Chile - San Pedro de Atacama

After the exciting tour through the salt flats, it was time to shower, do laundry, and chill in San Pedro de Atacama (and of course, enjoy coffee and cake 🤗). San Pedro is a pretty tourist town in a breathtakingly beautiful environment: volcanoes, salt flats, lagoons, geyser fields, thermal springs, and extraordinary rock formations. The first thing that stands out in Chile is how incredibly expensive everything is!!! You even start to wonder if you should treat yourself to a beer at night, crazy.

There are a variety of tours offered, so it's not easy to decide on an excursion. To start off in a relaxed way, I chose the tour to the Puritama thermal baths. The baths are beautifully located in a gorge by the river at an altitude of 3800 meters. But it seems they didn't quite understand the concept of a thermal bath, as the water was not that hot, more like bathtub temperature when you're about to get out. After a short sunbath, the water was almost a refreshment. Nevertheless, it was a relaxing and uneventful morning. In the afternoon, I went on a guided tour/coffee ride (it was really over-touristy) to Valle de la Luna. Despite the crowds, the rock formations and views were beautiful.

To avoid the other tourists, Sonja and I simply rented mountain bikes the next morning to take a tour through the Atacama Desert. The goal was the Laguna Cejar, about 22 km away. Equipped with bikes, helmets, and safety vests (safety first), we set off. There wasn't much going on along the beautiful and mostly flat road, we only encountered 1 bike and 2-3 cars. There were also only a handful of other tourists at the lagoons themselves. Most people seem to come on a guided tour to see the sunset. In the Piedra lagoon, you could go for a swim, well, not really swim. Due to the high salt content in the water, you could rather just float on the surface and relax.

For the rest of the day, we just chilled...