Hi – I haven’t posted for a few days as I’ve not had any Wi-Fi because I’ve been on an incredible journey through the desert and the salt flats – but more on that later.

I’m going to catch up and start by going back to Thursday 22 March. Much of Thursday was spent travelling from Valparaiso to San Pedro. I was picked up at the airport in San Pedro by the hostel I was staying at and as we drive into town the views were pretty amazing.

When I arrived in San Pedro I quickly booked the valley of the moon tour for the next evening and also paid for my tour to Bolivia via the salt flats.

I met a girl in my dorm, Kirsten from Germany and also a guy, Filippo from Italy.

On Friday morning Kirsten and I explored San Pedro. There’s not a huge amount here and most of the main street is filled with tour agencies and souvenir shops.

We visited the small artisan market but as it’s no longer high season not many of the stalls were open. But it was a nice wander round the town.

Late afternoon Kirsten and I went on the moon valley tour and this was amazing. The tour started at the visitors entrance to the park and already the landscape was looking a little surreal.

A short distance into the park we reached the salt cavern where we got out and clambered and crawled through the cave, sometimes using the torches on our phones so we could see where we were going.

At the end of the cave we entered into a canyon where the guide explained about the formation and stratification of the rocks.

Following the canyon we walked back to the minibus and took a short trip to the great dune – and the size of this sand dune was pretty impressive.

We walked along the ridge for around 40 minutes before setting of to see the 3 Marias. On the way we drove past the amphitheatre.

The three Maries are a rock formation and have resulted from intense erosion and are around 1 million years old. You have to have a bit of imagination to see them especially as the head fell off the one on the left.

Personally I preferred the ‘pac-man’ formation which is officially supposed to be a dinasour.

We drove a bit further along to watch the sunset over the valley – it was beautiful.

Then it was home time and a quick change of clothes before heading out for dinner with Kirsten, Filippo, Max, Alfonzo and Carina. I had a local pie dish which was a pie surprise as it had all sorts inside – meat, corn, olives, vegetables and eggs. Very tasty but a little bit too sweet because of the corn. I refrained from alcohol too as I knew I’d be going to high altitude the next day.