The bus from Salta to San Pedro is quite amazing. The trip takes you north through Argentine farmland before heading east up through an amazing valley, with heaps of switchbacks to rival a French Alps climb, until finally climbing up onto a Andes plateau at around 4200m. By now the air in the bus was getting thin and you could really feel the altitude. From here the road crosses the dry desert climate, with Volcanic peaks off in the distance on either side, and also crossing a salt flat before crossing the border into Chile, and descending into San Pedro de Atacama.
The town itself still sits at 2400m and is no more than a dust bowl, with a few streets full of decent restaurants and tourist outlets. We spent a day relaxing at the hostel trying to acclimatise to the altitude, and also searching the dozen outlets offering 4x4 tours through the desert into Bolivia. After reading heaps of horror stories of cars braking down, crashing, etc, etc, we booked with Estrella del Sur a Bolivian family run company that seemed to have some good reviews.
The following day we jumped on another tour up to El Tatio geysers, the highest geysers in the world at 4300m and supposed to be the highlight of the Atacama. The tour leaves town at 4am to make sure you arrive at sunrise when the geysers are most active. The scenery is pretty amazing with Volcanoes surrounding the site, but the geysers themselves were a bit of a disappointment. It may have just been the day we went but they weren't very active, only bubbling up a metre or so, and there wasn't the colours that were expected. Go to New Zealand instead.. The highlight was probably the herds of Vicuña that are a smaller relative to the llamas, and are now a protected species, and also the Vizcacha, a member of the rodent family that live in nearby rocky area.
On the Saturday before we left town, we watched the competitors who were racing in the Atacama Crossing, head off on foot to the first camp before starting the 7 day ultra marathon race the following morning. www.4deserts.com/atacamacrossing
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