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San Pedro de Atacama, Chile Day 21 We checked in to the Mama Tierra hostel late the night before, where we had very kindly been collected from the bus terminal. As it had been pitch black we really had very little idea of what our surroundings were like.
Set in the Atacama desert it is one of the dryest places on earth, with 320 clear night skies on average per year. The sky colour in daytime on our photos looks like a fake travel brochure blue it is so clear and bright. We found it boiling hot during the day and freezing cold at night. Chile has around 151 active volcanos and a good number of these can be seen from San Pedro. One of which erupts every year in April, except last year when it occured in July and this year....well they are still waiting, luckily for us there were no erruptions during our short stay.
Death Valley and Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) Our first excursion was to Death Valley, mistakenly named this by the locals who had misunderstood a french speaking Dutch priest years before. He had named it
Valle de la Marte (Mars valley) due to it´s familiarities with the red barren Mars surface. However, the locals misunderstood this as Valle de la Morte (morte meaning death in french) ... and so the name Valle de la Muerte (valley of death) was born. The rock formations here are crazy and so Planet Mars like in appearance that NASA tested their moon buggies here.
Heading on to the Moon Valley we visited the ´Three Marys´ (a strange rock formation that we never quite understood why it gots it´s name)... to be honest, we believe one of the formations should be called the ´dinosaurs´ head´ (just look at the photo). We also visited a nearby disused salt cave which closed down sometime in the 20s as salt prices plummeted - it wasn´t too amazing but yes we did taste the salt crystals and yes of course they tasted....salty. Next on to Moon Valley where we clambered up the side of the sandy and rocky hill to sit and patiently wait for sunset. Which according to our guide was one of the best in the world......ehemm.
The landscape was packed with volcanos and as the sun set the backdrop
Overlooking Valle de La Luna
Visibility that day was 250kms across the Salar de Atacama behind us of the land turned a deep red, it was impressive but not as stunning as we had expected and been led to believe.
Day 22 - Geysers del Tatio Today we were up at 3:30am and waited patiently in the freezing cold for our tour bus to collect us and take us to the Geysers del Tatio. The highest Geysers in the world at a staggering altitude of nearly 4300mts above sea level. The night sky was so incredibly clear that we saw 5 shooting stars between us in the space of 40 minutes. Of which 2 were really vibrant and had lengthy tails.
I was concerned about going to above 4000mts as we already found breathing uncomfortable and difficult at times, especially when you forgot the altitude and walked too fast... respect the altitude was something we learned very quickly. To help with the altitude sickness, Thomas had purchased coca leaves the night before.... do as the locals do I guess.
After some time and a great deal of ear popping moments for both of us we arrived at day break to the Geysers. The smell of sulphur was really pungent. We were
completely surrounded by geysers, some quite large - all were discharging a constant flow of steam and every now and then the larger geysers shot up water at 185 degrees celsius in temperature. We had been advised how dangerous these were and to keep a good distance from them and not to run as the crusts around the geysers were fragile as had been discovered to the misfortune of 5 people who had perished when gettng too close some years before.
Running would have been out of the question anyway, it was baby steps everywhere as it was very hard to breath with ease and the altitude made us feel incredibly light headed and ...well, just odd and uncomfortable in an unexplainable way. So we chewed on coca leaves and hoped these would help. We also had the opportunity to take a dip in the natural thermal pools there, but as I was feeling pretty bad I declined but Thomas braved the minus 7 degree temperature to jump into the warm (32 - 35 degree) pool.
On the way back down to reality we stopped off to visit one of the highest villages in the area, Caspana, home
to just 5 people including 1 child it is currently part of a government project to repopulate this village as its roots go back as far as 800BC.
Back in San Pedro and after a short walk around the village, we recovered by sleeping the rest of the day in order to be tip top for our 3 day jeep journey across the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.
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