Woke up in the middle of the salt flats to a beautiful sunny morning. Rode to a small touristy town by the Bolivian border called San Pedro de Atacama. We literally rode around the town probably 6 times looking for the Copec gas station. We stopped to ask locals for directions and each time they seemed to point in different directions. We finally found it tucked away on the property of a hostel. After fueling our bikes we filled our bellys with a Chacarraro (basically a burger). We walked around the touristy areas to check out what there was to do in the area. We found out there was a geiser about 100 kms away from town so we decided to go check that out.
Here we are checking out the market in San Pedro.
We rode up to an elevation around 4500 meters to get to the El Tatio Geisers which were located near many snow capped valcanoes. We ended up misreading the park map and ended up taking a detour down a very narrow, washed out, dangerous road but finally got to the geisers. There were many little geisers bubbling away around the area. The best part was the thermas´ that you could wade into and enjoy. The temperature was pretty cool but the pools were quiet warm which was a contrast in feelings.
The high altitude made breathing quiet difficult and we were both getting headaches. Also the bikes ran like absolute crap. The KLR with its mighty 37 horse power felt like it was running with 5 hp. Literally the bikes would stall when you would come to a stop. At the termas pools we met an Australian couple who were driving this beast of a vehicle throughout the world. Their blog at :
http://www.globalroamer2.com/
After leaving the hot springs we rode towards Calama. The road out of the Valcanoe area was amazing. The sun was setting and we decended about 2500 meters in a matter of minutes. We rolled into Calama as the sun was just setting behind the mountains and found ourselves a hotel. The hotel required us to park our bikes at a parking lot down the street which was treat to figure out as the directions were in Spanish.
