San Pedro de Atacama

After Mancora although we'd had alot of fun hanging by the pool etc we were in need of a little culture. Having already traveled through most of southern Peru previously as part of the GAP trip we decided to power through and head straight down to San Pedro de Atacama in the Atacama desert. Now to get there involved alot of traveling, and I've already told you all how that went.

Once we arrived in San Pedro we needed to find a hostel, after walking around in the baking desert heat (we wrongly assumed Chile was going to be cold... I can confirm we were wrong, look at those skies) we found the below hostel. After a little bargaining we were all checked in.

Hostel Puritama


All the buildings in San Pedro are made from Adobe and externally all have a very basic feel, beautiful though.

The courtyard


My number one skype/email location in San Pedro

San Pedro has a very beautiful central plaza where the town's oldest building can be found. It was a beautiful old white washed adobe building, though the roof did appear to be falling in.

Me and the oldest building in San Pedro

San Pedro church

One of the 'must see's' listed in the Chile guidebook was the museum in San Pedro. As we were in town I had one of my 'days of learning' and headed to the museum. It set out the history of the people of San Pedro and there influences from the surrounding tribes etc.

Some ancient pottery in the museum

On our final night in San Pedro Chile were playing Columbia in their final qualifying game for the 2010 world cup. We sat and watched the game in a massively crowded bar with an old German chap called Dieter. He'd lived in Peru for the majority of his life, he was 70 and didn't look a day over 55. And he'd just bought a small patch of land about 10km outside of San Pedro and was now settling down to the simple life

Marco, Dieter and Me

At the final whistle Chile had beaten Columbia 4-2 and had qualified for the world cup for the first time in 12yrs. The bar, and inturn the town, errupted into celebration... celebrations which continued long into the night.

Chi chi chi... le le le... viva Chile!!