As soon as we had entered the mini-bus of the Chilean operator at the border, we could literally feel that we were in a different country: the car was brand new and had seat belts, streets were tarmac again and flanked by road signs that were actually (!) followed. Our hotel room followed the highest craftmen standard we had experienced in South America so far and we could walk on the sidewalks while carefreely chatting to each other and not needing to watch out for potholes or various leftovers we didn't want to step into.
After one night in town, we packed our tent, some food and plenty of water and headed for a three-day-trek in the Atacama Desert. We walked through the "Valle de la Muerte", admired it's fairytale sand and stone formation at sunset and camped once more at the most stunning spots with million-dollar-views. Unfortunately, the moon was extremely strong and thus we could not see the stars so well, but it was nonetheless an awestruck sight. For the second night, we accidentally camped on Inca ruins, which we found out only the day after while hiking back to San Pedro... Of course it was forbidden to camp on the site of Catarpe, but the sign was posted only 5 km away and we frankly did not recognize the ruins to be Incan. We thought it were stone rings used by shepherds for herding of sheep or llama, as we had seen in Peru :-). By all means, we had a fantastic campsite (of course we left without traces!) and a friendly, straying dog kept us company during the entire night. We called her "Sucia" - since she was all dusty - and we admit that she got the entire pack of the soda crackers that counted as our emergency ration. Thankfully, she posed for some pictures and escorted us back to San Pedro. On the way, about five of her doggy friends joined in, so we must have looked like vagabonds when we arrived in town! Back in the hotel and after a hot shower and delicious "menu almuerzo", we felt ready to spend the afternoon in the shady patio planning our trip into a completely different climate zone: Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. Did we mention, that it feels fantastic wearing shorts and sleeveless tops in November???
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