The Blaus - South America and Europe

15 del Marzo, San Pedro de Atacama

We decided to rent mountain bikes to go to the Valle de Luna (valley of the moon) for the day. We packed our bags for the cold evening, bought some water, and headed off to the Valle. It is about an hour and half ride to the Valle, and once we got there we realized that we did not have enough water to last until sunset (the big event in the valley). We are not used to the dryness of the high desert, and did not know how quickly we would go through our water. Luckily, we met up with two other guys on bikes, and American architecture student from Montana, and a German student from Hamburg who were happy to share with us. We were very lucky, because otherwise we would not have been able to continue on much further, and they were a lot of fun to be with on the journey.

The scenery driving through the desret is very surreal. It really does look like you are on the moon, or mars. There are red rocks everywhere, and the desert stretches as far as the eye can see, all the way to a string of volcanoes in the distance that are snow capped. Once we got to the entrance of the Valle de Luna, we went on a 45 minute hike through caves that have been formed in the rocks by rain (not sure when it ever rained there, it was dry as a bone with no vegetation at all). We put on our head lamps and went through totally dark caves that had lots of quartz formations and salt deposits embedded in the rocks. The shapes of the caves were amazing, looking like a large sand castle made of wet sand dripped through a child´s fingers. There were some parts we had to crawl through in the caves, but overall we could walk or crouch to get through. It was our first spelunking experience, and was a lot of fun.

Then we continued on our bikes to huge sand dunes that looked like a scene out of Star Wars. We hiked up to the top of the dunes an hour before sunset to watch the sun go down over the desert and to see the pink light on the distant snow-capped volcanoes. It was just the four of us on top of the world, in this beautiful setting as the sun went down, and we felt lucky to have it all to ourselves. Then, about 30 minutes before the sun was going to drop behind the cliffs, tour bus after tour bus pulled up to our spot to let off those damn touristas. Our beautiful spot was corrupted by 100 people who came just for the sunset. We still enjoyed ourselves in spite of the gathering crowd, and after the sun was gone we began the ride back in the dark to San Pedro de Atacama. With headlamps to light the way, half a bottle of water for 4 people, and empty stomachs (we brought crackers, but the last thing we wanted to do was put dry crackers in our mouths with a short water supply) we hit the road. It was a really fun journey, the stars can not possibly be seen better from anywhere in the world, and we had total quiet and the stars to guide us back. We felt like we really accomplished something when we got back to town, and all went out to a steak dinner. It was our last meal before heading to Bolivia, so we felt we could splurge on one last decadent meal. All the restaurants have outdoor fires to keep warm by, so we sat around the fire and ate and felt good about our day, and prepared for the jeep ride to Salar de Uyuni the next morning.

posted by The Blaus @ 6:38 PM