San Pedro de Atacama

After the tough but amazing trip to the Salar de Uynui, we have spent a very relaxing week in San Pedro de Atacama (Chile). The temperature has averaged 25 degrees during the day, and we have only seen one cloud on the whole visit! We spent alot of time just relaxing by our accommodation, but we did manage to fit in 3 tours!

Firstly, we went to look at the night sky. Due to the fact that there are no clouds here, a great little tourist observatory has popped up! There were 5 impressive telescopes, through which we got to see different coloured stars, the Milky Way up close, and Saturn!

Secondly we visited the Moon Valley (rumoured to be where they faked the moon landing). Our guide was extremely enthusiastic, and at first we thought we had mistakenly joined a geological field trip from uni! We got to see some great rock formations, as well as seeing a fantastic sunset.

The third and final trip was to the Geysers! We had to leave a 4am, as the steam can best be seen in the cold conditions (it was -5 when we arrived!). The geysers were great (check out the video), especially the cyclical ones. Afterwards we got take to some “hot springs”. If this had been our first hot spring in South America then we might have believed them, but I think they need to seriously think about reclassifying them as “luke warm”springs (might not get as many tourists!). Having said all that, they were in a great location, and instead of being a pool, we sat in a warm stream which had a great jacuzzi affect!

Tomorrow our short Chile adventure comes to an end and we take a 12 hour bus ride across the border into Argentina. Will update more from there.

Photos…

Geyser video…