San Pedro de Atacama

This day. I loved it. But I like adversity. We started the morning with the kids playing outside. I watched them color in the communal kitchen and dining room. 

We had errands to run today: laundry, gas, water, and head out of town. 

Backing out of our campsite in the mud and getting stuck was not on the list. The camp dog barked out my spinning wheel. I got out and turned on the winch and Christine piloted the RV and after two attempts we were free. I shouted at Dd when he was giving Christine opposite direction of what I was giving, so that was a Dad fail.

We drove to town in silence after that. San Pedro de Atacama has adobe walls and dirt roads and lots of tourists. It is not especially pretty and with the recent rains the roads were rutted and with mud holes. There was one laundry shop in town with same day turnaround. Everything else was next day service but we wanted fast turnaround so we paid more than double what we normally paid.

The laundry would be ready at 4 pm so we headed to get some gasoline at the only gas station in town. We saw a German defender that was at our campsite last night and it turns out Dd recognized him and we camped next to him on our first day in Peru at Swiss Wassi. He had just been in Bolivia and loved it and said there was no problem getting gas at a gas station in Uyuni. He was headed to Argentina now. 

I filled up our 5 gallon spare tank and realized our sliding door latch came off again. This was the fourth time it has happened and my third time fixing it. It involves removing the interior window shade and plastic panelling. I ziptied the piece back on again. We parked at the gas station curb and had it fixed in an hour. Not bad.

Next we went to filled up water. The water at our campsite was "hard" per the manager and she didn't recommend drinking it. We paid for five 5-gallon jugs at a grocery store and bought some groceries.

We were going to drive to the town center but we spotted a barber shop without customers. We asked how much for a haircut and it was only $7. Both Dd and I needed haircuts. Dd had a heart cut into his scalp for Valentine's day and I didn't. Oh well.

While I was waiting for my turn Starlink called me and sorted out the problems I had and I wouldn't need to mail my device back to them and they would cancel the shipment to Colombia and give me credit for the purchase. Amazing. They told me to swap out the Starlink dish too as they were going to disable it.

We went to pick up the laundry and I climbed to the roof of the rv and swapped starlink dishes and then spent an hour trying to activate it. Christine and the kids went to walk around the town and bought some cactus fruit ice cream.

It was already past 5pm and we were ready to go and it started raining. We went to the gas station to drop off the trash and the old Starlink and headed out of town on a dirt road. We were not expecting that. We were going to go to a spot on ioverlander that Jeff and Shelly from Canada recommended but decided we didn't want to drive down to the river, and parked at a pullout. We made dinner and the kids played outside until it got too cold. It will be 46 F tonight. And it is raining. Happy Valentine's Day.