San Pedro De Atacama - The Sleepy Desert

After the incredible adventures we had the days prior being apart of the biggest Salt Flat tour in the world entering into the city of San Pedro de Atacama was not a hot destination for us. This town is a small tourist town to say the least where you walk down one of the few main streets and everything is directed toward tourism!  From the star gazing tours to any tours offering what the Uyuni Salt Flat tour already took us to we couldn't find a reason to stay in this town for more than one night. I read online and saw that many hostels and rooms were $15 USD+ a night per person in this city but luckily close to where the bus drop off location is there are a few hostels close by that are from $10-$13 USD that are not advertised at all online. So as soon as we unpacked from the bus and slung our backpacks on, a young man approached us and told us he worked for  few hostels nearby. I usually am skeptical about guys like him on the street but for some reason I had a good vibe from him and we went over and stayed at one of the hostels he worked at for 8,000 pesos  ($12.50 USD)! It didn’t include breakfast or anything and it was a 4 person dirty shared dorm but we were the only two in the room! Standards of rooms become low as you keep traveling on. Any room that doesn't look like it has mold on the walls or bugs in the bed are pretty good in my books.

After settling and it still being mid day we asked the receptionist if he knew any local cheap lunch spots nearby we could eat at. We pointed us towards some lunch stalls that was a 5 minute walk from our hostel and it was the most incredible vegetarian lunch I have had since Cusco, Peru. There were a few different stalls/restaurants and of course we just went to the one with the most locals in it. After lunch we knew we wanted to leave this town as soon as possible so we ended up just walking to the bus station and buying a ticket to Iquique for 13,000 pesos ($20 USD) each that was leaving the next day around 9:30am that would be almost seven hours long! So that evening we walked back towards our hostel and saw a big fruit and veggie stand and bought some groceries to cook with that night and just had a chill night at the hostel. I am telling you sorry if this blog post was boring but for me this city was boring. The stars are beautiful at night if you want away from the main part of town and I heard they even had sandboarding. You can find something to do here if you are really on the hunt but for us it was just a low key layover city.

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