It was time to get going on our tour booking. There are hundreds of booking agents all over this little town but we just went with the one the one that the manager of our Hostel (Mama Tierra) ran.
She seemed very confident and certainly had a no-bullshit attitude and could tell us what are the advantages and disadvantages to each of the tours. It was gonna take time to get a good idea of all the tours that are advertised. So many options and they all sounded so similar - but apparently they are all different.
Anyway, we booked something for the next day and the day after. We were also thinking about going on a three day trip to Bolivia (as Martin had planned) but this was a bit much in the end and we decided to focus on Chile and the Atacama area we were in.
One other adventure that needed to be done was sandboarding. There are two options, going on an organized tour that includes and instructor, boards, boots, helmet, transport and all that or get a bike and a board. We were tending towards the hard core version but, the fact that we didn't even know where exactly to find these dunes and the heat and the rumour that the place was 17 km far away made us reconsider. In addition it was cheaper to do the package.
So why not? We booked a Sandboarding class for 5pm, and reverted back to chilling in the hostel.
I had to do some planning for my next destination, Mexico and a bit of reading up on Cuba, so we enjoyed a lazy day and realized very soon it was a good idea that we didn't take the bikes. It was really unbearable hot. Not so much the temperature, may 36 - 38 degrees but it was just so dry and stuffy. We were happy to lie in the hammock in the shade and had to do nothing.
Until, at 5 we headed over to the place from where the sandboarding trip would start. It was a good group of maybe 10 people, we all go boards and stuff and went over to a Big white econovan and headed out into the Valle de Muerto.
Funny story about that valley btw, apparently a belgish explorer called the place Valle de Marte (Mars Valley) because it looked like mars to him, but because of his accent people understood Valle de Muerto (Death Valley). So it's not as dangerous as it sounds in the end.
We got to the Sand dunes and the cool Sand boarder guy gave us a quick 30 min introduction into how it's done and off we went.
Having done some snowboarding before I thought this shouldn't be a problem and it is just like sandboarding in the heat. But it wasn't: First of all there was no lift and carrying a board up a 70m sand dune in 35 degrees heat over and over again is quite exhausting. But going down was good fun actually, although it was much slower than I expected. The sand has much more friction than snow, so you use candles to wax up the board, but that does not improve the speed by much.
Kai, had not snowboarded before but he also very quickly got the hang of it and was carving down the dunes like a pro after the first couple of tries.
We went for 2 hours up and down the dunes and it all worked out quite well. It was a cool experience but would not necessary become a new hobby. Snowboarding is much cooler (well obviously).
After not having broken any bones and done our workout for the day we were all craving for some proper food.
To be honest it was a good call we didn't take the hard core bike route as we would not have found the place with the dunes anyway and would probably have died in the desert.
Kai and I ordered some sort of Meat plate with incredible amounts of different meats on it and that was just the right thing that night, although we wert told not to eat too much and not red meats and don't drink too much as we were going to go to 4500 m tomorrow.
But we couldn't help it, we had to eat a lot after that day. It sort of was a reward for the exhausting activities.
We had one more beer in the Salle de la Cerveza and then were ready to get back and shower off the sand.
We also needed to change rooms. We were wrecked, full and all was good. Time for bed as it was going to be an short night once again.
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