The Atacama Desert

Atacama is the driest desert on earth. It's about a 2 hour flight north of Santiago. We've spent the last 3 days touring the highlights. It's a big place -- we logged over 700 miles on our rental car with our guide. Speaking of our guide, what an interesting character. He's a shayman and from what he described to us, does some crazy drugs but didnt seem to be on them while we were with him (we don't think)


We arrived around 10am and headed straight for our first excursion to the Salar de Tara which was our first stop in the Flamencos National Reserve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Flamencos_National_Reserve):

Tara is at about 12k feet above sea level. Just on the boarder with Bolivia and Argentina. We drove 100km through the mountains (reaching 14k feet) and then 30k on a dirt road to first get to these rock formations.


The Salar itself behind us.



More incredible rock formations around the Salar tara.




Our little hotel room in the desert.


Kenny at sunset overlooking Moon Valley.





Day 2:


Now at 13.5k feet, we went to the high altiplanic lakes. This is Laguna Miscati. It's sister, Laguna Mineques was still frozen over from the winter.








After the lagoons we traveled the 90kms back towards San Pedro to check out the Salar de Atacama. This Salar is home to the largest lithium reserves in the world...


...and also a lot of Flamingos that feast on the salt water crabs which give them their pink color.


By far, our favorite part of the trip was the Moon Valley. A portion of the desert that gets it's name from it's resemblance to the moon's surface. We climbed through several caves and to the top of a huge dune...





...which we ran down shoeless. A lot like snow skiing. It was awesome.


Day 3:


We woke up super early to make the 100km trek up to the highest altitude we visited during the trip. At about 14k feet, we watched the sunrise over the Geysers del Tatio. The geysers are most active between 7 and 9am so we had to leave our hotel at 5:30 to make it there for sunrise. It was about 15 degrees fahrenheit when we arrived so standing in the steam from the geysers was really nice.














After the geysers we headed to the hot springs but decided not to take a camera. Then it was off to the airport for our trip back to Santiago and then on to Barcelona.

Oust digital camera is still not working so we also have some pics on a disposable that we bought in Atacama that we'll get developed here in Barcelona and post when we have them. I also have some videos of each sight in Atacama I'll upload and post separately.

More from Barcelona tomorrow.

-WLC