Thursday, April 3, 2014

Sunday, March 9

We all woke up early after sleeping on the bus. The bus kept driving a while longer while we all complained about how much we wanted to shower, change clothes, and brush our teeth. Then we stopped for breakfast in a little town. Breakfast for vegetarians was a sandwich with nothing but lettuce inside. After breakfast we walked over to a nearby mall to look around for about 30 minutes. I don’t really know why we went, but I took advantage of the opportunity to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Then we got back on the bus and kept driving. We stopped in the town of Chiu Chiu to see a historic church and to shop in the feria artesenal.
Next, we drove the rest of the way to a little town in San Pedro de Atacama.
We ate a fantastic lunch of roasted vegetable crepes, and then checked into our next hotel. I was rooming with Trine and Madison. We had 15 minutes to change our clothes (sadly it was not long enough to get the shower I wanted so badly) and get ready for the hike we were going to take in Valle de la Luna. It was really hot outside, so we basically just put on shorts and ugly tank tops with our hair in buns.
We got to Valle de la Luna and went on a hike through these salt caves.

It was pitch dark in places and we had to bend over and even spider crawl to get through the narrow spaces. All the rocks were made of salt, which I confirmed by licking one of them. When we finally came out of the tunnel we reached an absolutely amazing view of rock outcroppings everywhere. We took a bunch of pictures there, and then kept walking back to the bus.
Then we drove to another part where we had to hike up a big sand dune. When we got to the top we were all breathing hard but it was totally worth it for the view of the valley below.
We stayed there taking pictures and admiring the spectacular view as the sun set.



Then we walked back to the bus and back to the hotel. We went straight to dinner in the hotel. We were all really happy that we’d finally seen some amazing views because on the south trip, the gorgeous picture opportunities had been abundant, but on this trip so far we hadn’t had that many. After dinner, it was late and all anyone really wanted to do was shower and go to sleep, but my roommates convinced me to throw on my bathing suit and jump in the pool with them for a little while before showering. We got in at like 11 and then were immediately kicked out by the receptionist. Then we all went back to the room, showered, talked for a little while, and went to sleep.

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