North Trip! (Day 4 and 5!)

After we showered and got ready, my roommates (Jodie, Jessica, and Stella) and I were late to get on the bus. They told us the time and we were there on time. But.. it turned out that our phones had switched time zones when there wasn't actually a change. The counselors yelled at us, but we weren't the last ones on the bus, so we were all good. Anyways, we were off to the salt caves! They were so cool to walk through! They said to bring hiking shoes and they were right! Some parts were pretty narrow and we had to bend and squeeze ourselves through.

When we got through, we spent some time climbing around and taking pictures!

We were actually taking pictures in the shadow. ;) Jodie and I

Jodie, Brenna, and I

After a while to take pictures, we were off! To the Valle de la Luna! It was definitely a high light of the trip. (Captions are going on the bottom of the pictures on some of them in this post...)

We started out by walking along a path to the top of a hill. It wasn't too bad with a sight like this:

And go to the top to take a zillion pictures!! These are some of my favorites from my whole exchange. Flag pictures are the best.

The view

Our attempt at a U-S-A picture hahhaa.

Alex, Grace, Jodie, and I

Vivien and I with the Chilean flag:

Chile!

Most of us!

Some of the best people from the trip!

Jodie and I took a lot of hugging pictures. :)

When I realized that my hair was a big mess in this one, I fixed it and took another one. I still like this one better though.

And then we sat down and really watched the sun set. It was so peaceful and amazing.

An American sitting there, in the beautiful country called Chile, watching the sun.

Sitting on a ledge with my legs dangling over.

With one of the best people I know by my side.

It really couldn't get much better.

This might be my favorite picture :)

And soon the sun was set and the moon was out in the Valle de la Luna. So gorgeous.

After the lovely evening in the Valle de la Luna, we went back to the hotel for dinner. After, we had the choice of going to bed or going to walk around the town in a group. I was exhausted and kinda wanted to just sleep. But I figured I better not be lame. :P So a group of 10 or 15 of us, went out with the counselors. We walked around for an hour or so and got a picture with the police. A couple people walking pulled out their phones and stopped to take a picture of a bunch of foreigners. hahaha. 

So. San Pedro de Atacama. It's elevation level is roughly 8,000 feet above sea level. And that was a pretty big change. And so my head hurt most of the drive and my ears were plugged for a good chunk of time. And while we were on the walk my nose started bleeding. Which NEVER happens to me. (well yeah. that's enough about nose bleeds. haha)

It was 12 or so when we got back and we showered (with salty water) and finally got to sleep!

The next day was fabulous! Here we go! Wake up time was at 4 in the morning. Yep. Like 4 solid hours of sleep for me. We were on 2 little buses at 4:30 and were off to see some geysers! Los geysers del Tatio.

The night before they told us, it'll be pretty cold tomorrow, so bundle up! And we all thought, uhh what? I have a sweatshirt...

And they were right. We got out for a bathroom break after an hour in the bus and I was almost crying I was so cold. I had a sweatshirt, a thin jacket, and a pretty scarf. :)

This picture sums up the visit.

But seriously, it was pretty chilly. It was -8 degrees Celsius which is 18 degrees Fahrenheit. And yes, I know, in Ironwood, that's not even cold. But it's different when you don't have any winter clothes.

But anyways! On to the geysers! The geysers of Tatio are the 3rd most important in the world. The importance was explained as the most "present" in the world, if that makes sense. We were at an elevation of 14,000 feet!

They were worth the cold and super pretty with the sun rising.

Jodie and I

Jodie and Jessica!

Me!

Terrece from Australia

Jumping Jacks for the cold.

This whole of hot steam burned me!

After we had explored we had some hot chocolate or tea and some gross sandwiches.

The ride back to the hotel was super long and bumpy, but somehow I still slept soundly.

LLama!

Hehehehe!

We got back to the hotel and changed clothes. Then had free time. Jessica, Stella, Jodie, and I just hung out in the room. Turns out... we missed a surprise birthday party for another exchange student. Most of the kids are part of a WhatsApp group. And that's how they got all the details out. So... we were super late to that. And the leaders were mad with us. But oh well...

After that, we were on the bus again!

Not sure when I took this, but a driving picture:

This time to see some flamingos! There is a national reserve that we visited. It was so pretty and cool! There was a path that we walked along. One both sides there was shallow ponds of water and flamingos! I loved it. Here's some pictures.

I like the reflections in this one: 

Jodie and I:

Jodie, Grace, and I:

One of the rules was that we had to be quiet to respect the flamingos in their habitat. So it was so peaceful to be in relative silence.

This reserve is located on the largest salt flat in Chile. Called the Salar de Tara or the Tara salt flat. So all the white in the background is salt.

Yay flamingos!!

After the flamingos, we went to a part of San Pedro to see this church (I've seen so many churches) and to shop.

Some stairs made out of cool wood:

Hugging a cactus:

I didn't buy anything. Then we went back to a restaurant to have lunch. A pretty looking cream puff. (It wasn't actually that fabulous..)

The next activity was not in the program origionally. But our awesome tour guide talked the Rotary leaders into taking us.

SAND BOARDING.

We drove to Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) and got some snowboards and walked up a sand dune! The view from the top.

Then we strapped ourselves in

And sandboarded down! I've never been snowboarding and I was pretty terrible at skiing. And so I wasn't that great at sandboarding, but I had a lot of fun! It was pretty hot and we were there for 2 hours. And the walk up the hill was eternal.

Here's some pictures!

Lookin' pretty pro, thanks to Jessica's photography skills:

I still had my fair share of falls though. In one, I twisted my knee and it hurt for a few days after.

I had so, so, SO much fun though!

After sandboarding, we went back to the hotel and had free time. Jessica and I went swimming in the pool. It was super cold so we didn't stay long. We went to dinner an hour early by accident. We had an hour to kill and so we asked to go shop in town. And I'm glad we did. I bought my host mom a colorful mate cup (she has a collection) and some post cards.

Then we had dinner for real. We didn't have anything for that night, so my room spent it telling stories, looking at pictures, and laughing. SO MUCH LAUGHING. We were all dead tired. And we were headed out of San Pedro de Atacama the next morning early so we were supposed to pack our bags up. That didn't happen so we ended up being awake until 1:30 or so.

That day was one of my favorites from the trip! We did a LOT of activities and squeezed them into one day.

I'm almost done writing about my fantastic North trip. And then I'll be on to write about exciting things happening right now!

Thanks for being my patient blog readers. It amazes me how many people read this thing!

Cuídate! I'll write again soon!