After a marathon of visits in Bolivia, we reached this very long country of Chile in the North. The landscape was similar to the ones we saw during our previous tour in Salar de Uyuni.
Chile was a big surprise and not a good one regarding the price of everything... We found a nice hostel in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile where we dropped our tent for 18€ the night. Just crazy... Going to the toilet or charging your phone, nothing is free in Chile. Even if you are a client. Anyway...
The French Bakery Surprise
There was a French bakery close by to our place and we had a real breakfast pleasure... Croissants, Pains au chocolat and a baguette. Almost as good as in a normal French bakery! San Pedro de Atacama is a good place to visit the desert (of Atacama). So, we did 2 things with another couple we met in the bus (lovely new couple, they met during their trip!).
The first one was a star watching tour as it's one of the best places on earth to watch it. However, we were really disappointed as it was just outside of the city and nothing really extraordinary (as Augustina guessed...).
Valle De La Luna by Bicycle
The second thing was much better. We rented bicycles to visit the Valle De La Luna. It really looks like a moon. Even the NASA does some tests of their robots there. It's a famous place where you can see different rock formations. It's a few kilometers from the city. There are different spots as the area is wide. So, doing it by bicycle is nice if you are in a good shape. We were not really in a good shape honestly, more tired than anything else. But we enjoyed it as it's really beautiful.
After a couple of hours, we finished our visit and were starting to come back to the city. But like two true newbies, we took just 2 liters of water with us and we had a big surprise... The other side of the Valle de la Luna, the road to come back was only going up. We were not prepared at all...
We achieved to stop a pick-up and the nice guy brought back Augustina to the city. It was the only time we achieved to stop someone. People from Chile are not the best, from far... The three of us continued and we made it back to the city, thirsty and super tired. Still, it was a good day :-)
The Great Car Rental Disaster
Then, we took directly a night bus to go to Copiapo as we thought spending more time in the very North of Chile was not worth it. Our initial plan was to rent a car or something for 5 days to do all the seaside up to Santiago. But guess what...? We did all the agencies of the city and the airport, no car available or 400$ the minimum we found. We were not lucky, it was a special weekend...
We even did a road trip to the airport to try. Shitty day! We gave up and took another night bus to go directly to Santiago, Chile. Before leaving the bus terminal, we bought tickets for Mendoza, Argentina for the next morning (as everything was sold out for the day). And after giving up searching for a guesthouse, we went to the Crown Plaza hotel using William's reward points. Awesome service there! Best thing we could do after all of these few tiring days! Huge bed, nice shower... We even went to a real Japanese restaurant for dinner!
This is how we took another bus (a minibus this time) next morning to go to Argentina, in Mendoza, to visit a few bodegas and drink good wines!
October 8–12, 2018