My First Desert

Most of northern Chile is desert, the driest desert in the world, with some locations never having recorded any rain fall ever. A few days ago, I left Valparaiso on the coast and took a 25 hour bus ride to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, very close to the border with Bolivia. And while a 25 hour bus ride might sound boring, the bus system in South America is amazing and it was probably the most luxurious time Ill have here. Its a two story bus, and I got the front seat on the 2nd level, so the only thing in front of me was glass and a panoramic view of Chile, and the seats recline all the way, and they feed you!  Here is a picture of my seat at night;

When we entered the desert, I was excited and felt rushed to take pictures, but I felt silly later since the next 20 hours of desert looked the exact same, like this;

 

The bus dropped me off into this small village San Pedro in the middle of the desert with sand roads, sand pretty much everywhere.  The houses are just mud, rocks, and sheet metal.  Here is my hostel;

  

And here is me alone in the desert looking for water; (you kind of have to zoom in to see)

Not really.  I went into the desert with group and tour guide.  Here are some pictures;

  

  

and we climbed this massive sand dune, and on the other side looked dangerously steep and about 100 meters down, and the guide told us to just start walking down, and it was really amazing, because you could run and every time your foot hits the sand it kind of forms a step, so that was fun.  Before we ran down the dune;

  

We then went to an area called Valley of the Moon, which is supposed to be very similar to the surface of the moon, and where NASA tests some of its missions.  The heat causes the rock to crack, so there is all of this erry cracking noise.  The moon;

 

I´ll be here for a week more or so and Ill update soon.