It was definitely a crazy transition emerging from the high-altitude, freezing cold, windy, Bolivia into the desert of San Pedro de Atacama- a full 2000 m lower. Things were definitely a lot warmer and we were actually able to break out some hot weather clothes which was lovely.
Looking over the Valle de la Luna, a viewpoint outside the town
A place we wild camped for a night. We had an excellent view of Volcan Licancabur.
In the Atacama desert, excellent sunsets lead into excellent star gazing. They get so many cloudless nights, are at high elevation, plus the fact there aren’t any huge cities around it makes it one of the best places in the world for astronomers. In fact, the larger ground telescope in the world, ALMA, is found here.
We took a star gazing tour one night where we learned about some of the major constellations, including the zodiac, and the planets. That night we could see Jupiter and Saturn.
After the sun, we learned that the next closest star to planet Earth is Alpha Centauri, which is still 4 light years away. There is an awful lot of space in, well, space!
Taken with my phone through the telescope objective. I will admit, the astronomer took it for me. Having just a bit of moon made the stargazing really excellent.
Interestingly enough, the Atacama desert is in fact the driest desert in the world. There are rain stations here that have never actually received any rain. nope, none. This is because it is sandwiched between the Chiléan Coast Range and the Andes, creating a double rain shadow. On average, the desert receives 1 mm of rain per year. 1 mm!
One plus of this lack of rain is the preservation of the Chinchorro mummies, which predate Egyptian mummies by thousands of years. It’s the first known artificial mummification of human remains.
There is definitely a cool vibe here, it was hard to put my finger on it at the time, but we ran into multiple backpackers that had planned to stay for a few days and ended up staying weeks.
Desolation at its finest
It’s also rare for a desert to have snow, but here the peaks are at a high enough elevation that it doesn’t melt away.
Here is a salt laguna on the drive into Argentina. It really felt like you were on the moon sometimes, or Mars. I read that NASA uses the terrain to test equipment destined for the Red Planet, and many a movie and tv show have been filmed here, like Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets.
Working on my jumping pictures......
Once in Argentina we started making our way south, bound for Santiago with a few choice stops along the way. This was Purmamarca, where we stopped simply because it ‘looked cool.’ The joys of your own vehicle on the road.
Plus there was a mini-hike to a great mirador, the Hill of Seven Colors.
For geological reasons I really don’t understand, there is a lot of mining in Northern Chilé and Argentina. Which is good, because these people need something other than agriculture- their goats were pretty skinny!
A salt flat where they had scraped up heaps of wet salt to dry and later harvest.
Vicuña! Which I pretty much yelled everytime we spotted them. They were my faves.
Ok, so I’m kind of just stopping at a random place. Jared is going to take over for the rest of the journey south through Argentina. Even writing about this now, I’m thinking about how we had to leave my dear, sweet Argentina. How I will miss her beautiful landscapes, people, wine....and fantastic steak!
Until Next Time!
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