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Published: March 19th 2010
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Hola Amigos!
After arrangements were finalized for Glenn and Marjorie’s journey home, Greg and I jumped on a bus to San Pedro de Atacama, in the north of Chile, away from the earth quake scene. San Pedro is 24 hours by bus from Santiago and landscape wise is very different. Not a cloud in the sky, hot temperatures in the high 30s, very dry, little vegetation apart from cactuses and sparse shrubs and clay coloured dirt and buildings. We stayed at this wonderful little hostel, Candelaria, with hammocks and an above ground pool.
Our first day, we walked into town to explore and see about organizing a way to get into Bolivia. The town is made up of narrow dirt streets with small bungalow stores, restaurants and tons of tour agencies. The tourist vibe was easily felt here, and most stores sell many of the same souvenirs over and over. We booked an excursion to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) that night where we trekked to see the Death Valley, walked/ran down massive sand dunes and finally hiked up on top of a ridge in the Moon Valley to watch the sunset. Valle de la luna is just
outside of San Pedro in the Atacama Desert. Due to the various sand and rock formations created by the wind and floods (over centuries) as well as the reddish color, the area resembles the surface of the moon. It is a very unique and beautiful landscape.
Just our luck, as we were all sitting on the ridge watching the sun go down, we all started to feel a slight shaking underneath us. Sure enough, it was another earth quake in a town called Calama, 100 km from San Pedro, 6 on the rictor scale (we probably felt 5 on the rictor scale). No damage done (where we were) just bad luck, most of us had come from the South so we thought we had had our fair share of earth quakes. After the excursion, we had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant in town while a local Chilean band played their traditional flutes, guitars, and recorders.
Our second day, we went up town during the day, and did another excursion at night, this time with a company called Space. A French astronomer who lives in San Pedro invites you to his home a small distance outside of town where
he teaches you about stars, galaxies, the solar system, the universe and then takes you out to his back yard where you do naked eye star gazing followed by a look in one of several telescopes aimed at clusters of stars and planets. It was a truly unique and interesting experience. The night sky in San Pedro is one of the best in the world because there are no clouds and very little pollution making a perfectly clear and bright sky most nights of the year. We saw many different constellations, the milky way (brighter than we have every seen it), Saturn, Mars, and approximately 3000 stars lighting the sky.
Our third day, we went to the Puritama hot springs about 45 minutes outside of town with 3 people from our hostel, one Irish, and a couple from England. It sounds very strange, we know, to go to hot springs in the blazing hot weather, but it was actually very refreshing and nice. These hot springs were different from the ones we visited in Pucon, there was next to no one there, and it was very natural and untouched. The hot springs are set within a deep red canyon
with tall grasses and a number of small bath like pools and small waterfalls. That night, we went out for dinner with some more people from our hostel and got ready for an early start the next morning for a 3 day trip into Bolivia to the see the famous Uyuni Salt flats.
Take care,
Laura and Greg
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