High and Dry (Part 1)

---

San Pedro de Atacama is a tiny town in the Chilean Atacama Desert not far from the borders with Bolivia and Argentina. Its sole purpose is to provide a base of exploration for travelers to the surrounding area's geysers, canyons, lagoons, and other geological features.

The town is inhabited by about five thousand people and is divided into two pieces - tourist and residential.

The tourist section is a grid of dusty, unpaved wild west streets lined with old adobe style buildings serving as shops, lodging, and tourist services. Occasionally these are interrupted by nicer stonewall constructions which house cozy restaurants with large fireplaces inside.

A small and pleasant central square with trees and benches is bordered on one side by a whitewashed church. Despite being the tourist "center", locals and their families can be seen at all times of the day walking around - especially in the square.

But this is not the center of town. Unlike many other towns and cities, the division between these two distinct economic and social entities is not formed by a road or imaginary line driving between them. The tourist and residential parts of this town are two geometrically self-sufficient lobes that are connected only by the umbilical cord of a single road.

In the early afternoon, I wander down this road out of the tourist bustle and into the locals' neighborhood. The first thing I notice is that either side of the umbilical cord is busy with construction - perhaps tourist-related - but it seems more to me to be municipal in nature.

Further on, and the dusty ghost town road morphs into a beautifully and smoothly stoned avenue. The entire neighborhood uses this technique and makes it look almost like a newly developed suburban community outside a wealthy U.S. city. I take it as evidence that the profits from tourism are being used to improve life for the people who live here rather than merely to over-polish the tourist experience.

The houses are still what one might expect in a poorer Latin American community - simple concrete structures with mostly corrugated tin rooves. A splash of character is given to several of the homes by painting the window shutters and front doors a vibrant blue.

Back in the tourist area, music by Pink Floyd, Shakira, Foo Fiters, among other global standards is played in shops and restaurants. But here, only the sound of more traditional Chilean love ballads and folk songs can be heard drifting from open windows.

Small satellite dishes can be seen mounted on a few of the tin rooves. This is a fleeting luxury as electricity that comes in from the west is unpredictable and cuts out at least once a day - often for up to twelve hours. This affects tourists and residents alike, and generators can be heard purring around town when needed.

Water is also anyone's guess and some of the nicer hotels have a small water tower for keeping a reserve.

Back on the main strip, I visit various agencies looking for passage into Bolivia from here. There are several companies that do a 3-day trip over the border and across the Uyuni salt flat - the largest in the world. The idea will be to be dropped off in the town of Uyuni where my travels in Bolivia will begin.

Once I find what I want and have the next few days planned out, I stop for a bottle of water and head over to Cactus Tours for an afternoon excursion to the Valley of the Moon.

Valle de la Luna

Oscar takes a final drag on his cigarette, exhales, and drops the butt into the dusty street. "Ok, guys, let's go."

Oscar is young - no more than 26 or 27. He's wearing a ball cap, sunglasses, a thin beard, and - like a lot of guys in Chile - his hair a little long in the back. He is enthusiastic and it's obvious that he wouldn't want any other job than to go trekking across deserts, canyons, and salt flats.

We follow him up the street away from the front door of Cactus Tours and toward a white microbus coming to a stop a block away. The group consists of two girls from Madrid, an English guy from Cornwall, a young Swiss couple, and myself. The Madrileñas and I are the only ones who speak Spanish. But the girls don't speak much English, so Oscar is going to have a talkative afternoon in both languages.

We all pile into the van and greet the driver, Juan. We're off.

After about a twenty minute drive outside of San Pedro, we pull off the road and walk a ways to the Coyote Lookout. This is a sheer drop off from the plateau into the deserted valley below. The view is stunning and immense. Oscar explains that this lookout was used by llama herders as a vantage point to find pockets of vegetation and water. In more recent times, the name 'Coyote' was given due to its similarity to the cliffs from which the Looney Toons coyote was so frequently falling. I walk as close to the edge as I dare in a wave of dizziness. I look up and check for hovering ACME anvils.

We begin to trek down into this valley - known as La Cordillera de Sal. This is a depression caused by the movement of two different tectonic plates in the past.

