I never knew that a desert could be so beautiful, but my trip to San Pedro de Atacama included some of the greatest scenery I've ever experienced. It's really hard to pick just a couple pictures for this blog, so you should look at the rest on Facebook!

The tiny pueblo of San Pedro, where our hostel was located. It's full of small shops and restaurants and tourists. It was weird to see so many other gringos and hear so many languages other than Spanish.
El Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). We hiked all over the rocks and squeezed through a tiny, pitch-black cave.
This is a giant sand dune that we trekked up.
Our awesome tour guides surprised us with wine and cheese at the end of our first day. We drank our wine while watching the sun set over the mountains in the Atacama desert. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
On our second day, we went to a salar (a wildlife reserve with lots of salt deposits). It was weirdly beautiful.
And we saw flamencos there!! The last thing I expected to find in the Chilean desert was flamingos, but hey, this country is full of surprises.
Then we went to see some gorgeous lakes at a ridiculously high altitude. I love the contrast between the desert, the water, and the snow on the mountains! Crazy.
On the third day, we woke up at 3:30 am to go see geysers. It was way too early and way too freezing, but getting to see the sunrise over the geysers was worth it.
We stripped off all our winter clothes and swam in a hot spring near the geysers. It was SO COLD, but the water was about 80 degrees and kept us from dying. Getting out was pretty painful, though...
And of course one of the best things about South America is llamas. During this trip, I saw tons of llamas, fed a llama, and even tried some llama meat (which may seem kind of cruel after the previous llama bonding....I'm sorry...but it was delicious).
On our last day in San Pedro, we had some free time so we decided to go sand boarding. It's like snow boarding down the side of a dune!
I was a huge wimp at first and absolutely terrified of going down the steep dune. But everyone else told me to suck it up -- so I finally did, and it was awesome. This is a picture of me being a badass sandboarder. Since sand is soft and warm, it's not really that risky of a sport. After a couple hours of this, we had to hop on a plane back to Santiago without any time to shower...I think I'm still removing sand from some parts of my body...