We slept in and then went out in search if breakfast. We had asked a tourist at another cafe if she knew of any good breakfast places and she sent us down the road to a place she had eaten the day before. The place itself looked kind of disheveled but the menu was great. It was run by a French woman so there were tons of delicious, fresh options to be had. We had booked a sandboarding tour the day before which didn't leave until 3:00pm, so we had plenty of time to lounge around and read.
We met for our sandboarding at the tour agency and were assigned gear along with the 16 other people in our group. I was a little worried since they gave us an actual snowboard and my previous snowboarding experience had been less than stellar, resulting in most of my time being spent on my ass. Our guide Sebastian assured me not to worry, that I wouldn't fall and would be fine without protective clothing. It was a short bus ride out to Valle de Los Muertos where the big sand dunes are. We grabbed our boards and realized that we would need to hike up the giant sand hill for every run! This is the part I was not excited about. With the altitude and carrying the snowboards in the sand, it took quite an effort to climb to the top each time- talk about a workout!
I was nervous on the first run and couldn't really stand up in the sand, but after the initial jitters, I realized that the sand slows you down a lot more than snow and is very forgiving if you did fall into it. I lost all fear of it and made each of the next runs without stopping at all. It was a lot of fun but definitely could be improved by a chair lift, lol.
After a few hours of sandboarding, we headed to the Valle de la Luna. There are some cave systems there made out of salt which we walked through and sampled.
The Valle de la Luna got its name because it looks like the surface of the moon. It is a very dry landscape, but when they do get the occasional rain storm, the salt is brought to the surface of the rocks by the water, leaving them a jagged white.
We stayed to watch the sunset and drink Pisco sours on the top of one of the mountains. It was very windy and cold but we got some amazing views of the mountains and full moon.
After the sunset, we headed back to town and changed into warmer clothes. We ended up going to "Sol Inti", a restaurant that had gotten great reviews on Trip Advisor and had been recommended by our sandboarding guide. Sadly, they were out of the dish I wanted so we ended up having salmon for the second night in a row. The salmon was really good but the desert was a sour apple gelatin with carmel sauce...so bad.
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