21-24th May (Mon-Thur)
New country and a lovely shiny new currency, literally - Chile must be doling out new notes because all my Chilean pesos were crispy copies of the Australian waterproof dollars. The border crossing was so simple we almost didn't realise that we had actually landed into San Pedro (2,407m) because I hadn't quite anticipated how deserted in the desert it was! The Atacama Desert is one of the driest deserts in the world, except for this year when they had 30 days of rain instead of the usual 5. Some parts of the desert haven't seen a drop of rain since record keeping began! As such all bricks are made from mud and sand, no need for concrete. The biggest building in the town was the police station, apart from that and the church nothing else was particularly aesthetically pleasing. The entire town essentially consisted of extension after extension of small wattle and daub makeshift rooms which were then turned into tiny restaurants, tiny bars, tiny mercados and tiny tourist shops. With all the sand and dust and hundreds of dogs roaming around I found it all to be quite quaint.
Day One was spent searching for a hostel which was extremely difficult as no map had all the streets on it, but thanks to my new Spanish skills we eventually found our way. That night we had our first Pisco drink in a very cool reggae bar complete with a Rastafarian DJ mixing his own iTunes with YouTube! Day Two we met the girls, Sian and Grace from London and moved to their hostel and spent the day organising our Salt Flat Tour. Day Three was activity day! San Pedro is a backpackers favourite for it's proximity to all things geysers, volcanoes, hot springs, salt flats, salt lagoons (buoyancy), deserts, sand dunes, and Andean peaks. Fortunately all of us had the same two activities in mind - sandboarding and star gazing!
For 8,000 Chilean Pesos (divide by two and multiply by three for Euro) we set off with 'Pirate Adventures' to go sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) followed by Pisco sours over sunset in Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). Sandboarding was such work, hiking up a hill in soft soft sand is such work when going down takes no more than thirty seconds. Old snowboards and bindings were matched to each gringo with little attention paid to height and then long white candles were broken up and divided out between us all. It was absolutely essential to 'wax' the board before each run. After a brief demonstration from our 'sandboarding instructor' everyone was left to their own devices and fresh tracks in the sand were made by about 3 or 4 who had snowboarded before.. everyone else fell head over heels down the 'slope' with the instructor shouting out helpful advice like 'close your eyes' or 'close your mouth'! The entire thing was hilarious and we all had sand in every nook and cranny because it took one or two runs to get used to it. We had to rush then and leave Death Valley to get to Moon Valley in time for sunset.
If you can imagine San Pedro to be like the desert planet in Star Wars then Death Valley is where they raced those land pods things. Crazy and often unworldy rock formations with only one path which was completely dug out to make the area passable by 4x4.. The name actually comes from a mispronunciation by a Belgian priest who thought the landscape looked like Mars, or 'Marte' and the locals misinterpreted his pronounciation believing he said 'Muerte'. Moon Valley is so called because the landscape resembles the moon's surface and after a 15 minute difficult hike we reached our viewpoint for a beautiful sunset. Beautiful not where the sun disappeared behind a very high rock plateau, but for the change in the colours of the rocks and soil as the shadow creeped towards the Andean mountains behind the Valley. Unfortunately I had left my battery in the charger so my photos were taken on my iPhone.
San Pedro is apparently one of the 'World's Top 10 Stargazing Spots' and neither the girls nor I wanted to miss out on the tour led by French astronomer Alain Maury which came recommended in the Lonely Planet. We were so so cold for the two/three hours that we spent outside looking through the huge and incredibly valuable telescopes, listening to his explanation of the stars and their movement but it was well worth it. The Milky Way down here is so clear at night that to see it through the telescope is incredible!
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| Me bundled up in layers with stars! |
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| Took a photo of Saturn through the telescope, didn't turn out as well as what we actually saw but it's still cool! |
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