for a person to ride with them for free and she couldn´t turn down the opportunity. Keeping with the theme of sickness on this trip, she threw up 3 times while in the air...over the city. Aside from being awfully embarrassed and covered with the morning´s breakfast she was fine once her feet were safely on the ground.

The view from the cliff...a long way down.......

taking off....

and we´re flying!!!
Can you see the other parapenters in the distance?

Later that day Micah went for a surf lesson with Lalo, a surfer who works at the hostal where we stayed.

While not yet in the most proper form I did catch a couple waves and they weren´t all so teeny as this one...




and got trampled by a few more....



What a day! I am pooped!