After 2 weeks of doing nothing and 1,5 great week at Jan and Antonia’s, it was time to say goodbye and go on. We had booked a bustrip to Calama, a trip that would take about 22 hours. From there we had to take another bus to San Pedro de Atacama. Because it was such a long journey, we had booked the most luxurious seats they had, seats you can turn into a bed. Just like 1st class on a plane.

Jan and Antonia took us to the busstation and then it was really time to say goodbye. It had been a great time and their hospitality was superb. We would have loved to stay a while longer, but we had to go on sometime.

The bustrip was indeed long, but the beds were fine. But you never sleep much on buses and planes. When we arrived in Calama we discovered that we had to wait another 4 hours for the first and next bus to San Pedro de Atacama. Not nice… We finally arrived in San Pedro around 6 pm. Then the bikes had to be put together yet. They had been in boxes during the trip. When that was done, we went looking for a campground. It had been a very tiring day.

The next day we looked around in the town. It’s a very strange and little town; all houses are made of Adobe, a sort of clay with twigs inside. But very, very touristy! That was a bit of a shock to us, since we hadn’t seen many tourists lately even though we had been in touristy areas a couple of times. In those places we didn’t really notice those tourists very much. But here, we did! Many blond people, most of them German speaking.

We stayed for 5 days and in those 5 days we looked around and played the tourist. The town is surrounded by sand, rocks and saltflats. We cycled to a saltlake where you can swim. The lake is so salt that you just float, just like the Dead Sea. The water was freezing, but it was hot enough to warm up quickly. Very strange to stay afloat on the water, you want to push your legs down but that’s very hard. They just come up again. We also went cycling around the town a little bit.

We went to the Tatio geysers on a tour. For that, we had to get up ridiculously early, we would be picked up between 4 and 4:30 am. So, good citizens as we are, we were standing outside the gate of the campground at 4. Busses came by, but no one stopped. Time went by and we were just about to go back to our tent when, finally, a bus stopped. It was almost 5 am by then… But the guide really made up for that. A very nice guy who gave a lot of information on the geysers and the surroundings. It turned out to be not bad at all that we were there a bit later, because by the time we got there most people had already gone to another site. It also was a bit less cold, because it was a bit later already.

The reason the tours leave so early is that the geysers produce steam and because the wind picks up during the morning and day, the steam gets blown away and you can’t really see the steam go up as nicely. The geysers are located on an altitude of about 4300 meters (13.000 ft) and it was freezing at that time of the day. It was about -10˚C (25˚F). Breakfast was included, but it was outside! Very cold, but a bit surreal in between those steaming geysers. You could just walk right through the fields of geysers, but you had to watch your step. If you fall in one of them you fall in boiling hot water. It was beautiful, there are many geysers and you see all the steam go up.

We watched the sun come up in a special place that day and we also watched it go down again in a special place. Again on a tour; we wanted to cycle, but we were too lazy and we didn’t want to cycle back in the dark.

In the Valle de la Luna (valley of the moon, because a part of it looks like the main crater of the moon) you can watch the sun go down. The surrounding mountains turn very beautifully orange/pink/red. We had to climb a sandhill and from there we could see the whole area. Very beautiful, despite of the clouds that blocked the sun in the beginning. So it became a very long day!

The next and last day in San Pedro, we spent sleeping in and packing our panniers for the hard journey over the 4800 meter (14.500 ft) high Paso de Jama.