December & the desert of Atacama

Hi there

It's been a while. I don't really know why I ever decided to start writing a blog since I knew very well I would run out of motivation eventually. I thought by writing a blog I could get people in Finland (and elsewhere) informed on how and what am I doing here and that afterwards I wouldn't have a hundred persons asking me how am I actually doing. Oh boy was I wrong ahahaha

keeping a blog has definitely scraped off a few of the extra questions but I still get a lot of q's about a lot of things, such as my weekly schedule and wellbeing. Oh and one of my friends still thinks that I'm in France. 

Now that this unnecessary rant is over, I'm just gonna say that I'm not giving up on this blog thing, at least not yet. So here, have a quick summary of my December so far.

December in a nutshell

During December, I decorated the christmas tree, left my school for summer vacations, celebrated Finland's independence day, wrapped christmas presents, met friends, and did some sports. 

the biggest thing that has happened during December though was a trip to the north of Chile. We took off with my family to go on a quick 4-day vacation to the north, on the desert of Atacama in a city called San Pedro. During those four days we did in total four tours and still managed to have time to wonder around the city. The north was really pretty and very different from pretty much all other places I've been in. Decided to make this my first (and most probably the last) blogpost with actual photos of what has been going on because why not:

Me enjoying life at Termas de Puritama

Termas de Puritama was the first tour we went through. The place is located in a valley and consists of about 7 (?) thermal baths. This place in particular was really pretty, never thought I'd see a place like this in the middle of a desert :D

Valle de La Luna

Valle de La Luna or The Moon Valley is a national park, and it's pretty much full on desert. We hiked on one of the hills there and heard a lot about how the valleys and salt build-ups were formed. Interesting in a way, but all the talk and information was in Spanish so it went basically in from the other ear and right out from the other. Beautiful place regardless of that!

We also watched the sunset in Valle de La Luna, and I just had to do a pose like this. sorry not sorry.

Next up was a tour named Piedras Rojas (red rocks). Started with watching flamingoes eat. interesting. I didn't get a good picture of them but I saw them. Trust my word. More things I saw: alpacas, more animals which I don't know the name of, more salt-water pools and a couple of red rocks. 

Last but not least, I woke up at 4 am on a Sunday, to go see the Geysers of Tatio. These hot mineral bath geysers were super cool, and would say it was worth the less-than-4-hours sleep the night before. When we got to the geysers, the temperature outside was about -10°C, felt just like home!! :D There would've been a chance to go swim in one but I didn't have my swimsuit with me so I didn't... Oh well too bad.

Altogether during this trip I woke up early every day, sat in airplanes, mini-vans, cars and thermal pools. Walked a lot, ate good food and burned preeeetty badly from my face, but it was great.

Tomorrow is christmas eve, and I still have pretty much no idea how i'm going to be spending the last days of this decade, but we'll see about that. Who knows, maybe I'll even write about it here. That being said, I hope you all have happy holidays and a great start to 2020. Until next one,

Saara