summer time

With things heating up here in Santiago (temperatures are expected to creep into the mid-80s by next week), we thought it'd be a great idea to prepare ourselves for the summer sun by heading to the driest desert in the world ... San Pedro de Atacama! (Ironically, after a steady temperature increase in Santiago since mid-October, it snowed while we were gone.)

We started our magical adventure (really, it was quite magical ... I think we said, "I feel like I'm on the moon" maybe 703 times) with an ill-fated yet still wonderful bike ride through Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) on Friday. Ill-fated because my tire popped (did I mention we were in the Valley of DEATH?). Wonderful because you see a lot more detail when you're walking a stinky broken bike through a barren desert than you do when you try to do fancy tricks to avoid rocks and thick sand traps. 

In the middle of our bike trip, we paused to do some sand-boarding. As Allison's guidebook suggested, we intended to live out our "Lawrence of Arabia fantasies" by gliding smoothly through pristine sand dunes on our sandboard (which was no different from a snowboard, as we deduced from the word "ANTARCTICA" written across the bottom). Turned out my Abby of Arabia dreams were not to be fulfilled this go-around. Our buddy Erica had to do a little dance all the way down the massive sand dune to achieve a measly 4.56 seconds of sliding. So a little anti-climactic. But still fun.

They're not moving. At least I didn't have to say, "Stop moving! I want to take a picture!" like always.

The trek up was brutal. Sweet Madeline had to lend me her shirt so I could protect my burning toes.

After hitchhiking back into town in the truck of a jolly German couple, we visited some lakes that are saltier than the Dead Sea. Because they're so densely saturated with salt, it's impossible to sink in them. Trust me, we tried. But our legs just kept floating to the top. We also rolled around in some nasty-smelling, albeit refreshingly exfoliating, "mineral mud" (in the words of our guide, who very unfortunately chose to wear a Speedo).

After watching the sunset, we spent some together time at the hostel before calling it quits early to prepare for our 3:30 AM wake-up call ... to see the geysers! But before we get to that, a somewhat off-topic explanation: Madeline sometimes likes to have "Hair Down Time." It's basically this great time when Madeline unlocks her ponytail and leaves her hair down. It can be abbreviated HDT. There was some of that at the hostel, and it made us all happy.

Mads may or may not have her hair down in this picture. But trust me ... HDT definitely happened.

We were a little wary of the geysers. Some had told us that it wasn't worth the sleepiness or the altitude sickness (we had to ascend almost 3 miles) or the -13 degrees Celsius (that's 9 degrees Fahrenheit, folks) or the altitooties (won't explain that one). But we did it, and loved it (at least I did ...)!

Note Madeline's Christmas Sweater Country Club ensemble.

On the same tour, Madeline and Allison tried some llama kabobs (rudely right after we saw a pack of llamas and commented on how cute they were ...).

Also on Saturday, we went to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). It really felt outer-spacey.

Yes, my Chilean host parents have me on steroids. (NO I DON'T KNOW WHY I LOOK LIKE A GIANT...even when I'm hunching!)

Senior pic #2!!

After watching yet another beautiful sunset, we dined in an open-air restaurant with a fire-pit and some great music (basically all restaurants are open-air ... who needs a roof with rainfall once a year for a maximum of 5 minutes?). Since Allison's birthday was Halloween, I told the musicians to make her dance. Muahaha.

And we'll fill you in on Allison's surprise (and my birthday shenanigans, as well) in an upcoming post. Stay tuned.

Sunday, our last day in San Pedro, was spent frolicking with flamingos (which we for some reason kept accidentally calling penguins the whole trip) and hovering above the high-altitude lakes (I needed an "h" verb there to make some parallel alliteration ... sorry it didn't work so well). We were told by our guide Salvador that flamingos spend 80% of their life dragging their noses through mud to collect shrimp. The other 20% is spent mating. Pretty humdrum existence. But they seemed so rosy and happy!

Anddd we saw some other unexpected fauna on our way up to the blue blue lakes.

Fox. Zorro.

Ostrich. Chile is so weird.

There's the lake! Mads and I used our fifth-grade science knowledge to deduce that the lake is so blue because it's only 3 meters deep ... which means the always-cloudless sky is easily reflected. Right?

San Pedro really was fantastic. Every time we visit a new city, we fall in love a little more with how strange and diverse Chile really is.

We're very blessed :).