We ended our Salt Flat tour in San Pedro, we were a little concerned as we approached the border due to our tour company telling us the border could be closed due strikes but they continued taking us towards it anyway. We were able to go through the border albeit after a pretty long wait in a stiflingly hot bus and more stamps in the passport, yay!

We arrived late in the afternoon and started the hunt for accommodation, we found a nice YHA hostel from the guide book, John had his own room whilst we shared another room with 3 story bunk beds of which Mike and Kev were on the top some 5 metres off the ground, it was quite a climb to the top, especially after a few drinks.

After looking around San Pedro we discovered the Geysers and lagoons we could see from San Pedro were already covered with our guide on the Salt Flats, it became apparent we maybe stuck in San Pedro with little/nothing since both the buses out of town were fully booked and we would have to wait for the next ones in 4 days time. Our hostel was advertising Sand boarding along with a tour of some caves and the chance to see the sunset and moonrise from an exclusive location. We had heard it was a fun thing to do and since we missed it in Lima we decided to give it a go here. With our activities sorted we went to find something to eat.

After eating we decided to spend the rest of the evening in a very productive way and went to the bar for one or two drinks, which turned into several more. We spent the evening drinking under the stars alongside an open fire to keep us warm, joined by Barry someone in our room in the hostel who was also trying to get out of San Pedro. To conclude the evening we left the bar after it closed and bought some more of our own beers to drink back at the hostel.

The next day we got up late and went to find out how we could get out of San Pedro, the result was a private minibus costing almost triple the other buses, but after we weighted up the pros and cons of stay in San Pedro it was our only option. With a big hole in our pockets after paying for the bus we headed off Sand boarding. We left in the back (me and Kev) of a pickup truck, everyone else had a nice seat in the front of the pickup.

After a short drive we arrived at a sandy hill with no ski lifts! I tentatively put my hand up when asked whether anyone had snowboarded before which meant I could keep my trainers on and us a board with bindings, everyone else had to do it in their socks and on a board with hoops for their feet.

We began waxing our boards with the supplied candlesticks and started heading down the slopes, head first in some cases. It was harder than it first looked with Mike slowing to a complete stop down the hill and Kev doing one or two face plants into sand.

We all came to the conclusion the hardest part of sand boarding was the climb back to the top of the hill on scorching hot sand and we should also not take cameras because we almost lost another camera, Mikes, when it was dropped into the sand and the lens got stuck out luckily hitting it against a hard surface sorted it out.

The caves we were taken to were not very spectacular and somewhat disappointing to look at, not quite what they had been built up to be. After leaving the caves on the advice of our guide we grabbed a few beers to take with us to drink whilst we watched the sunset.

We headed to our exclusive viewing area for the sunset and full moon experience, it just so happened all the other tour companies must have got wind of this exclusive location as they started arriving too.

As the sun approached it’s final moments before disappearing behind the skyline it started moving very fast, so we had to work fast on our photos and almost as soon as the sun had gone a very fast rising moon on the began to appear which we all had a go at pointing at, with some success.

The following day we left in our very expensive taxi towards the Chilean border enjoying some chilled out music courtesy of the line out cable and iPod once again. We reached the border and got into another 2 cars to reach our first destination in Argentina, Salta.

Bring on the steak and wine, yum!