Day 15 - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (2 April 2012)

Day 15 - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (2 April 2012)

We have another slow morning here. Get up and collect our clean clothes, have showers etc. We head into town and go out for lunch. We get the set menu at this place. We thought the set menu said “hamburger and a glass of wine” for 4,000 pesos (NZ 12) each. What we actually got was a hamburger patty with tomatoes, raw onions, basil and oil drizzled over top (menu was in Spanish, hard to get things right). It sounds weird, but it was presented really well and actually tasted delicious.  We also got a really nice glass of red wine too. So we weren’t upset with it.
After lunch we rented out a bike each for the rest of the day. For 8,000 pesos (NZ $24) we both got a bike, a lock, pump and spare tyre until 10pm.  It was good to get back on a bike, although it was abit different to the road bike and conditions at home, considering firstly it was a mountain bike, and also the chains were slightly rusted and the road conditions were, well, much worse than at home, considering the town has only dirt roads.

On our bikes we headed out of town to the ruins of Puerta Quitor. The ride was really nice, a short 3 km ride one way from the edge of the town. It was another hot day however and Ann was feeling the effects of the heat and the altitude, and possibly the fact she hasnt been on a bike for about 10 years.  We took abit of time out and then had a look at the ruins. The ruins were where the town was situated in the mid 1500's. The town was on a hill so they could see any attack coming, it was a good climb to the top where we had fantastic views of the ruins, San Pedro township, the desert and the Andes in the background.   This view really emphasises the point that San Pedro is in the middle of nowhere!!!  It was a good opportunity to pull out the binoculars and have a good look around. When then walked back down the hill and looked through the museum.  They had actual artefacts that were found in these ruins here. So that was good. We then biked back into town.

We decided to start getting supplies for our 3 day 4x4 tour which starts tomorrow morning. We start off by buying two bottles of water (6 litres each) and we bike that back to our hostel. We then head back into town and buy some snacks for the tour and toilet paper and one more bottle of water (6L). We had to do this in trips because it is not easy carrying all that water and food on a bike all at once! We then head back into town one more time and we go for a bike around the streets just for fun then we hand the bikes back.  At the hostel we get all our gear and food etc ready for our tour in Bolivia.

Puerta Quitor ruins - http://www.tripadvisor.com.ar/ShowUserReviews-g303681-d2337471-r129649530-Pukara_de_Quitor_Ruins-San_Pedro_de_Atacama_Atacama_Region.html