Mi Vida es Chilena...¿Cachai?: Walking on the Moon

Last weekend, I finished my 4-week traveling streak.
Abby, Madeline, Erica and I traveled to the north again to experience the Atacama Desert in San Pedro. Everyone in Chile talks about San Pedro (or San Peter - Madeline and I saw this on a Twitter billboard today) as being one of the top places to go. So we took advantage of the long weekend - All Saints Day - and hopped on a plane to the desert.

When we arrived in the city of Calama, we had to take a two-hour bus to get to San Pedro. The whole way there, I just stared at the window in awe. The desert is so vast, but it wasn't what I expected. For some reason I always have this picture of Aladdin in my head when I think about the desert. Beach-like sand dunes that go on for miles. But nope! The desert is so much more than that. Its rock formations, and volcanoes, and sand dunes, and occasional pockets of greenery when there is enough water underground to supply the tree roots with nutrients.

Driving in the bus - the mountain in the background is a volcano that is very close to San Pedro

Soon we arrived at our oasis in the middle of the desert

Once we made it to San Pedro, we had a bit of a snafu with the hostel situation. We had "booked" a hostel, but all we knew was the name. I had forgotten to grab the address. We figured it wouldn't be a big deal, thinking San Pedro was probably tiny. We were wrong - there are tons of hostels there.
We tried to ask around for directions, but no one seemed to know where it was, or they just didn't want to help us. We had heard that people get nicer in Chile as you go further south and these people were just proving the point.
Finally a man drove by and asked us if we were going to Hostel Candelaria - what a miracle! We were! So he picked us up and took us to the hostel, where we got settled and talked all about plans for the weekend. About 15 minutes later, the wife of the hostel owner came into our room and asked if one of us was named Sarah... nope.
Turns out there were 4 other girls who had booked the room we were in, and they were on our bus from Calama to San Pedro. When they got there, they had called the hostel to be picked up but the hostel owner found us first, assuming that we were the 4 girls that he was supposed to pick up. Oops. Our reservation hadn't gone through all of the way. But everything worked out and he just moved us into another room.
So with the hostel all sorted out, we went into town to plan our tours and grab a bite to eat.

The next morning, we woke up and rented bikes and sandboard, ready to explore. Sandboards are just snowboards - and you basically use them to ride down the sand dunes.
As the navigator, I led everyone into Valle de la Muerte - "Death Valley" and we biked through this valley of amazing rock formations.

Sadly, about halfway to the dune, Abby's bike tire went flat. Cool.
The bike company had given us all of the tools to fix a flat, but none of us had ever done it in our lives.

So I took charge. We found the tear, got out the rubber glue, spilled some on my leg - and freaked out because it was supposed to be toxic (oops), and attempted to patch the tear. No success. It was too big and the patch didn't hold. And because we were in a valley, we didn't have cell service.

So we walked our bikes up to the dunes, parked them, grabbed our lunches and our sandboards, and ran up the sand - a TON harder than it sounds. The dune was so steep and we kept sinking as we tried to climb up.

Then we attempted to sandboard. No one could really get the board going. We all went pretty slowly, but it was funny.

At 4, we went on our first tour - to the Laguna Cejar.
40% of the water is saturated with salt - more salt than the Dead Sea! - which means you can just float in the water. So awesome. Except it was FREEZING.

Then, Erica and Abby jumped into more freezing fresh water - Ojos de Cejar. They are two perfectly circular holes that have eroded and collected water. Madeline and I didn't go in because we only had 1 dry towel to there was no way that the 4 of us could share it.

After the swimming adventures, we stopped at our last lagoon to watch the sunset and enjoy some pisco sours and cookies. What's Chile without some pisco?

Day 2 we woke up at 4 am to see the geysers which are most active between 6 and 8. It was really cool because Chile has one of the largest concentrations of geysers in the world (I think it's more than Yellowstone).

On the way back down, we saw some llamas and vicuña - some of the classic Chilean wildlife.

Then Madeline and I ate some llama.... sorry! But it was great!

That night, we went on another tour of Valle de la Muerte, Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), and some other important landmarks close to San Pedro.

This is the same place where we had gone sandboarding!

As we were walking through Valle de la Luna, our tour guide told us to take of our shoes and we all walked barefoot through the sands of the Atacama Desert. Going down this steep slope was the best part:

Valle de la Luna - Moon Valley

That night (October 30), we went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday - they had the live band at the restaurant sing to me in Spanish. While Erica and I checked in for our flight before dinner, Abby and Madeline went back to "pay for the hostel" - which actually entailed decorating our hostel! So when we came back, they surprised me!

"Feliz Aniversario!" - Happy Anniversary of my birthday! Abby couldn't find "Cumpleaños" which actually means birthday. They used alfajores as my cake!!

Then I hopped in my bed full of balloons - Happy 21st to me!

On my actual birthday, we toured around the whole day - but I did receive some wonderful phone calls from my host fam, my real fam!, and some friends on my Chilean phone. Thanks guys!

Flamingos in the 3rd largest salt lake in the world within the Atacama Salt Flat.

After seeing the flamingos, we hopped back on the bus and my friends had the whole bus sing for me! That's 2 Happy Birthday's in Spanish!

A fox!

The high altitude lakes! So blue.

All in all, our trip to San Pedro was a hit. We toured around a ton, so we were completely exhausted by the end.
But when we came back to Santiago, we had one last thing. My host family threw me a birthday asado - barbeque - so Abby, Madeline, and Mary came over to celebrate one more time.