Destination #9: Sand-boarding in the Death Valley (Chili)

OK, here is where we start to get off-track a bit. Sandboarding in the Death Valley in Chili was not on our initial List of 28, but damn, it was so cool that it should have been. So we have decided to play our first wildcard, we are going to replace #22 "Going to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo" (which is ending at the end of October and for which we were seriously running out of time anyway) by sandboarding in the Death Valley in Chili. So here we go, our new destination #9: Chili. 

Thursday 4 August - Saturday 7 August: San Pedro de Atacama (Chili) 

A 10 hour bus journey brought us from Salta in Argentina to San Pedro de Atacama (or SPA) in Chili. SPA lies 2,436m above sea level. As a reference, approximately 27 percent of Holland lies below sea level. Despite drinking liters and liters of water, we couldn't avoid the altitude sickness kicking in. SPA is situated at the edge of the Atacama desert and apparently is the driest place on earth. The small town is packed with back-packers and hostels and believe it or not even has an official North Face shop.

4km west of SPA lies Death Valley, a magical place with sand dunes which can run up to 120 meters long. Here is where we did the coolest thing so far: sandboarding. When choosing our sandboard (basically the same as a snowboard) it was determined that Emma was a "regular" and I was a "goofy". All of a sudden my whole life started to make sense to me, that was until I was told that if you are a "goofy" it just means that you have your right leg up front, and if you are a "regular" it means you have your right leg at the back of the board.

Anyways, sandboarding is "Da Daddy" as my buddy Max would say. Ok, we never really figured out how to break, or how to do turns, but we did manage to go down the dunes with amazing speed, until we fell over that was. 

Prize for best tumble down the dunes went to Michelle who decided to go for the "ostrich break technique", i.e. you go down the dune with dizzling speeds and when you lose balance you bang your head in the sand first while the board goes over your head. I took her a couple of days, but she eventually recovered. 


Downside of this sandboarding is that you will have sand coming out of bodily spaces you didn't know existed for weeks. Nevertheless, this was definitely the highlight of the trip so far!

So what else did we do in backpackers' paradise besides eating sand? We chilled-out in the Termas de Puritama hot springs (water temperature: 30 degrees plus), checked out the sunset in the Valle de la Luna (or Moon Valley) while drinking Christian's signature drink the Pisco Mango Sour, and last but not least, we went for some star-gazing, where I learned the hard way that trying to ask intelligent questions about black holes while everybody is freezing cold or half asleep doesn't earn you any brownie points in the group. 

Next stop: Salt flats in Bolivia