san pedro

the town church ------------------------ happy birthday to marie



the christmas eve apero -------------------- the christmas day bravery


a sign of life! -------------------------------------------- moon valley



dune boarding at 40°C ---------------------christian, seb and ludo claiming it



another way to explore the dunes -------------------- rock formation in moon valley



and some more ---------------------------------- the road through death valley

seb and christian, still fresh as flowers


it is hot. it is the desert. welcome to san pedro de atacama in chile.

it is here where we met up with ludo and marie and where we spent christmas, sweating buckets. luckily, there was often a slight desert breeze to cool us down, partially. we stayed in quite a nice hostal with a tiny kitchen, meant for all of the guests to use. so, needless to say, there was often a serious train smash...

san pedro itself is really, really small and it`s quite easy to do the tour of the village in a tenth of a day. the streets are dusty, the walls look like they are made out of mud and there are bars and restuarants for as far as the eye can see. don`t get me wrong. it is a quaint place -

so once we had, had our fair share of perusing the town, we explored its surrounding areas ie: the ruins of pukara de quitor (which really was not anything special). they are situated about 3 kms outside of san pedro. strangely enough, it felt as though we were actually in a traditional african village. even the murals, on the non-ruins, were similar!

so already we were given a little introduction to returning home; the heat and landscapes that resembled africa and the prices that looked very similar to those of europe. tough as it was to adapt, we (or rather i) were happy to leave bolivia - tut tut tut!

christmas day was unlike any we have spent; the boys (seb, ludo and christian) hired bicycles and cycled (yes, in the intense midday heat) to moon and death (another one!) valley. marie and i decided to take it easy and took the car...unfortunately getting into a spot of trouble with the sand just before the dunes of death valley. luckily, the boys were not too far behind and with a show of muscles, pushed us out of the sand.

check out the video below for some amusement ;)

we also visited a french astronomer, alain (see seb`s link) who explained the stars and the sky in a really comical way. who would have thought that one could actually laugh at the constellations? well, alain made us and the ¨tour¨was well worth it...until ¨q&a¨time when things got a little too technical...and a brief doze was needed...

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On finit le tour du salar d'uyuni a la frontiere chilienne. De la, un bus nous emmene a San Pedro d'atacama, petit pueblo construit sur une oasis au milieu du désert atacamenien. Le village est sympa, tout de blanc construit et essentiellement axé autour du tourisme. Il fait bon retrouver qq restaurants présentant sur leur carte autre chose que pomme de terre, frite, riz ou pates...

Ce village nous permettra de nous reposer un peu pendant les fetes et surtout de retrouver Ludo et Marie, qui n'ont fait que 3000 kms de desert depuis la Serena pour venir passer noel en famille : c'est beau l'amitié....

On aura l'occasion d'assister a la conférence d'alain, un astronome francais qui s'est installe une dizaine de téléscope dans son jardin en pein désert. Il nous explique les étoiles ainsi que la formation de l'univers. Je le remercie par ailleurs d'avoir bien calmé le vieu israélien relou qui voulait faire le malin en parlant de trou noir et d'expansion de l'univers a minuit : en 10 minutes il nous a expliqué simplement et clairement la création de l'univers et tutti quanti...autant dire que karis s'est endormie et que je ne me souviens de rien meme si j'ai vraiment eu l'impression de tout comprendre pendant 10 minutes...

Enfin, dans un souci de changer la tradition du 25 decembre (qui normalement implique un énorme repas que l'on met 10 jours a digérer), on se motive pour se faire une randonnée en vélo dans le désert (vallee de la lune) sans eau a 11h du mat. Comme si cela ne suffisait pas, on loue en plus des sandboard pour descendre les dunes de la vallée de la mort.

Meme si les paysages etaient grandioses (sol lunaire et dunes de sable majestueuses), l'épreuve nous a réellement épuisée et on en garde un souvenir mytigé...surtout que le soir même, une longue route vers la cote nous attend.

the dune boarding kings