Errand day in the desert

Today it’s safe to say that although we got a lot done – a lot of errands – we basically did nothing.
I actually (as usual) woke up super early but fell back asleep soon after and at about 9ish Juliet and I were both up. 9 might not seem that late, as far as lie in goes, but when we went to bed at 10pm the night before, an 11 hour sleep was well deserved.
After having the biggest and most ridiculous stress this morning about what we should do in terms of getting to Peru – I basically wound myself up a huge amount, we finally have a plan and our flights are in the process of being booked. We are now going to Lima, the capital of Peru and are going to spend some time there. We have extra time on our hands as we’re now not visiting some of the Bolivian towns we’d planned on, but we’re both actually really looking forward to Lima now, and have read up all about the shopping and amazing Peruvian restaurants that it has to offer.
Our errands for today included: 1) having a lovely omelette brunch for £3 (not really an errand but very necessary. 2) Buying some gloves, we figured as we’re going to be putting our bodies through minus twenty five degree cold, the least we could do is give our fingers a chance. We went to a local market and bought some double layered, super warm alpaca gloves for £2.50. (Even though we were given free ones before, they are fingerless and very thin and we just didn’t believe they could do the job). 3) Exchanging some money into Bolvian bolivianos. We need 200 (about £17) as a entry fee for the salt flats and it is recommended to bring 50 more (about £4) incase we want to buy souvenirs/water/snacks etc. (the fact that we only need £4 shows how cheap Bolivia is!). 4) Our last errand was to get some toilet roll – we’ve been warned that this is a must as there is absolutely none in any of the hostels we will be staying in while on our salt flats tour. Lucky for us (so stingy) but our hostel has piles of toilet rolls in their bathrooms so we didn’t need to actually leave to hostel to complete this errand.
We also booked our Atacama deserts tours for the next few days.
Tomorrow we are planning on exploring ourselves, either by foot or by bike (which seems like a popular option) and then in the evening we have a star gazing tour. The at scams desert is the best place in the world to see stars and so we figured that this is a must.
On Monday at 4.30am we are going off to see the Geysers in the desert and the natural hot springs. We’ll come back for a couple of hours in the middle of the day and then in the afternoon we, along with three other girls we’ve made friends with, actually have a private tour of the Moon Valley. (It cost 1000pesos each – £1 – to make the tour private)
Then on Tuesday we are off to the Salt Flats!
We heard that the climate here actually drains your energy and as we both had naps this afternoon and were in bed by 8pm this evening.. I’m beginning to agree!

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I’m missing everyone at home lots but am looking forward to the next few days!
Shout out to my amazing parents at the Darby races today… Especially my beautiful mummy who came out with winnings!! (Unfortunately daddy didn’t do so well.. Hehe)

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