Trouble in San Pedro....

So after spending 3 days being sandy, cold and covered in dust from riding around in a jeep, and not having showers, we arrive in San Pedro de Atacama, our first stop in Chile, in hopes that our weather conditions and state of ¨dirtiness¨will improve.... however, this is not the case. We get off the bus for the first time in San Pedro and instantly get smacked in the face by a huge wind gust of sand!! There is sand flying everywhere. It´s so bad that you can´t not wear sunglasses because it burns the eyes, but it´s pointless to wear them because you literally can't see out of them, as the sand and dust just stick to them! Laura and I instantly lose some excitement for this city. We get off the bus with our bags, stand outside in the blowing wind/sand at immigration with a crabby bus driver, get our entry stamps, go through customs, and then head back on the bus which eventually drops us off in the middle of the city. We fight the wind and start heading towards a hostel that we had read about in our Lonely Planet. Unfortunatley it is full. Bummer. We then walk to another one, it is full as well. We then decide we will just start walking into every hotel/hostel we see, as we are now crabby, dirty, tired and can't see where we are walking due to the blowing sand! We get denied time after time, (to the point where we actually consider skipping this town all together and getting right back on a bus) before finally remembering there were some young guys passing out hostel flyers around the area we got off the bus. We walked back there and are greeted by Elias, who quickly becomes our best friend and tour guide! He walks us to Hostel Rural the Life, which is super cute and happens to have 2 open beds! Yay! We get settled and then ask about an ATM and lunch spots, as we are starving. Here is where our trouble begins!

Turns out San Pedro has been dealing with windstorms and has not had power for the last 3 days!! No power meant no ATMs, no open banks, no credit card machines and no opportunity for us to get money. We have no cash on us, other than the couple Bolivian pesos I happened to find in my wallet. We trade in the couple pesos we have and realize we at least have enough for a cheap lunch. Elias and a friend Giovanni, who happens to be in our same dorm room invite us to have lunch with them at a cheap, local restaurant nearby. The food was great and they bought us our first Chilean beers! Not a bad deal!

They ensure us that the power should be on shortly and we should be able to take out money. We walk around to the 5 different ATMs in town hoping they would turn on, but no luck, no power. This wouldn't be a huge problem excpet that we only have a couple days in this city and NEED to be to Santiago, which is over 20 hours away via bus in order to catch our flight to Easter Island and see a couple surrounding cities beforehand. We had planned on flying to save us a day but without having power we could not get on the internet to check flights and prices. We head to the bus terminal, thinking our safest best is to at least book a bus out of town the following day to make sure we arrive in Santiago in time. We are told the bus station can't book anything because the computers are down. Shoot. We may really be stuck here for a couple days, until the power comes on! We walk there anyway and are hopeful when we see they have a backup generator and their computers are on! Yay! We find out there are spaces open the following day, but we cannot pay for them, therefore they cannot be reserved. The credit card machine doesn´t work and we still are money-less. We quickly come up with the idea that we can have someone from home Western Union us some money as there is a western union in the terminal we´re at. But, unfortunately we can´t call the US because the phone lines are down and again, can't email, there's no power. We're in trouble. We leave the terminal after I realize I have an emergency fund of American dollars that I could exchange. Turns out we have just enough to get us to the next city, Calama, where we could then take out money and get a bus from there to Santiago. That does mean however, that we had no money to pay for our hostel , nor eat, nor do any fun excursions that we planned on doing today.

We head back to the hostel and laugh about our situation, as we play cards and have drinks with Giovanni and the guys, waiting for what seemed to be a miracle at this point. They assure us things will work out and to just relax, so we do. They joke that if we can´t pay them tomorrow, we will have to paint or do some work at the hostel to pay them back. We're willing to do almost anything at this point for money! After a couple hours we decide to check the ATMs again, still no power. A couple hours later the power comes back on!! Yay, we can take out money, or so we thought! The ATMs are on but.... none of them have any money in them! Apparently this happens frequently here. At this point in time there are money-less tourists all over the streets, literally lining up at the ATMs, waiting for them to be filled. Supposedly they would be filled around 6. We decide to return later that evening and for now we´ll go book our bus and some tours for that afternoon or the following day, assuming they´ll let us pay later or with a card. Bus tickets failed, credit card machine still down. We walk to a couple restaurants whos credit cards were working in hopes that they could just run our cards and give us cash, but no luck.

