We walked on the moon: San Pedro de Atacama
It began with a very unusual event for us: while sleeping in an overnight bus, suddenly, at 2:00 am we wake up and see, that everybody is getting up and gathering their belongings. We are at some kind of check point in the middle of nowhere, as far as we can see, and we notice that everybody has to pick up their luggage and open it for an inspection by some kind of agents. Weird...as we are not crossing any border. Pinochet is dead, but it looks like the system structure remains the same. Apparently, this is a control point to nail smugglers of prohibitive substances? We are back on the bus about 30 minutes later. We arrive in Calama at 4:00 am, and, another weird thing, we are supposed to continue sleeping in the standing, by now quite freezing bus till our connection to San Pedro at 8 am, but get kicked out at 7 am and have to wait outside, as everything around is closed, including the bus station. Finally, at 10 am we are in San Pedro! a little town in the middle of the Atacama Desert and one of the most sought after destination in the northern Chile. From this town wide variety of tours are available through the Atacama desert and the pre-Andean summits. The town is situated in the centre of the most spectacular nature scenery of the region. On the main street tour operators, souvenir shops and restaurants line-up one after the other. Before heading to a higher altitude we decide to stay for a few days at this level to acclimatize, and start by exploring the Valley de la Luna, one of the driest places on the planet and the Valley de la Muerte. WOW! surreal lunar landscapes with sand dunes, incredible rock formations - yes we walked on the moon - sunsets here are spectacular and create a superb changing of color all around us and on the distant ring of volcanoes. After three days of perfect weather we are ready to tackle the higher grounds and higher altitude, although some heavy clouds started to roll in during the night. We begin with the Laguna de Chaxa, a National reserve for flamingos. These birds love the salt flats, don't mind the cold, and are concentrated in one of the biggest lithium reserve in the world. As we continue up, we see something, not many Chileans had ever seen here, snow at 3000m! Our tour guide is quite exited, snapping photos as we drive - none of us are though, as snow flurries and no-visibility forces us to turn around. We see nothing beyond 30 meters. (Yes, even here they are talking about unusual weather patterns.) We don't see the lagoons, we don't see the world's highest geyser field, all the roads to these attractions and Bolivia are closed for at least the next three days. We even experience some rain, although this region receives only 14mm of rain a year, and not at this time! Mother nature has the upper hand. So we had seen what many Chileans had never seen, but we don't see all that we came to see. Maybe we'll be back later.
