As I scribbled away in my notebook writing this post, I had the following saying in my head as I wrote "desert": only one "s" in desert, because you only want to go there once. two "s"`s in dessert, because you always want seconds! While I`m always up for dessert, it`s funny, I would certainly love to go back to this particular dessert.
We drove through this beautiful desert on the bus the way to San Pedro and to my surprise, promptly pulled into a bus station. We`re here!? It looked like a site for a tour, much less a town. Seeing no taxi`s, we lugged our gigantic duffel to our hostel- San Pedro Backpackers. It was hard to believe any type of establishment could exist in these small adobe-like buildings, but we found our hostel with no problem.
Check in was not until 12:30, so we locked up our stuff (travel tip: invest in bike locks to secure the duffel/backpack/suitcase to a larger nearby object, such as a bed, and use a gym lock for the zippers to close the bag. Look for ones with codes to memorize so you don’t have to worry about keeping track of keys).
We then walked into town to change money. Can you believe we spent nearly two hours trying to find Bolivianos (Bolivias currency, which we would need for our next step of our journey) in Santiago with no luck but nearly every place in teeny tiny San Pedro sold them.
We walked around an artisan market which never fails to suck me in. The colors! The wool! The ALPACAS!!! It is incredibly difficult not to buy every gorgeous hand made product you lay eyes on. Some of you though will reap the benefits of my shopping spree!
We got settled in our rooms and had a delicious salmon lunch followed by ice cream. I chose a flavor called chañar, mainly because it was the closet thing that resembled chocolate. However, I later learned at a museum that it was a very useful fruit for the indigenous people of the Atacama region.
We booked our three day tour to the salt flats of Uyuni that would commence the following day. We purchased the necessary supplies: toilet paper and three 10 galleon jugs of water (that`s right, we`re not in Santiago anymore- no drinking the tap water here!) and to my outrage what do I see but PEANUT BUTTER. Are you kidding me?!?! Do you know how hard we tried finding it in Santiago?! We eventually found it and stocked up before the trip, but I never imaged in a million years to see several giant sized Great Value brand peanut butter here.
If I see it in Bolivia I`ll just die.
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