San Pedro de Atacama, CL / Feb 08 - 12

The driest place on earth with only 30 mm of rain every year...except this year, but more about that later!
San Pedro de Atacama is very close to the border of Bolivia and Argentina. It's a desert with salt flats, volcanoes, and incredible rock formations.

Downtown San Pedro de Atacama is a few square blocks of red dirt streets and adobe buildings.

And turistas

All the buildings house restaurants, gift shops, hostels and tour agents.  We used these guys, Cosmo Andino for a couple of tours.

First Tour

The first tour took us to Valle de la Meurte (Valley of Death)

Where we got to run down a couple of sand dunes, unlike the other tours who took the bus.

And others who were sandboarding.

Side note: the Belgium priest who 'discovered' this area named it Valley of Mars but that was too hard to pronounce so it became Valley of death.

We moved up to a higher salt plain.  The white on the ground is salt not snow.

There is nothing growing up here.  No animals, plants or bacteria.  Just strange rock formations.

Last stop of the day was to a ridge in the Valle de la Luna for the sunset

All alone against the sky

It had been cloudy all day with lightning crashing all around us when the sun broke through.

Bringing out the colours

Adios dia

Second Tour

The next day takes us up into the high plains very early in the morning.

Past some of the many dormant (and not so) volcanoes.

(The astute reader will notice the large puddle in the driest place on earth...)

First stop: flamingos!

Except for this pond full of flamingos there is nothing but the salt plain

We stop in a little village

Off to a little lake surrounded by snow (!!!) capped mountains

Llamas!

Lunch time in the mountains

Where almost nothing grows

On the way home we stopped in another village, where they were busy preparing for the next storm.

The Rain

So what's with all the water in the driest place on earth?

Good question.  We saw about 20 years worth in our visit and it was raining for some time before that.

You'd think rain would be welcome here, but it can be devastating.  This river has overflowed it's banks and washed away several buildings.  People were evacuating their homes.

We waded across the river the day before but didn't dare try it now.

Our tour guide's adobe house was dissolving and he had to move out.  The quaint dirt streets were muddy cess pools (many dogs about).  Many stores and restuarants were closed until the floors were mopped up, while others brought out the buckets for the leaky walls and roofs.

On the other hand, nobody is seriously troubled (unless you lived close to the river) and the desert hasn't been so green in many years

And the clouds make for pretty sunsets.

The bus to Salta

The rain did cause us some inconvenience.  The road through the Andes to Salta was closed due to mudslides or avalanches.  It wasn't clear what or where the problem was.
We were supposed to leave at 9:30 AM, but our bus (and many other vehicles) waited on the edge of San Pedro de Atacama at the Chilean border.  This was the last bit of civilization for several hundred kilometers.  If the road didn't clear, we'd spend another night in town.  There is nothing beyond San Pedro, nothing.

 BTW, take a closer look at the guardrail.  Very reassuring.

Nobody knew what was going on until 6 hours later the call goes out for 'Documentos, documentos!'  Suddenly we had to join hundreds of other travellers to get our exit visas.  A simple 'stamp, stamp, stamp' that took hours.

Finally we're on the road for a theoretical 10 hours journey.

We did see some wonderful landscape before dark.

We're at about 4700 meters, nothing here except flamingos in the lake.

We reach the Argentinian border in the dark and rain.  More stamping of passports and visas and X-ray checks of everybody's baggage. (Dave had to empty his to prove that his water filter wasn't a sawed off shotgun, which caused hilarity between him and the border official) We're almost half way.

Nothing much to see outside now, so we watch some horrible DVD about 1970's Japanese gangsters meeting multiple gruesome and noisy ends.  Very calming.

We make it down from the mountains and arrive in Salta at 4 AM (scheduled 8 PM).  Surprisingly, there are still people up and about, including the taxi drivers and the night clerk at our hotel who greets us with glasses of champange.  The perfect end to a perfect day.

Buenos noche!