Like the surroundings of Salta in Argentina, the landscape here is Martian and barren. The path we use to descend is only about 18 inches wide in some places; and the drop is at least 10 meters. We proceed carefully.

Once we've descended the main part of the depression, Oscar stops, sits, and starts taking off his shoes. "This is a personal preference," he says smiling.

We look at the trail we will be following into the bottom of the valley and realize it is pure sand. The rough and dusty plateau we have been descending has essentially given way to a Sahara-like sand dune.

We all kick off our shoes and go shuffling down the dune laughing and taking pictures. The sand feels warm and soothing on the feet.

Finally at the bottom of it all, we put our shoes and socks back on and continue to hike for another hour across the sun-baked landscape.

Eventually we reach the mouth of a canyon that was formed by an ancient - now extinct - river. Before walking into the canyon, Oscar reminds us that this part of Chile holds up to 40% of the entire world's lithium reserves. Quite a lot of it can be found in the walls of the canyon. This comes with a catch.

"If you are going to take a picture, turn your camera on, take the photo, then turn it off. The lithium in the walls has a magnetic reaction with the lithium-ion batteries in your cameras and this will cause the batteries to drain extremely quickly if you leave them on.

Human beings extract lithium from a desert in order to make batteries in order to power cameras in order to take pictures of the desert from which the lithium came.

In a fit of resentment, Nature exacts revenge.

The canyon is beautiful. The walls slowly start to rise on either sides of us and form shapes and patterns I've never seen. Salt deposits are everywhere and create strange crystalline hives clinging to the walls.

Once we've reached the center of the canyon which looks to be about 15 meters deep, Oscar sits down again.

"Everyone take a seat, and be as absolutely quiet as possible."

We all shuffle around looking for a comfortable rock, set down our day packs, and eventually arrive at pure silence.

The sound we here is at first creepy. The walls of the canyon are crackling and popping all around. It would almost seem that something was about to crumble and come tumbling down upon us. To me, it sounds precisely like the sound of a car engine that has just been turned off on a sweltering summer day - only in some monumental surround sound.

Oscar describes how, beneath all the layers of orange and red rock, there is a thick layer of salt deposits. Below the layers of salt there are large pockets of oxygen. During the cold desert nights, the oxygen is cooled and condenses. Then, in the late afternoon when the sun is at its strongest, the oxygen starts to heat and expand. The expansion causes the layers of salt to crack and shift. What we are hearing is the cracking and shifting of the salt muffled by the rock.

He pauses to let us listen more, then continues in a lower voice, "Now during Incan and pre-Incan times, shamans and wise men would come here to meditate. It was believed that the sounds were words of the Earth - that the Earth was speaking. These men would take mescaline and other drugs and meditate until they could understand what the Earth was saying. This would often be used to make decisions about agriculture, society, etc."

We listen and think a few minutes more, and go on.

Early in the evening, we exit the canyon and find the van and Juan waiting for us. We climb in and take a short ride to a large sand dune that overlooks the Valley of the Moon. It's a rough ascent to the top through the loose sand, but the view is spectacular. The Andes in the East change colors as the sun slowly sets.

Once the sun is well below the rocky horizon and the temperature begins to sharply drop, we make our way back down the dune and head back to San Pedro.

It turns out that Cornwall and I are staying in the same hostel and that, along with the Swiss couple, will also be doing the Altiplano tour together. To close the day, the four of us go to a highly recommended restaurant - Estaca. The place is cozy and warmed by a crackling fire.

Swiss Guy wants to practice his basic Spanish, so we let him order the wine and food for all of us. His pronunciation is labored and sometimes comical, but his friendly enthusiasm and willingness to try wins him friends with even the most apathetic native speaker.

Steaks come out drowned in various Andean sauces, and are delicious.

We order another bottle of wine and continue talking and sharing travel stories.

The wine and the fire warm us, and the day ends in a glow of red and orange.

---

Photos

Mushroom Rock
This formation illustrates where the river was running low, eroding away the rock to form the "stem" and leaving the larger part above water. Wind continues to erode it, and in a few hundred years the top will become to heavy, fall, and kill a tourist.