Chile - San Pedro De Atacama

We left Arequipa at 7am and arrived in Tacna, a small Peruvian town near the Chilean border at 1pm. After some negotiations with some shady locals we were on our way to Arica, Chile with another couple in a taxi. We arrived in Arica around 3pm and waited for a bus to San Pedro de Atacama, we left around 9:30pm.  The bus stopped a couple of times, we had no idea what was going on as we were awoken by some man shouting some rapid fire spanish and the bus emptying. Turns out it was just a luggage check, so we had to grab all our lugguge, unlock it, have it checked and have the whole bus then try and jam their lugguge under the bus at once. We arrived in Calama around 9:30am the next morning had a quick bus change and an hour later we arrived in San Pedro.

It wasn't our original intention to head to Chile, we were going to cross the border into Bolivia through Lake Titicaca. But the border had been closed on and off for the past three weeks or so due to some striking Miners, they literally cover the roads in massive rocks and boulders to prevent any traffic from passing through the one road to Bolivia. We thought it would be much safer, quicker and smarter to head through Chile, as it really wouldn't be that much out of our way and we can get to La Paz through the Salt Flats from here.

Awesome little town with dirt roads and lots of whitewash buildings

San Pedro De Atacama is a sleepy little desert town close to the Chile-Bolivian border. It is really small with dirt roads with friendly dogs running rampant.  The place is quite expensive, our double room costing amost $60 a night - more than double the rest of the places we have stayed.
We didn't get up to much the day we arrived apart from book a three day tour of the Bolvian Salt flats that would get us across the border and explore the town a little.

The next day we went Sand boarding.....heaps of fun down a massive, steep sand dune a few km's out of the town. We did alright, took a while to get the hang of the thing, but by the end we could make it down the dune without falling arse-over-tit.  

We headed  to the travel agent to check when we would be departing in the morning, turns out this border into Bolivia is closed!!! This time due to snow! There is no clear timeframe for the crossing to be unblocked as the same has happened to the Chile-Argentinian border and that one takes priority (not sure why three countries need to prioritise a border clearing...but anyway)....So we are stuck for another day here....So we went sandboarding again!

Nice view after sandboarding, went nicely with the pisco sour we were drinking....

We were a bit better the second time, but we both had a pretty big wipe out, so we were really sore...With the days delay we had to move into the dorm as the hostel was full....the border closures are stopping people from leaving....so it is very busy.... we were all ready to depart on the tour and we were about to go to bed as we had an early start when we had a knock at the door. It was someone from the travel agent to say the tour will be postponed another day!! grrr

Finally the next day we were able to leave for the Salt Flats....