Back once more into Chile. This is now the 3rd entrance stamp we have in our passports for this country and we have spent the least time here. Still, their 2 tone stamps certainly brighten up the place.
The bus ride from Salta, in northern Argentina, to San Pedro De Atacama, in northern Chile, was a 12 hour slog over the Andes. On one hand this did mean some beautiful views of the mountains, salt plains, and cactus forests in the desert, but on the other hand it meant driving to a height of 4400m to get through the Argentinian customs. A fair few people struggled at this height with altitude sickness, knowing in the back of their minds that if they were finding this tough then Bolivia was going to be a killer. Fortunately Gen and I made it through ok feeling just a little pleased with ourselves for doing so! Chile's border control was at a much more sensible height and so for several hours we were driving through no mans land until we reached it. When we did finally make it there our driver told us that he would not be dropping us off in town as it was only round the corner, meaning we had to trudge along with our packs on the sandy roads in the blazing heat trying to find our hostel which ended up being no where near where the lonely planet map said it was. In fact, it turned out that the lonely planet map for this very small town was wrong with pretty much everything. I'm not sure how you can get a map of a town with 4 streets in so wrong but they managed very successfully.
We stayed at hostel sonchek, a very nice place with very friendly Spanish speaking staff and a load of cats. We were meant to meet our friends at this hostel but when they arrived they were moved next door as they had been double booked. This did make meeting up with them a little tricky as the Internet was very slow and hostels don't allow guests!
On our second night we joined George and Lisbeth to go star gazing in the Atacama desert. Wow. What an incredible night it was. Thanks to the altitude we were at, 2500m, and the near complete lack of light pollution, the night sky looked unreal. We actually saw the milky way without having to look through a telescope. We even saw Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. We were guided through the stars by a very knowledgable Canadian astronomer who showed us the different constellations and constantly blew our minds with facts. For example, due to the distance of some of the stars and the speed of light, some of what we were actually seeing was as old as the dinosaurs! He hit us with such a plethora of huge numbers and facts that the whole thing started to sound like it was made up! After about an hour of staring up in wonder with the naked eye, we moved on to a set of 10 enormous telescopes aimed at different points in the sky and if we weren't already impressed then these would prove to tip the balance. Through these we were shown that the stars have different colours, that even though they look like one they are often many stars close together, an amazing view of Saturn that looked like it could have been a picture stuck on the end of it and even a supernova which is quite rare to see as they are not around that long and are usually too far out even for these telescopes. To top off an excellent night we were treated to a very tasty milky hot chocolate (an earl grey tea for Gen), and a quick question and answer session before heading back to the hostel. Initially the price of this evening seemed pretty steep but after experiencing it I would gladly have paid more without complaint.
Our second excursion while here in Chile was to the Valley of the Moon. It was a little tricky for us to book this trek as we were used to the Argentinian pronunciation of valley which is "vashe", where as the Chileans say "baye". But we got there in the end and headed to the valley which looks like it could be on the moon. The rock formations due to plate tectonic drift here are a geologists wet dream and even to us they looked beautiful. We were incredibly lucky as last month the Atacama desert, supposedly the driest in the world, had experienced it's first rain in 10 years, and on evaporation of the rain a layer of salt was left covering every nook and cranny making it look even more like the surface of the moon. We even got to watch the sunset over the valley, along with about a hundred other tourists! It was a beautiful sight and an excellent way to end our time in Chile. Next stop, Bolivia...
Quinning.