Salt lake and Valley of the Moon.
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2005
1
16
21
Trip End
??? ??, 2005
San Pedro de Atacama,
Chile
Friday, April 1, 2005
At around 2600m above sea level we could definitely notice the effects of the altitude. Just walking down the street is a bit of an effort, your mouth feels dry, and I felt like my nose was burning with each breath. Another side-effect/benefit is that one alcoholic beverage and youīre well on your way to a good night-hmm, might be able to get used to this after all... But if it all becomes too much thereīs always the local remedy of coca tea, which went down quite nicely on the few occasions we tried it.
We only spent a few days here as we are really feeling the pressure to move on as quickly as possible now, so we took one day to visit the Salt plains, saw more flamingoes, watched a beautiful sunset, took some salt home with us to put on our dinner, only to be told the next day that it contains huge amounts of arsenic!
Death Valley
! Luckily it was a bit tricky to break up so we didnīt bother with it...We also visited the Valley of the Moon, an area of the desert nearby that supposedly looks like a lunar landscape. This was also very nice, amazing scenery, took some great photos, watched another beautiful sunset then as the temperature drops very quickly once the sun goes down everyone legs it back to the minibuses as quickly as they can.
The town itself is quite cute, one main dusty street-what am I saying, everything is dusty here!- surrounded by low rise stone buildings, that are fabulously cool during the day, and yet warmer than outside at night, how I donīt understand. I loved the restaurant we ate in on our last night there, with itīs sandy floor, huge stone fireplace in the middle and why bother with a roof when youīre in the desert, itīs not like itīs gonna rain any time soon!
There is also a great museum with some well preserved mummies and other artifacts that were discovered locally, see photos.
Onwards and upwards-literally- to La Paz.
