San Pedro de Atacama

Llama Meat

Eating Llama Meat

         Desolate ghost town, none of the street lights were lit I am glad I had pickup service from my hostel.  It was 11:30pm when I got in and everything in the town was already shut down.  Did not see one taxi, so it would have sucked to walk with all my bags in the dark.  After 26.5 hours on buses I finally made it to the super small town of San Pedro de Atacama.  No paved roads/ everything closed at 11pm.  For some reason I am the only person at my hostel.  The nice buses were sold out in advance again so I was forced to take the bad one again which meant they gave me juice for all 3 meals and a pack of cookies opposed to real meals and comfy seats.  So I ended up eating like 4 snickers bars and a bag of Doritos I had bought in case of an emergency.  I haven’t had a real meal in over a day.  San Pedro has numerous dirt roads, which provide the charm of this little town.  It is the 3^rd more popular tourist town in Chile.  San Pedro only has a population of about 2,000.  The town is so small you can walk it in about 15 mins.  Not a lot of color, that is unusual of Chile as most things are brightly colored but I guess we are in the desert and the population is mostly indigenous Indians.  As it’s winter at nighttime the temperature drops dramatically as low as 5 degrees or more.  I’m currently writing this entry in bed freezing.  I am wearing gloves that let the fingers out so I can write/touch my ipod/take pics/underarmour long johns and top/ followed by a thermal then a hoodie as well as jeans and alpaca socks.  They give you three pretty strong blankets but the cold still runs through.  There is no heater in my hostel, which is definitely something I miss.  I’m missing the amenities of my apartment at moments.  The town itself is surrounded by the Andean mountain range and clear skies.  There stargazing here is unreal.  I wish it were possible to capture it with my camera.  While the town doesn’t have much to itself the shear beauty of the landscape is what draws so many tourists.  There are numerous adventure treks you can do for very cheap.  Definitely a very cool place and the landscapes are surreal. I went to the largest Geysers in the Southern Hemisphere they are number 3 in size in the world and ate Llama meat.  Which was really good.