The desert

Its not really that the atacama desert is hot that makes it so intense. The temprature only really gets up to 85 degrees in the dead of summer. Its that at an altitude of over 9,000 ft in the valley it feels like you are only inches from the sun wherever you go. Even in the mornings when it is only 60 degrees you can feel the sun just pounding you relentlesly. The desert is flanked to the north and east by the andes mountains with countless peakes over 18,000 feet. The Atacama desert is also huge and there is litterly nothing out there except for a few copper mines and small oaisis towns. One of these towns is San Pedro de Atacama where me and Jim have been for the last few days. Its only a town of about 2000 people but dont let that fool you. San Pedro is the biggest tourist trap that we have been to so far. Every buisness in town is either selling crafts, excursions, or overpriced food. Its not only the food that is overpriced here. Everything is at least twice as expensive as anywhere else in chile and there is no way to find low budget stuff because the town is so small. Once you get passed the fact that your getting ripped off the place is pretty cool. There are a ton of cool things to see and do. One of these things is sandboarding which is basicly what is sounds like. you strap a snowboard on and ride down some big sand dunes. It was pretty fun except when you crash and get sand in ever crevice of your body. Our guide was actually pretty helpful eventhough he was super hung over and kept talking about how a girl busted her grill when she was drunk and he had to take care of her. The other cool thing about San Pedro is that we came during carnival week. Im not really sure what that means but random parades with marching bands and whatnot break out randomly. one passed our hostel last night at about 1 am.