San Pedro de Atacama

I am happy to report that I´ve actually done some stuff!  In fact, I´ve done quite a lot.

In the North of Chile, San Pedro sits on the edge of the Atacama desert, the driest in the world.  It is also in one of the driest regions in the world.  In fact, whoever decided to build a town here must have been stark raving mad.  The town is small enough to explore in an afternoon by foot and it is a lovely stroll through the mud-red buildings under the never-ending sunshine....

 

I arrived on the bus with Joel and Anne-Marie, who I´d met in La Serena and were going the same way as me.  Within minutes of arriving, I´d bumped into Joe, who I´d also met in La Serena, Ditte and Pelle, who I´d met in Pucon and another five backpackers I´ve met during my Chilean escapades - small world!

Those of us from La Serena were thrilled to find that San Pedro has an observatory!  So we headed out to visit it the first night.  We drove out into the desert and when we arrived we were greeted by an eccentric Canadian astronomer.  Once my eyes had adjusted, I found it was possible to see quite well with only the light from the stars. And when I looked up into the sky I was in awe....

The main difference between the night sky here and back home is that you can see the Milky Way.  I have never seen so many stars in my life, it really was beautiful.  We spent an hour hearing about some of the history of astronomy, while our guide pointed out numerous star constellations using a big green laser pen.  We were told how to find the South Pole using the Southern Cross, how far away the closest star is to Earth and spotted Saturn, Jupiter & Mars.  We also saw lots of shooting stars!  After that, we headed over to an area with 10 huge telescopes pointed at various stars/planets.  It was possible to see the rings of Saturn, the binary star Alpha Centuri, a cloud containing 11,000 stars and much more.  My personal favourite was "The Jewel Box", an area of space with three stars that are different temperatures - the coolest is red, the next is yellow and the hottest a blue-green.  All twinkling away in the viewfinder!  The night was ended with a hot chocolate and some more star-info - it more than made up for missing out in La Serena :-)

The next day a load of us visited la Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), a huge valley out in the desert.  The landscape was ridiculous, with huge lumps of sandstone jutting out from the ground and jagged ridges running out to the horizon.

We were lucky as the recent rainfalls have leached the salt out of the ground and brought it to the surface.  A salty crust has formed over the mountains and valleys, giving a surreal snow-effect to the landscape.

After some long hikes through the valley we were taken to a great lookout point where we could see all out over the valley.  Words (and unfortunately, my pictures) cannot describe how breathtaking the view was.

 

The following day was my last day in San Pedro so I thought I´d do a spot of sandboarding!  This involves traipsing up an extremely steep sand dune, strapping yourself into an old snowboard and hurling yourself off the top.  I´ve never done it before but it was fairly easy to get the hang of - you just point the nose straight down the sand dune and go!  There was a ramp set up where you could do jumps.  Towards the end I was feeling quite confident so attempted a few tricks - each time I managed to get some air...and then land face-first in the sand.  I even managed to somersault down to the bottom of the dune on one jump.  I went home with a serious amount of sand in my ears but a big smile on my face - it was great fun!

 

 
I´ve just crossed the boarder to Bolivia.  Instead of doing it the boring way, in a bus, I decided to cross in a 4x4 which took three days and passed some wonderful sights!  I´ve just arrived, but the internet here is ridiculously slow so I´ll write about it tomorrow.  One last picture of a heated game of ping pong (or whiff whaff) at the hostel in San Pedro!