San Pedro de Atacama, Chile 🇨🇱

It is freezing this morning and is -8 when I am collected at 5am (as a side note, Nicky and Liam went with another company and they were forgotten, so waited in the cold for over 2 hours!). I am wearing everything I can, knowing full well that by 10am it will be roasting and around 25degrees. We drive for an hour, it’s dark so I don’t feel too bad that I sleep.

The sun is just starting to rise as we enter the geyser area. It is very cool, just looks like the floor is steaming. There is lots of steam, coming from masses of channels underground where water hits hot rock. A few larger Geysers and also conical Geysers. I learn that the colour on the surface surrounding the opening is created by bacteria and the different colours are different types. We move to another area where we can walk around but first get a surprisingly good breakfast of avocado and scrambled egg sandwich. After a stroll around the quieter area we walk through wetlands where we see large footed Coot birds and herds of Vicuña. Our final stop is a small village called Machana which was one of the first in the area. Here we see a cheerful character cooking llama kebabs to the rich throng of tourists. Time to head back and it is only lunchtime but a roasting temperature now.

There are three new girls in hostel who are really friendly so we stroll to town to get money changed and see more of the town centre. Tonight it is packing up again but this this time for a new country, Bolivia.