Easter Outing to San Pedro

We started our Easter weekend with a bus ride from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama on Good Friday. The ride took 13 hours but never got boring due to the amazing landscape we went through. We left Salta at 7 am and went further north to San Salvador de Jujuy before we started climbing up the Andes, that we had to cross to get to our

destination in northern Chile. On the way we went through the Quebrada de Humahuaca with its famous colourful mountains that look like a painter spilled all his colors – amazing scenery. Further up we reached the highest point of the journey at around 4200 m above sea level at the Paso Jama and left Argentina through a windy border post somewhere in the middle of the Andes. Right there we witnessed a lonely procession of the cross by about 10 indigenous people that climbed up the rugged mountains, carrying a small wooden cross. What followed in Chile was a high plateau with different salares, lagoons and otherworldly rugged landscapes and vistas of smoking volcanoes before we got to the Atacama Desert and the little oasis that is San Pedro. When we reached the Chilean border post a little outside of town the sun was just setting and the Andes mountains turned flaming red for a brief moment before it turned dark very quickly. And with the darkness came the cold.

San Pedro is a very touristic place in the driest desert of the world. Dusty roads with low, white buildings made of earth form the village around a small plaza with a little church and some trees that offer shade during the extreme heat of the day. At about 2400 meters above sea level and the surrounding landscape that offers no protection from winds and no means to store the heat of the sun for the dark hours it gets seriously cold at night. Luckily enough, every second store sells products made of Llama-wool. Socks, hats, pullovers, gloves – you'll never go cold again after a shopping tour through the main street of San Pedro.

The last bed in town was booked over the Easter weekend so there were herds of tourists, us being part of them. Consequently we joined them in exploring the astounding surroundings of San Pedro via different tours:

We got up really early on Easter Sunday for a tour to the world's highest thermal field at about 4300 m, the El Tatio Geysirs. After leaving at 4am we got there at around 6:30, when the sun wasn't quite up yet and it was still cold enough for the geysers to look their spectacular best. We ran around the amazing field with tons of steaming and spitting geysers for about an hour, at a temperature of -8°C. After long debate last summer, we had d
ecided not to take warm clothes and carry them around through tropical countries and summer until we'd get here – so this was the first test for our onion-idea of just layering all the thin clothes we have, should the need arise (our San Pedro Shopping was limited to a hat and gloves by budget restrictions). It was okay-ish, but still needs perfection for when we get to really cold places...We had an improvised breakfast at the spot (the coffee would have warmed us up if it wouldn't have been cold the moment you poured it into the mug) and then went to a nice thermal pool where we could take a quick swim. The water was murky and not really hot hot (about 25°C) and the freezing air made the decision to actually get our of your clothes and into the water really hard. But the steam, the beautiful vista of spitting geysers surrounding you and the sun that finally made it over the mountaintops got us going and we found ourselves in the pool with tons of other tourists a little later – it was really nice for a moment, before the water got too cold and we had to get out of the pool again... Let's call it an experience. On our way back to San Pedro we stopped in a small mountain pueblo to see how the few people that once lived of a nearby mine are now getting by with serving tourists very tasty fried empanadas con queso y jamon, making a good deal of money by offering banos to them and keeping some llamas for wool and meat.

After a good afternoon sleep we spent the night on another tour – a brilliant one! We went stargazing in the Atacama desert. The tour took us out of San Pedro to a really dark place in the middle of nowhere where we were welcomed by a Canadian astronomer who really knows his stuff. The tour started with a really long and detailed but amusing explanation of the night sky and how humans in all stages of our history saw and understood it. Amazing stories
were told about how mankind very slowly started understanding more and more about our solar system, the galaxy and the universe and how they used it in their everyday life. Then we got to look through ten telescopes to see ten different amazing objects in the sky. We were blinded the brightest sky in the southern hemisphere, Sirius; we realized that the next star out of our solar system, Alpha Centauri, is actually two stars that are very close together; we saw Saturn with his ring and moons as if it was painted on the sky; we were amazed by different gas nebulas that we could see because they were illuminated by baby stars that are forming inside of them; we marveled at the beauty of the Jewel Box, a group of very colorful stars in our galaxy that look like gemstones on the night sky; and we looked as far away as to the amazingly formed Sombrero Galaxy (guess what shape it has...). At the end we got the best hot chocolate in a long time to warm up and ask all the questions that were on our minds. It was a great tour, and it will probably be a while until we can see a stary sky as clear and bright as the one we saw that night.

 

On the last day of our Easter weekend in San Pedro we went on a tour to the famous Valle de la Luna, the Moon valley. It is very close to the village, but when you get into the canyon it's like entering another world. Bizarre rock formations covered under a mantel of minerals and coupled with giant sand dunes make up this most arid place in the world, meaning that life is almost impossible here. It's position between the high Andes and smaller mountains to the west make for the harsh climate that formed this beautiful, otherworldly place in millions of years. We walked around, learned a lot about the geological reasons for the look of the valley and about the mountains and volcanoes we saw on the horizon. Then we went to the Valle de los muertes to watch the sun set behind the mountains to the west, creating spectacular colors on the rolling sand peaks of the Valle de la Luna and, even more so, on the scenic mountaintops of the Andes. What a view! The changing of the colors on the Andes went from glowing red to dark purple and greenish blue when the sun was finally gone. And when the Andes stopped looking impressive (color-wise), the sky just got started with its fiery show.

When we got back to San Pedro after this, we went out for an Easter dinner with two friends from Aachen, who are also traveling around this beautiful piece of our big but very small planet earth. What a great gift to see friends on this day, in this unlikely place. We had a good, very calm night with lots of talking and laughing and if it hadn't been for the cold of the night, we might have kept standing in front of our rooms and kept talking until it got light again.

In the end, our Easter-Outing to San Pedro was a short but very intensive and memorable visit to the Atacama desert and Chile – go and do the same next year and you won't be disappointed.