San Pedro de Atacama

After a 24-hour bus ride Verena and I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama at noon. San Pedro de Atacama is a small town in the desert in the north of Chile at 2,440 meters (2.440 meters) above sea level! We checked out a few hostels and ended up staying at “La Ruca”, a really nice place. The afternoon we spent checking out tours to do in this area and found out that there’s lots of cool stuff to do here

We booked three tours:

- Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley): on Friday afternoon

- Geysers del Tatio (at 4,320 m (4.320 m) above sea level – I’ve never been up that high in my life!): Saturday – starting at 4 a.m. to see the sunrise there

- Salar de Tara y Catedrales de Tara (at 4,900 m (4.900m) and higher): a 4WD (4 Wheel Drive = “Allradantrieb”) full-day tour in Spanish (!) and for 4 people only

We’re very much looking forward to all these tours – the scenery is supposed to be spectacular!

On Monday we’ll head into Bolivia - also doing a tour: 3 days/2 nights. We’ll book this tour tomorrow as we haven’t decided yet which company to go with – none of the companies receive consistently good reviews; so we still have to think about it. But the scenery is supposed to be stunning there, too: lagoons, geysers, salt desert, etc. – all at very high altitudes. That’s also the reason why we’re taking things slowly here – to get acclimatized to the altitude.

PS: I booked my flight to visit Jenny and her family in Florida (July 8-13). Can’t wait to see you

PPS: I changed the final flight of my RTW-Ticket to July 28 (leaving NYC at 20:50), which means I’ll be arriving in Zurich on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 10:55 (= the end of my trip around the world). – And then head to Vienna soon to find an apartment (and a job) there…