desiertos pintados, un fondo de estrellas brillas en el cielo oscuro.

Firstly, I apologize for anyone who wanted a second by second account of this trip (ie. myself), it would be quite impossible to recount it all. Hopefully, though, these bloggies can give you a taste of what I and my fellow travelers did.

Part 2 of viaje 7/19 a 7/27:

We continued the tour with Ricardo, onto the Pintados, a series of rocky sand hills covered in more geoglifos. It was amazing to see these 600-1000 year old or some works of art. For realz.
There are supposedly over 900 different geoglifos spread across a bunch of cerros (hills). Pretty crazy huh. But we weren't allowed to go up the hills (for obvious protective reasons). So we took pictures and stared at the massive shapes for a while. We were literally the only people (again) in the national park, so we decided to have a little DP outside of the car. (DANCE PARTY). Ricardo bumped some traditional Chilean dance music and we followed suite. Soon we were doing a strange dance similar to "Father Abraham" or "Making Melodies", but it was called "En La Selva". That little dance proved to be a useful warming tool for later on in the trip.

We stopped by the little pueblito of La Tirana, where all the festivities had been going on the week before. When we got there all was calm.. but we visted the church and whatnot.

Coming back to Iquique (we were in "Greater Iquique") was sure a treat. Beautiful. God is amazing really.

We got back into town and initially planned on buying tickets at the bus station.. only to find that there was "no space" (later we learned that they all say that but there really is space). Since the whole trip had been founded on whims, we brushed those plans aside and started planning to stay in Iquique for one more day. Luckily we discovered another bus, Kenny Bus, with cheaper prices.. and tada!! suddenly there was space for 5 people!! (before they told us they had no room). We rushed back to the hostel (and stopped by the market to pick up stuff to cook a quick improv dinner), cooked, ate, and went off with all our backpacks and whatnot back to the bus stations.... and off we went!! on our way to Calama. (our initial plan had been to go to San Pedro directly, but there were no buses doing that so we had to take a bus to Calama (6hrs) and then from Calama a bus or taxi to San Pedro (1.5 hours). ¡Que complejo! We left at night at around 11 or something around that time. Expected time of arrival? 5 am. We decided to just figure out what to do once we got there.

Bad choice.
We arrived at 5pm. And.. suprise. Nothing was open. Not even the supposed 24 hr. hostels. The temperature in Calama, compared to sunny Iquique of 65 degrees, was probably around 35 degrees. At least it felt like it. Even with layers, including my down jacket.. a beanie, gloves, I was shivering. By the grace of God the bus driver pitied us and drove us to the Tur-Bus station. Nearby we discovered a 24 cafe... semi-outdoor. and a bunch of cute patchy street dogs. We chugged tea and busted out dancing "en la selva" to warm up a bit. We talked to the nice fatigued lady running the cafe via little hole in the door (she didn't want to open the door because she was by herself),with which she also served us our té. Finally we headed over to the Tur Bus terminal in hopes that it would be open. Wrong again. But again, by God's grace and mercy for reals, we found a little side business of taxi-drivers. They graciously allowed us to sit and warm ourselves up in their little closet of an office. The little room was made even more cozy by an Irish couple and a British lady, all with flushed faces and nearly blue lips, that we happened to see walking past. We knew them from the hostel in Iquique. Small world! or San Pedro was really that touristy. We finally decided to just take a taxi to San Pedro. And so we did. vroom.

On our way to San Pedro, we saw the breathtaking view of the sunrise breaking through the seemingly untouched desert. It was amazing. In the background there were rows and rows of volcanoes, while in the front were amazingly perfect sand hills; something I thought possible only in Mario 2 Level 2 with those weird red dragon things? Ok but that's really what it looked like.

At around 7am we arrived in San Pedro.

San Pedro. Was not what I expected. But it was an extremely cute pueblito.

We went hostel jumping and finally found this cute place, Residencial Vilacoyo. It was one of the cheaper places, but it was still comfortable (despite the bathrooms being outdoors).

After eating breakfast at a nice cute (seriously everything was cute) cafe, we went tour hunting. That day we explored Valle de la Luna, Valle de la Muerte, and other cool desert-y sand formations. The tour-guide was a gnarly looking Chilean guy who talked about how these formations came about, info about all the volcanoes, etc. The naturaleza was seriously incredible. It was an entirely different picture of nature that I had never seen. God's creation seriously dumbfounded me. The pictures I took could only capture a snipit of the beauty surrounding me.

When it came time to go to Valle de la Luna, the sun was near setting, and crowds of tour groups were making their way up the massive sand hill to get a better view of the puesta del sol. I only realized how out of shape I was when I started walking up the sand hill. The fact that it was sand made it a tad harder. At one point I was really wishing I had camel feet.
"Ships of the desert!" -Prof. Herbst

As the sun began to set, the sky and the fondo exploded with colors. We just sat there snapping photos and trying to absorb surrounding us. Truly amazing.

On the way back to San Pedro, the black sky was covered with billions of brightly shining stars. Later on a Brazilian told me that San Pedro was the most blessed place on earth to see stars. I believe him.

The day ended with a heart full of wonderment and joy.