We had planned on going sandboarding this afternoon, doing a desert star-gazing tour at night and visiting the Tatio Geysers in the morning. More bad luck. None of the activities, nor tours we wanted to do are going on, due to weather conditions. We ask about for the following day and are told they can´t promise anything. We begin to feel as if we came to this city for nothing, as again, we don't have time to sit around and wait for the weather to improve. I was determined to find some tour that would happen for sure tomorrow and sure enough after being persistent we found two!! They even said they'd allow us to pay tomorrow, assuming we'd have money by then. We again head back to the hostel, thankful we got a geyser and sandboarding tour booked, and hopeful that we'd have money by morning. Luckily on the way we happen to overhear someone shouting that there was an ATM in town that had money! We ran into the building it was in and literally jumped for joy as we ran our cards and pulled money from the machine. At least now if nothing else we have money to get out of town!

On Sunday July 18th, after a cold and noisy night in our hostel, we woke at 3:30 am to start our tour to the Tatio Geysers and walk through the geothermal field nearby. Despite the bitter cold, these geysers were amazing, (especially at sunrise) and a lot larger than the ones we saw in Bolivia. When I say bitter cold, I mean it. Numb fingers and toes. Can't feel any part of my body. I think it is more cold than the salt flats, and those were cold! After standing outside for what felt like hours we loaded back on our tour bus/truck, I'm not really sure what you'd call this thing, and we headed into shelter for breakfast! We first stopped at hot springs but nobody from our group even went in the pools. The thought of getting in a swimsuit sounded unbearable so instead we headed to eat! Breakfast was made right on a stove that pulled out from the bus, pretty efficient! We had pancakes with dulce de leche and hot ham and cheese sandwiches, both of which were ice cold before arriving to the table, but delicious none the less.

After breakfast we visited Machuca Village, a tiny, quaint little town in the area, then headed to Quebrada Guatin, a cactus field in the mountains. It was a lot like Fish Island on our salt flat tour in Bolivia, a mound of cacti in the middle of nowhere. We saw llamas and donkeys along the way, took lots of pictures and enjoyed the scenery. There were definitely times where I wanted the tour to end, simply because it was so fricken cold, but when it was all said and done I am very happy we were able to do it! The landscape was amazing, we learned a lot about the area and our guide was awesome! To put the icing on the cake, we never had to pay for the tour! He forgot to collect pur money and we forgot to give it to him! Free tour and $50 to spend elsewhere!

We arrived back to town just in time to go sandboarding!! We packed up our bags and said goodbye to Elias and our friends as we would go directly from sandboarding to the terminal, heading to Santiago. I had been super excited about sandboarding and was relieved that they were actually allowing people to do it today, as they had not taken groups out the last couple days due to weather and safety. We drove to Valle de la Muerte, or death valley and it was awesome! It was a mountain of desert sand, waiting to be ridden on! We got our boards, strapped in, took some pics and headed up the hill. It was quite a struggle climbing up the massive sand hill! There are no sort of lift or rope to help you up, you just have to drudge through the heavy, deep sand! It was so tiring but well worth it once I made it to the top! The view was spectacular and the ride down was thrilling! I fell a few times the first run or two, but handled it pretty well by the end and didn´t hurt myself, so that was a major plus! It was definitely a workout, both going up and down the hill, as the board and my feet liked to sink in the deep sand. I had tons of fun and didn't want to leave the hill, but after a couple hours we had to say goodbye to Death Valley and our boards in order to make it to our bus on time. We were now leaving San Pedro and were off to Santiago!