So while taking the private transfer from Uyuni, we actually met a lovely couple from Venezuela. We shared the transfer from Bolivia right through until the next day at the border control office. We got to stay in accommodation like on the salt flats tour and chatted with them for the evening. Luckily we were in a jeep with just 4 people, so it wasn't too crowded. I've never actually met anyone from Venezuela, so it was lovely to meet them, and they spoke such good English. They finished their salt flats tour, and were heading back to Santiago, which is where they live now. They were telling us about the problems people face in their country with the rates of inflation being so high, the rates of crime are high crime rate and lots of people are trying to leave the country. We were all shattered after a hard 4 days at the salt flats, so we went to bed early as the car was leaving at 4am in the morning.

Re-visiting the hot springs
 
The next day we got picked up at 4am and had to drive for a few hours to reach the borders and get our exit stamps out of Bolivia . We tried to sleep for most of the morning, but then we awoke and realised we were back at the hot springs we'd been on while at the salt flats, so we stopped there for a rest and toilet break. This time, I had my camera with me, so I took a few more pictures. It's such a stunning place, so I was glad to be back here again. I stopped to admire the scenery for a few moments, then we set off again.

After another couple of hours, we arrived at the border controls, which is where we will be eating breakfast. By now, we were all starving, so it couldn't have come soon enough. It was just basic; bread rolls and juice, but it was enough to see us through the day. After breakfast, we got our exit stamps out of Bolivia, then we got told to take our bags out of the jeep as we would now be joining a minibus. That was a bit of a shock, but we left and repacked our bags on the minibus. It was unfortunate, but the Venezuelan couple we met, had to get on another transfer bus, so we didn't get to say goodbye to them . As we were the last ones on, John and myself couldn't even sit together, so I was a bit annoyed that we'd paid for a private transfer and had to finish off the journey in a minibus. Luckily, it was only a 20 minute journey into San Pedro, the driest desert in the world. We stopped at the border control to get our entry stamp, where we had to take all our bags out to get them scanned through a machine. It was bit of a commotion, but it didn't take too long. Afterwards, we got dropped off at the bus station and from there, it was down to us to find a place to stay, as we hadn't booked anywhere. 

San Pedro de Atacama 
 
It was really hot and we had our heavy packs with us, we had to get some Chilean pesos and search for a hostel. John got a map from the information centre, then the first thing we did was find a bus to book our seats to Salta. We heard the buses get booked days in advance, so we wanted to book a ticket for a few days time. We found Andesmar and booked our tickets . Next we wandered around looking for hostels and most of them were out of town, as when we looked online, they were pretty expensive to be right in town. San Pedro is suppose to be one of the most expensive towns in Chile, so that isn't good for us on backpacker budgets. We found one eventually, it was rather costly for a private double room, but we wanted to treat ourselves after spending so long in an uncomfortable bed at the animal sanctuary. We did mange to haggle the price down slightly as we're staying for 2 nights. 

When we'd settled in, we went to have a look round San Pedro, which is a beautiful colonial town set at 2,400 metres above sea level. It has lovely white buildings and a really old church. We wanted to see what tours are on offer. John said one thing he wanted to do while here was stargazing, as it's suppose to be one of the clearest places on earth to stargaze. I wanted to go into the Atacama desert, however we only have tomorrow, so we'll have to find a suitable tour . We walked around the main plaza and found plenty of tour companies, too many in fact, it all got a little overwhelming. In the end we found one, World White Travel, as they booked our private transfer here and we didn't have many issues, we booked a tour of a lagoon through them and asked about star gazing tours. They don't do those, but recommended another company. We saw them afterwards and went to book the star gazing tour. We will take the Laguna Cejar tour tomorrow daytime, and the star gazing tour the same evening.

Now we are in expensive country territory, we have decided that we can't really eat out anymore, so will have to buy food to cook at the hostel. We bought some food from the local market stalls, even that was expensive compared to the prices we'd been paying so far. Our hostel has a lovely garden terrace with hammocks and tables, so we cooked some dinner and sat outside in the garden for the evening, which was actually something I had been wanting to do for a while . I like San Pedro, it has a good vibe about the place, it's a shame we are only here for 2 nights, but we have to press on as we are seeing 3 countries in 3 weeks.

Laguna Cejar

The next day we had another walk around the small town, then went back to the hostel to cook an early dinner. Our tour is 4-9pm, then our star gazing one is 10.30pm, so we wouldn't really have time for dinner later. Then we had to walk back to the tour agency office for 4pm. We were the first ones there, and not long after, other people arrived. We happened to bump into Kim and her son Daniel, who we'd met in Tupiza, and went horse riding with, and they were both doing the tour. It's such a small world, we didn't think we'd be seeing them again, Daniel was all excited, so we hung around with them for the rest of the day. 
 

