More Atacama

Well late evening in San Pedro de Atacama is very pleasant about 7 celsius, no wind and plenty of eating and drinking places not to mention a backdrop of a whole pile of 6000 metre mountains. This looks not bad thinks me.

Well it isn´t bad, technically it isn´t that warm, about 18 to 20 degrees, but the intensity of the sun is unbelievable: it feels like forty degrees out of the shade. I now know what it feels like to be a meal for one in the microwave, and this is with sun factor fifty cream liberally applied . As if that isn´t bad enough when you step in the shade it becomes cold. As a result I am darting to and from different sides of the street like some obsessive jaywalker.

As for what I am going to do here sun allowing, well I am going on a tour of the salt flats, geysers and at night, when there is a uniformity to the suns influence,to an astronomical institute. Then on Sunday its on to Bolivia, where I am reliably informed I will be spending my first night in a byre, I can´t wait. 

There has been a gap in this epistle and that is the town of Iquique, near the Peruvian border, where I stayed a few nights, but there wasn´t anything to report there except 600 metre sand dunes, massive waves,  a city centre with sidewalks (and I do mean sidewalks) made of wood, lorries that deliver liquid gas like like ice cream vans in Scotland (yes to music), beautiful one storey wooden buildings, tsunami evacuation signs in the streets and a giant multi storey department store called Ripley´s, which believe it or not was quite Alien to everything around it.