San Pedro de Atacama - day tres

Our only mission for our third day in San Pedro was to try out the sandboarding at Death Valley. We decided to go with Atacama Tours and their tour left at 3pm. We headed out of town in their big dune cruisers for about 15km until we reached the incredible surroundings of our sandboarding dune. The formations were absolutely stunning and I often found myself just wanting to sit atop of the dune and just gaze at its beauty. 

Sandboarding itself was a bit different to snowboarding but Jimmy was still immediately labelled as the 'pro' amongst our group. I was just happy to be the only girl to not eat sand at any point, mainly because I kept my pace pretty cruisy. Some of the other girls had a rather different technique of just gunning it straight down the dune and stacking it at the end as their way of stopping. Pretty amusing to watch!

After only 4 runs we were all pretty knackered as there obviously isn't any lifts to take you up, just your own two legs climbing a mountain of a dune. The sun had disappeared by then anyway so it was time to head up to a viewpoint and enjoy the changing colours of the desert as the sun slipped below the horizon behind us. Despite the 100s of other people being there to enjoy the view too, after a few pisco sours (or pisco power as our guide called it) and photo ops we were all feeling pretty happy and chatty!

A dinner at a local recommendation with a few others from our hostel ended the day nicely and after a shower back at our hostel, Jimmy & I slipped off to bed for a quiet night of reading. It turned out to be a good idea as the others attempted to go to the desert party but it all ended up a bit of a disaster for them with a lot of standing around and a 'sausage fest' house party being all that was on offer for them. Bed sounded much more appealing!

Our next mission is going to be another bike ride to see the other valley Atacama has on offer, the Valley of the Moon. And as we missed out on the stars during our stay at Elqui, we are thinking a star gazing experience might have to be on the cards as the night sky here is pretty damn impressive now the moon isn't drowning out the star light.