We got driven by minibus about half an hour from San Pedro to Laguna Cejar. Because the lagoon contains a high concentration of salt, you can float in it; a bit like the Dead Sea . We won't be going to the Dead Sea any time soon, so this will be the next best thing. This small lagoon has impressive white edges of crystallized salt and is intensely turquoise in colour.
The salty water is also suppose to be good for your skin too. We didn't really get that excited about seeing the lake because we must have seen around 100 lakes on the salt flats tour. We got out of the bus and walked over to the Laguna, there weren't actually that many people there. 

John was first to go in, he said it was cold water, so I was bracing myself when I went in. John was literally floating, although he was actually drifting towards the edge of it. I attempted to get in, very slowly, but it was too cold for me to just go straight in the water. After standing on a ledge in the water, I had no choice but to take the plunge, so I just went for it and got in. It was a weird sensation just laying there floating, although when I went in, I could feel the current dragging me and everyone else towards the edge of the lagoon . Kim and Daniel came in, but Daniel was too cold to enjoy it, so he didn't stay in there for too long. John also got out fairly quickly so Kim and I stayed in there for a while. We got a few pictures, then got out when we all had enough of it.

After this lagoon, we got driven to two more lagoons. I can't even remember the names of the second one, it was that unimpressive. Our third lagoon was a bit more special, it had a mirror lake effect and it was such a shallow lagoon, so much so, you could see the salt underneath, which looked like snow. It really did reflect light here and you can get the same effect as the salt flats. It was quite beautiful here, and we'd be watching the sunset with a pisco sour cocktail. We ventured into the water, again, this was another salt water lake. Around the surrounding areas to the lake, it was all salt, but it looked like we were walking on snow. Who'd have thought you'd get this kind of scenery in the Atacama desert. After we'd done enough exploring, we grabbed our cocktail and had some crisps and biscuits to go with it, the pisco was nice, as it wasn't too strong . We watched another beautiful sun set, then it was time to leave to go back for our next tour.

Stargazing in the Atacama desert

We made it back, with about half an hour to spare. We had to wait to be picked up from our hostel this time, so it saved us walking back to town again. We booked it with an agency in town, but after waiting for nearly half an hour, we thought we'd booked it with a dodgy company and thought they weren't going to turn up. They did however make an appearance at around 11pm. They had been collecting other people up and we were last to be picked up. We got in and were taken somewhere just around the corner from San Pedro, it felt like we were going to somebody's own back yard. Indeed we were, well when we arrived it was an observatory that had been built in someone's garden. It was a proper observatory and it did have a huge telescope inside. There were quite a few people already there, and when we arrived the split us into two groups, ones which preferred the tour in English, and ones who wanted it in Spanish . Once that was out of the way, we got given a mug of delicious hot chocolate, I could have easily had another one. We got given a power point presentation about star constellations and got shown different slides of pictures of the moon and the planets. Meanwhile our guide gave a talk about the star gazing itself.

Once the boring bit was out of the way, we could begin the star gazing. We got taken upstairs to the observatory and inside the room where a big telescope was. Once we were inside the dome shaped room, we were locked in and the telescope was turned on. There was a remote control to work the huge telescope and we watched it go on and spin round. I felt like we were spinning around in the room. Then the guide took out a laser pen and started pointing at the stars literally. The pen was so strong, it reached all the way to the stars. He started pointing constellations out to us, then he would aim the telescope at them so we could individually have a look, including Orion, Pegasus and Tarantula Nebulus . There were quite a few we got shown, but I don't remember all the names. 

We got shown some of the galaxies and he also pointed those out with the laser pen. When looking through the telescope it's amazing how clearly you can see them. One of my favourite things of the whole tour was looking at planets through the telescope, we got shown Jupiter, which was a bright, burnt, orangey red colour. It's amazing to think we were looking at the largest planet in our solar system through this magnificent telescope. After we finished taking it in turns to look through the telescope, we got taken outside and he pointed with the laser pen at the stars, galaxies and planets that we'd been looking at through the telescope. It was an interesting tour and the Atacama desert is one of the best places to go star gazing. So although the tour was in someone's own observatory in a back garden, we still got to learn a bit more about parts of astronomy. It's a shame it didn't last a little bit longer, as an hour and a half went really quickly.