San Pedro de Atacama- Desert and Salt

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Day 48 - Wednesday 22nd March
The Facts:
San Pedro de Atacama
Ecological tour
Moon Valley
Astronomical tour

The longer version:
An easy start to the morning, with a tour or the Ecological sites around San Pedro de Atacama, including a visit to the museum full of mummies. The dry climate ensures that objects are very well preserved, so there are many artefacts and mummies from earlier times in this region. We also went to an old village (Tulor), of which 7% has been excavated, and we can see how they lived in round buildings. The other stop on the tour was to a Pukara, or a mountainside fortress. Our guide was also able to show us the foods of the area, so we tasted all these things that were falling off tress!
The afternoon saw us take a tour to Valle de La Luna, one of the highlights and must dos of San Pedro. Our guide Felipe was the highlight of the trip. He was a smooth operator enjoying chatting to the young ladies. But, he was an excellent guide, spoke great English, and generally made everything really interesting. We first went to Valle de Muerte (Valley of death) where we were able to run down massive sand dunes amongst Martian like scenery. We then walked through a salt canyon, and finally, to watch the sunset at ‘THE’ Valle de la Luna. We, and the other 20 tour buses, climbed to very high vantage point to see the sunset over a pretty cool landscape. The cloud was starting to accumulate which concerned us for the Astronomical tour. The tour was due to start at 8pm, however cloud delayed us an hour. An hour later he cloud had only got thicker, but still we held out hope because the mornings had always been very clear. An hour made an incredible difference, and at 10pm, not a cloud was to be seen. The Atacama Desert is one of the premier locations worldwide for astronomy and there is a new BIG telescope being built in San Pedro. Very happy with sights from the telescopes as we looked at double stars, planets, galaxies and my favourite- a globular cluster, which is thousands of stars bursting out from one spot! Very cool!


Day 49 - Thursday 23rd March
The Facts:
A tour to the Altiplanic Lakes
Laguna Chaxa
Laguna Miscanti and Mistinique

The longer version:
Another tour in the San Pedro, starting at 7am took us back to Altitude to see the altiplanic lakes, and salr de Atacama. The Salar de Atacama was very different to the Salr de Uyuni as it gets minimal rain. Here the salt crystals ‘grow’ to 70cm high! The lake is also home to 60% of the worlds lithium resources. We had the pleasure of going to one of the Flamingo reserves, Laguna Chaxa, where we were able to witness more flamingos. We had perhaps closer views here, and could readily observe them feeding, as the walked in a circle around their beaks in the water. Many also flew overhead, enabling some great photos.
We visited several towns on the way up to the Altiplanic lakes, seeing the town squares, churches and terrace farming. We were able to stop mid way through a lava field which was also pretty cool. The two lakes themselves were nice, and again very different to what we saw in Bolivia.


Day 50- Friday 24th March
The Facts:
Ascent of Volcan Lascar, an active volcano

The longer

Sand dune in death valley

version:
An early start (5am) as our guide picked us up and we continued to climb up to the altiplano, a region at 3000-4500m, and home to plants and animals not found at lower levels. We slept for the first hour or so, and woke to a rising sun or jolts from the rough and bumpy road. Up here there were many dead llama spotted. A year ago, the winter was very harsh and the conditions with over 1-m of snow resulted in the deaths of many animals in this area. We had breakfast at around 4000m altitude against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful sights we have seen. It was the stillest lake with amazing reflections of the nearby mountains, a rising mist, flamingos and squirrel like rodents!
We drove up to an altitude of 4800m, from where we started climbing to the crater of Volcan Lascar. There were two other people and a guide climbing that day. They started just before us, and we met up with the guide at the crater.
We continued driving upwards until it was time to walk. The instruction was to go slow. And go slow we did. 15-min acclimatisation breaks every 45 mins helped. Altitude sickness was going to be a problem for both of us, but we still made it to the top of the crater of the volcano. Being an active volcano there was steam and sulphur wafting across, and it was this that set Karen over the edge (not literally but she did get close). Roger managed to take 20 photos at 3 frames per second. For your viewing pleasure these photos were not included. We decided it wasn’t worth climbing the additional 100m to the summit. Beautiful views from the climb up of the volcanic border between Argentina and Chile. It was possible to see Chile, Bolivia and Argentina in one glance whilst climbing. As we made our way down the symptoms of altitude decreased but Karen was still ill. As we speedily drive down Roger made a miraculous recovery and started to eat, whilst Karen still had to get the car to stop. Eventually as we got lower Karen improved until feeling fine back in San Pedro.


Day 51 - Saturday 25th March
The facts:
El Tatio Geysers 4300m
To Calama and Santiago

The longer version
An even earlier start (4am) took us to the El Tatio Geysers for sunrise. We were fortunate and had Felipe as our guide again. These are the worlds highest geysers, and were quite impressive as the sun was rising. We were able to see them go from being steam out of the ground to a geysers with water coming out to 1.5m high! There were geysers of slurping mud, and huge water geysers with water going meters into the air.
On the return trip we stopped at another village for llamas (on a stick!), sheep and flamingos.
A little bit of souvenir hunting and we were on a bus bound for Calama. We had a yarn to two pommies on the bus. As it turns out they worked for British Antarctic Survey and had spent the summer on Rothera Base. They were truly amazed when they heard of our travels as we had been to many of the same places (Falkands, South Georgia, Antarctica AND Volcan Lascar the day before- the people we saw on the Volcano. One reached the summit with the help of reckless guide and oxygen.).
We were fortunate to get an earlier flight back to Santiago, so got back at a reasonable time and were able to get a full night sleep.

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