San Pedro in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert has evolved from a small village into a pit stop for buses of name-tagged tourists and salt-crusted travelers from Bolivia. Its dusty streets belie the fact that San Pedro has hotels that somehow manage to charge US$ 100 for rooms without room service, and bars and restaurants where a highball can set you back US$ 10.

It’s not what you expect from a small town in one of the driest regions on the planet, two hours from the nearest bank machine. San Pedro, however, is the base to explore the majestic Valley of the Moon and the explosive desert geysers. The more adventurous can try one of the region's popular sports — sliding down a dune with a plank of wood strapped to your feet.

I imagined sandboarding would be much like snowboarding, except hotter and without layers of Gore-Tex. Actually, I’m told it's closer to surfing, but I wouldn’t know because I spent too much time falling like a chicken dropped out of an airplane. Mind you, that does sum up my surfing experience.

Chile’s Valley of the Moon, more dramatically referred to as Death Valley, has its own unique appeal of beauty and desolation.

I had arranged my trip with Atacama Expeditions, whose Brazilian guide, David, was a professional sandboarder seeking sponsorship to compete in the United States. He didn’t speak much English, but his skin was deeply tanned, he could do cool back flips, and he managed to pick up some girls from another group on the dunes, thereby displaying all the attributes one looks for in a ski, snow or sandboard instructor.

The shuttle bus dropped us off in a part of the Atacama dramatically named Death Valley, primarily because nothing lives out there, but also because it sounds great for the tourists (the Valley of the Moon had been named as recently as the 1970s, after someone saw footage of the lunar landing and saw the similarities). The boards resembled shorter snowboards, with Velcro straps to secure your feet, and blunt rounded edges. Although the pros go barefoot, we were advised to wear low-cut shoes to avoid any injuries when falling, which apparently we’d be doing a lot of.

I quickly learned the first and most important lesson of sandboarding, that is, in order to come down, you have to walk up. It was still early in the morning, but my factor 30 sunblock was already out as we walked up towards a rocky ridge. Ten minutes later, the full beauty of Death Valley lay before us: the dunes rolling to the valley floor while the perfect cone of a volcano loomed in the distance. The biggest victims of Death Valley are apparently cameras, which fall prey to the super fine red dust that blows in the wind. Yet, it is hard not to try to capture the vast beauty and sheer desolation of the place.