Finally get to wear my shorts

Hi all. Since my last post I left southern Chile on an airplane and landed in the very north of Chile in the Atacama desert. I am currently stationed in San Pedro de Atacama, a dusty little desert town, where I am camping at a cool little hostel. The heat is a welcome change from the cold and windy Patagonia weather. After almost 2 months of travel I finally got to take the shorts out of my backpack.

The first thing I did upon my arrival was head out on a 4 day land cruiser tour of the desert in Bolivia. What a spectacular trip it was. I seriously thought on more than one occasion that I had left earth and traveled to another planet. The landscape is constantly changing from multicolored mountains to sand to crazy rock formations, thermal pools, geysers, salt lakes and salt flats. We saw so much in 4 days that my head was spinning. Climbing up to an elevation of 4600m on the first day didn't help either, but fortunately my only altitude symptoms was a headache.

There are these moments that I have only experienced while traveling that I think make it so addictive. It starts with you wandering around somewhere by yourself just taking in the experience when all of the sudden you realize that you have a huge lunatic grin on your face even though no one else is around. I had this happen as I was wandering around this dark red salt lake full of flamingoes contrasted against the mountains in the background. The colors were spectacular and I was in complete awe. I snapped out of a bit of a daze and realized I was smiling to no one but myself. I consciously thought about how lucky I was to be experiencing something absolutely incredible instead of being at work or in my home routine. It's these small fleeting moments that make the 20 hour bus rides, sleepless hostel nights listening to someone else snore and wearing the same shirt for 5 days in a row worth it.

The trip was capped off by visiting the Uyuni Salt Flats. I have dreamed of visiting these famous flats for years. 2000 square kilometers of blindingly white salt that makes Saskatchewan look like the Rockies. It was incredible to see nothing but white in every direction. You could watch other jeeps start off as a tiny speck on the horizon and slowly over minutes become recognizable as a car. It's something that definitely needs to be experienced to understand the vastness of such a flat and uniform landscape.

The other highlight of the trip was star gazing after the sun went down each evening. The sky was full of stars with the milky way stealing the show. Nice to be so far away from the city lights that obscure the sky.

Spending 4 days rattling around on all types of crazy terrain in dusty 4WD land cruisers was well worth it. Now that I have returned to San Pedro I am taking some day trips out to see the Chilean side of the desert. Hard to believe, but in exactly one week I will be leaving South America for Australia.

Desert photos are uploaded, I hope they capture a small piece of how spectacular the landscape is:

https://plus.google.com/112392129776163836192