San Pedro de Atacama, N Chile (near Calama)

What an absolutely amazing place.

Good job too, after a 24h bus journey.

Actually was quite enjoyable, the sleeper buses have hugely big reclining seats and sleeping is no problem. I had The Life of Pi to read, and amused myself in trying to find songs by cuddly old Nick Drake that don´t reference death in one way or another (surely not just his instrumentals).

San Pedro, at over 2700m, is an oasis town in the Atacama desert, surrounded by the incredibly colourful rocky landscape of the Cordillera de Sal on one side, and huge snow-capped volcanoes on the other. In between is a huge salt flat (the very occasional rivers around here have no outlet to the sea, so salt lakes and flats are numerous, complete with flamingoes. In that respect, if no other, it´s a bit like the Rift Valley in Kenya). The air is clear and the viz perfect, and there is tons to do.

http://www.gochile.cl/html/SanPedro/SanPedro.asp
http://photo.sanmedia.dk/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=4&pos=7
http://www.sanpedroatacama.com/
http://www.gochile.cl/html/ClimbSP/ClimbSP.asp

You can hire bikes in town, and there are amazing bits of desert, eg Death Valley and Val de Luna close by. After coming straight up from sea level I´m taking it fairly easy so far.

The Andes here start at about the height that the Alps are finishing. Might hike a volcano later in the week. You can potter up 5600 or 6040 m peaks on day hikes with no technical difficulty, just altitude is the problem.

Makes my altitude record seem a bit poor. Never bothered to record previous records before, but it was a bit of a talking point with other folks on Kinabalu back in Borneo. Now I´m curious and a quick google (for peaks I remember) results thus:

Coniston Old Man to Ben Nevis via all the usual stuff
Pic de la Coma Pedrosa, Andorra - 2942m
Klein Schreckhorn, Bernese Oberland - 3300m? (1985)
Monch, Bernese Oberland - 4099m (1985)
Aiguille de Geant, Rochefort and Pt? Grande Jorasses (1986)
Paldor base camp and some, Nepal - about 4600m (1986, HACE due to rapid ascent).
More Alpine peaks and a couple of 4km-ish Turkish summits 1986 - 1990
Point Margherita, Ruwenzori Mountains, Congo - 5109m (1991)
More Alps, Mt Whitney 14,496 ft (California, get metric dudes) and Pt Lenana, Mt Kenya - 4985m (1991 - 1995)
Lazy cragrat (1999 - present)

Hmm, looks like a new record should be easy then...