Day 55

40,106  – 40,163     57 Miles today (17,463 Miles Overall

San Pedro De Atacama

I ended up liking the vibe a lot in this desert town so I decided to stay two nights. Last night I booked a ticket for a desert in down with some cool views. I got up pretty early and went out for breakfast. It took the server maybe 3-4 minutes to figure out I was asking for milk. I don’t understand what’s up with people. I even showed her on google translate and she was confused. At the end of my breakfast she brings me a cup of milk and charges me $2 for it. Insanity.

I make my way over to the desert entrance and park my bike. it looks pretty cool in here but doesn’t look like there’s too much to see for the $12 entrance fee. I start my hike up to the first two viewpoints and I’m following a few French people. We get to the top and meet some other people from NZ, and Switzerland. We all take some pictures and then on the way down some guy that works at the park starts yelling at the French couples taking their ticket and putting it in his pocket. I ask them what’s going on and the guy starts yelling at me asking me for my ticket. I told him it’s in my motorcycle and I didnt carry it with me.

Supposedly we went past a marked area which we weren’t supposed to go and everyones lost their tickets to another viewpoint outside of town that you get when you get these tickets for the desert. Oh well. We all walk down bullshitting about things and when I get to my bike some woman working there approaches me and tells me I have to give her my ticket. I said I didn’t do anything wrong. We just followed other people there and they should have marked the trail better. I told her if she wanted to take my ticket from me then she would literally have to take my ticket from me. She was not happy at all.

I got on my bike and rode to the end of the road in the desert which wasn’t very far and then went for one more little hike which was garbage because it just led to another parking lot. I met half the French group on it and talked to them for 25 minutes and then we parted ways. Back into town I went! That wasn’t very worth the $12.

I went into town to exchange some money into Argentinian Pesos so I have something when I roll into Argentina tomorrow. I got some food here and there in town, went to a playground and did a big pull up workout and then made my way to a big gorge. On the way I picked up a Swiss girl and we took my bike over to the trailhead. We took about a 2 hour hike through this cool looking gorge and then to a scenic viewpoint. We made our way back down and she munched on an apple while I went for a little swim in a river by the trailhead to clean up. I was in the sun most of the day without a shirt on and covered in dust with a good tan.

After that I went into town for a little more food and then off to the viewpoint outside of town where everyone else lost their tickets too. I hung out there for a bit and took some pictures of the sunset. I went back into town for dinner and I’m starting to realize Chile is as expensive as Switzerland. Its insanity and the food is actually terrible for the prices they are charging. I ended up being stuck at the restaurant till about 10:30 till they gave me my check and I ran home to pack everything to get an early start in the morning for the border crossing.