Ahhhh the desert. We love the desert. The desert is great for two reasons. Firstly, the scenery (which is pretty nice as you can see in the above picture), and secondly, and most importantly, the heat. It's hot here!
In all seriousness, when packing for South America, I was thinking sun, sea, surf and sand. Away from the sea, I was thinking more sun, jungle, mosquitoes, sweltering temperatures and all the other things you associate with tropical and sub-tropical regions. Sure I was expecting it to get a little chilly down in Southern Patagonia, but I thought once we were back above the Tropic of Capricorn, it would start to warm up a bit.
I was not expecting to be shivering in a jeep wearing pretty much all the clothes I'd brought, wrapped in a sleeping bag, when the outside temperature is close to -50 degrees farenheit. That is what happened on the last day of our salt plains tour, and I never want to experience such cold ever again. I honestly think we'd have been better off in Antartica, because then at least we'd have had the sense to pack more than two jumpers.
Allow me to explain: There's this thing called altitude. When you're above 3000m high it doesn't matter where you are in the world, it's going to be pretty cold. Nearly all the places we visited in Peru and Bolivia were over the magic 3000 number, and our last night in Bolivia (the -50 degrees farenheit night) was spent at over 5000m (with no heating). That's higher than Mount Kenya, the highest mountain I've ever climbed. Mount Kenya is bang on the equator and has a glacier on it - that's how cold it gets at 5000m.
Added to this, Peru and Bolivia don't believe in central heating for some reason (and hot water is an "added benefit" rather than the norm), so basically, we've been very cold for a month. It's been a great month, filled with amazing sights and activities, but a very cold one all the same. In short, it's great to be in a desert ...
Unfortunately it is a very expensive desert, so we had just two days to relax and see the sights, or our budget would be blown and we'd be back in England come June. On Day 1 we decided to rent bikes, cycle to some dunes, sandboard down them, then cycle on to something called "The Valley of the Moon" for sunset.
Part 1 of the plan went very well. We rented bikes without a hitch, and cycled through some gorgeous canyons on the way to the dunes. The route went via a single track mountain bike path which was great fun to cycle along. It was quite tough though, and took us nearly twice as long as we were expecting. We reached the dunes eventually however, which were set amid some spectacular scenery (the picture at the start of this blog was taken from the top of one of the dunes). It was then that things started to go a bit wrong.
The sandboard that we'd been given was configured for a left-footer, which meant we had to attempt to go down the dunes "the wrong way round". This took a bit of getting used to ... as you can see in the pictures of my first attempt:
Fortunately for me, the subsequent runs went a little better, and we had a decent hour or so with the board before mounting our bikes again, and setting off for The Valley of the Moon. By this time, a big wind had whipped up, making the trip back along the mountain bike path even more exhilirating, since the wind was at our backs. Unfortunately this didn't last for long, as at the end of the path we had to double back on ourselves, and head right into it towards the Valley of the Moon.
Over the next couple of hours the wind grew nearly to a gail. On the uphill sections of the track, we were forced us to get off and walk our bikes to prevent from going backwards! After a long hard slog, and not a little complaining, we finally reached the border of the "Valley of the Moon National Park" at 5.50pm, a good 40 minutes before the scheduled sunset time of 6.30pm.
It was here that we found out that the actual "Valley" (and not just the entrance to the National Park) was at least 30 minutes away by bike, and that sunset was at 6 not 6.30 as we had been told. Oh, and there was also a $10 charge for entering the park.
The entrance itself was in front of a big mountain, which the sun had already disappeared behind, so we couldn't really watch the sunset from there. However, travelling any further would cost us $10, which was a pretty bad deal since we had no hope of reaching the fabled "Valley" by 6 anyway. After much pleading and hysteria, the nice woman at the gate allowed us in for free, and pointed us in the direction of some dunes that we could at least see the sunset from. It was pretty decent:
Our ordeal wasn't quite over yet though ... we had to cycle back ... in the pitch black ... with a wind that had now reached hurricane proportions. Somehow we made it - I'm not quite sure how - I think I've blocked out that part of the day completely from my memory. Anyway, we made it back, and resolved never to rent bikes again. But more importantly, we could relax as the day was now over. Some bits were fun, some were exhilarating, some were exhausting and some were soul destroying, but at least we could rest with the knowledge that we had done something with our day. We decided to check the photos and relive the best and worst moments. We got the camera out of our bag, pressed the on button ... and ... nothing. It wouldn't turn on. As a final revenge, the wind, our nemesis, had blown sand into the camera, and it was now broken. Arrrghhhh!
The next day we decided to do nothing.
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