A desert escapade to (not) turn 30.

For a long time I'd had the idea of doing something really special the day I'd turn 30 years old, or twenty-ten, like my bff suggested, because the idea of turning that age seemed horrible to me at the time. What a silly thing!

I always wanted to go back to Machu Picchu. Seeing the sunrise there was one of the most wonderful moments I can remeber in my life, so the idea of starting my 30 years in the Inca city seemed an awesome plan. However, beacause of my job at the moment I couldn't take at least two weeks off, and making that trip for fewer days just didn't seem worthy. The ads of flights popped up all the time on my social media and Chile was only a short and cheap flight away from Montevideo. Two or three weekends before my birthday, my then boss was getting to my nerves, and the thing went out of proportion when he texted me on a Sunday midnight about the corrections I had previously sent him with the urge he had demanded, a day before.

So, when I saw that text, I opened the airline site, I also opened booking.com to see if there was a room available fot the dates I wanted, I booked the room, the flight, and F*CK OFF EVERYTHING.

San Pedro de Atacama was spinning in my head since my days in the rainforest, when my Nordic friend told me that the sky over the desert was as clear as the one we were seeing then.

So, as soon as I decided to go, the activity search and the puzzle to fit everything in the few days I had, started. I sent an email to a tour agent asking for information of prices and booking a week or ten days before the departure date and waited.

Less than 24 hours before the take-off, while I was preparing my lunch, I got an email. It was the response from the tour agent I had written to. The email said something like this: "Due to the persistent bad wather in the area, we strongly recommend you not to come to San Pedro de Atacama at all this weekend".

By then, if I cancelled the hostel I'd loose money and if I changed my flight, the fees would duplicate the price I had paid. I was blocked, so I called my dad who is actually good at giving advice in these situations. He put it this way: "you can spend a lot of money cancelling your trip, or you can use what you already have booked and paid for and go. And if you can't go to any place, in the worst case scenario, you'll stay in the hostel playing cards with some people". See? Didn't I tell you my dad gives good advice? So, after having lunch, I started to pack and charging my camera battery, in 24 hours I was going to know the driest place on Earth.

*You can read the original version of this post in Spanish here.