In the Desert

After arriving in San Pedro we got settled in our hostel and took a walk about the small town. The center of town is only about a dozen streets so it was easy to walk through all of them. It's a cute ranch/cowboy kind of town. The people here enjoy the laid back quiet lifestyle-the guidebooks call them bohemian. It was noticeable that even though we were in the middle of a desert, we were in a first-world country since things were more expensive and chic. For lunch Ching Jen had crepes with chicken and squash while Jon had a steak sandwich. We noticed we had a different type of bread basket than Peru's or Bolivia's - we had biscuits with different kinds of salsa. They were a nice change to the often stale bread we got. And for dinner we had salmon (we don´t know where they get it, it must be shipped in daily seeing that we are in a desert!) with watercress, thick creamy vegetable soup and a lemon pie.

There wasn´t a lot to do in San Pedro, so the next day we rented bikes! This is only the second time Ching Jen has been on a bike so she got a lot of practice this time! We biked about 3km to an archeological site on dirt roads that had slight hills and dips through shallow streams. Getting to the site took about 1 1/2 hours, but getting back to our hostel only took us 40 minutes. Ching Jen was so excited to have accomplished this and looks forward to getting better at bike riding.

Supposedly, we had a bit of unluckly timing because we were in San Pedro during the couple days that it was forcasted to be windy. And with sweeping wind gusts, you get billows of dust through the town. Items sitting in the open quickly get a thin layer of red dirt. We were told that calmer weather was supposed to arrive right after we were there. Ah well, that is what happens in the desert.

From here, we head to Santiago by bus that will take 24 hours. We boiled some eggs and made some pasta to take with us on the bus since we didn´t know if we would be feed or stop at a rest stop to pick up food.