After some decent food and a comfortable, albeit chilly night's sleep (we´re back in 6 bed dorms as Chile is expensive) we were up early for an actioned packed Saturday in San Pedro de Atacama.
San Pedro is a small and lovely town with a bit of a dusty wild-west feel to it as it is situated at 2,400m in the middle of the Atacama desert, the driest place on the planet. It's a far cry from Bolivia.... significantly more developed with paved roads, street lights, finished buildings and nice cafes and restaurants etc. We decided that we would not hang around San Pedro for too long as we wanted to get down to Mendoza for the good wine and steak we had been hearing about and only have a week until we have to be in Santiago for our Easter Island flight. We were near the Argentinian border and decided we would take a bus across to Salta and then down to Mendoza (12hrs and 12hrs). As the bus only leaves on a Sunday, Tuesday and Friday we decided to book 3 almost back-to-back tours for Saturday covering all the major sights and actvities of San Pedro so that we could get out on the Sunday morning bus.
At 9am, we were collected and driven about 10 minutes out of town to the Valle de La Muerte (death valley) to try our hand at sandboarding. The Valley was spectacular with bizarre red rock formations which would not have looked out of place on the surface of Mars. We stopped at a huge sand dune, trudged our way to the top and after some brief instruction we jumped on our boards and headed down!
Well, we say headed down... we both went about 3 feet before going headfirst into the sand! Luckily it was very deep and soft so it made for a comfortable landing. We had 3 hours of tuition and by the end we were both doing pretty well, managing to board down the whole sand dune and pick up quite a bit of speed. At 12:30pm we were back in San Pedro, had an
amuertzo (set lunch) and joined our second tour of the day which was to the Valle De La Luna (Valley of the Moon). It is aptly named as the valley indeed looks like a proper moonscape.
We visited several spectacular viewpoints before heading into the Valley De La Luna National Park where we took a walk through a salt and clay canyon with bizarre rock formations before climbing to the top of the valley to watch the sunset, eating our picnic dinner of banana´s and yoghurt! As the sun dropped below the horizon we watched the surrounding Andean mountains famously turn from yellow to orange to pink to red.
We arrived back to San Pedro just in time to grab a hot choccy and then pick up our final tour... star gazing with a french Astronomer! We were taken by bus out to the middle of the desert where there is no light or air pollution. San Pedro is famous for having some of the clearest night skies in the world and they are completely amazing... astronomers come from all over the world to see them here and there are numerous Western-owned observatories. The first part of our tour involved us looking through enormous
telescopes at many different objects in the night sky. It was amazing to see the moon in such size and clarity, with the craters all clearly visible. We also saw Mars, Saturn and it's many rings, gas nebulae, star clusters, jewel stars and constellations... it was genuinely fascinating.
Afterwards we were given an explanation of the many different stars and constellations and tips on how to recognise them followed by a much needed hot chocolate. It was freezing in the desert at night! We returned cold but happy to our 6 bed dorm for the night before getting up the following morning to take a bus across the border to Salta, Argentina (12hrs).
San Pedro is a small and lovely town with a bit of a dusty wild-west feel to it as it is situated at 2,400m in the middle of the Atacama desert, the driest place on the planet. It's a far cry from Bolivia.... significantly more developed with paved roads, street lights, finished buildings and nice cafes and restaurants etc. We decided that we would not hang around San Pedro for too long as we wanted to get down to Mendoza for the good wine and steak we had been hearing about and only have a week until we have to be in Santiago for our Easter Island flight. We were near the Argentinian border and decided we would take a bus across to Salta and then down to Mendoza (12hrs and 12hrs). As the bus only leaves on a Sunday, Tuesday and Friday we decided to book 3 almost back-to-back tours for Saturday covering all the major sights and actvities of San Pedro so that we could get out on the Sunday morning bus.
At 9am, we were collected and driven about 10 minutes out of town to the Valle de La Muerte (death valley) to try our hand at sandboarding. The Valley was spectacular with bizarre red rock formations which would not have looked out of place on the surface of Mars. We stopped at a huge sand dune, trudged our way to the top and after some brief instruction we jumped on our boards and headed down! 
Well, we say headed down... we both went about 3 feet before going headfirst into the sand! Luckily it was very deep and soft so it made for a comfortable landing. We had 3 hours of tuition and by the end we were both doing pretty well, managing to board down the whole sand dune and pick up quite a bit of speed. At 12:30pm we were back in San Pedro, had an 
amuertzo (set lunch) and joined our second tour of the day which was to the Valle De La Luna (Valley of the Moon). It is aptly named as the valley indeed looks like a proper moonscape. 
We visited several spectacular viewpoints before heading into the Valley De La Luna National Park where we took a walk through a salt and clay canyon with bizarre rock formations before climbing to the top of the valley to watch the sunset, eating our picnic dinner of banana´s and yoghurt! As the sun dropped below the horizon we watched the surrounding Andean mountains famously turn from yellow to orange to pink to red. 
We arrived back to San Pedro just in time to grab a hot choccy and then pick up our final tour... star gazing with a french Astronomer! We were taken by bus out to the middle of the desert where there is no light or air pollution. San Pedro is famous for having some of the clearest night skies in the world and they are completely amazing... astronomers come from all over the world to see them here and there are numerous Western-owned observatories. The first part of our tour involved us looking through enormous 
telescopes at many different objects in the night sky. It was amazing to see the moon in such size and clarity, with the craters all clearly visible. We also saw Mars, Saturn and it's many rings, gas nebulae, star clusters, jewel stars and constellations... it was genuinely fascinating. 
Afterwards we were given an explanation of the many different stars and constellations and tips on how to recognise them followed by a much needed hot chocolate. It was freezing in the desert at night! We returned cold but happy to our 6 bed dorm for the night before getting up the following morning to take a bus across the border to Salta, Argentina (12hrs).
