Valle De La Luna

It's been quite a long time since I've uploaded anything to this blog, but after discussing this vacation with several people recently I decided it was time to make some more posts, hopefully I can get the rest of my photos up this weekend (Thanksgiving weekend). I've held a desire to finish posting all the photos to this blog since we got back, but I could never find time, let's see if I've found it now. BTW, I think Thanksgiving is the greatest American holiday so I want to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

I made a post showing the pictures of the journey to the Valle De La Luna, but I did not show the pictures of the Valle yet. We got to a point where we could see that there were clearly no more vehicle tracks except those made to turn the vehicle around. There wasn't even a non-sandy strip for us to travel on with our bikes...


...so we left our bikes and climbed the nearest hill. Once at the top we decided we must be at the Valle De La Luna and proceeded to take it all in. The next few pictures were taken from the hill we climbed. It was a rare cloudy day and although it did not rain even one drop the sky provided a stark contrast for the land below.






For those who've been waiting to see sand in this desert the following few photos ought to do.

The wind kept kicking up dust into our eyes so we had to be careful not to trot through the sand too much.
When we did hike through the sand we left quite a trail

A lot of the tourists try sand-boarding at this location. You can see one of them in the lower right quadrant of this photo. We decided we didn't want to bother with this and were later told this was a wise decision as you spend more time climbing to the top of each hill, than you do boarding down.
Having seen the sand boarders further in the Valle than we were, we assumed there must be more to the canyon so we pushed our bikes through the sand that was impassible for the vehicles and once again found a trail. We didn't make it too far before discovering that if we wanted to go further it would be a mix between biking and pushing the bikes, so we decided to turn back after a short way, the next few pictures are from further in the Valle.


One new thing that we discovered further in the Valle were veins of rock that looked a lot like marble to me, but they could've just as easily been some kind of salt compound for all we knew. I took three pictures of them anyway.

Riding to the moon! or Riding into ...death?

The first day we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama we didn't have enough time to arrange a tour to the Valle de la Luna, the Valle de la Muerte and to Bolivia. I really wanted to go to Bolivia, so we spent some time arranging our trip to Bolivia. While we were getting the details about the Bolivia tour the last tour to the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) left. We had been told that you could bike to both the Valley de la Muerte (Valley of Death) and Valle de la Luna. So we rented some bikes and set out.

It had been a while since I had been on a bike but it felt really good to be back on one. So I immediately moved into riding with one hand while turning my body around and taking pictures. That's how I eneded up with the following two pictures of Sita.


On the way out of town you pass over a bridge, under which a stream runs. This creates a really green area which, given the surroundings, is compelling. It also happened to be cloudy that day (it didn't rain, though) which gives the impression that this view could possibly have been created naturally... That is, until you see the pictures after the following two.

This picture was only a few hundred feet from the last two. I'm trying to interepret the directions to the Valle de la Muerte.

Riding to the Valle de la Muerte.
Sita is actually in this photo can you see her?
The entrance to the Valle from the main highway, you can see Sita on the bike and other's touring on horses.
A picture of the highway we would face after visiting the Valle de la Muerte.
The road into the Valle, looked prett cool.

It was dry and we got so thristy so often that I had to pull the larger bottle out of my backpack and use it to fill up the smaller one that I kept in my more accessible pocket.
Almost at the Valle...