On my final day in San Pedro de Atacama I took a trip to the El Tatio geyser field. This particular outing was highly recommended by other travelers that I had met in San Pedro and Chileans absolutely raved about the greatness of the geysers of El Tatio.

A hot spring at El Tatio

This tour departed at 4 A.M. in order to get to the geyser field at sunrise – when the air is cold and the light is soft, lending dramatic effect to the steam rising – which will lose much of its appeal as the ambient air temperature climbs. The day’s highlight was swimming (or “hotpotting” as it was called when I did it in Yellowstone) in a hot spring – and at El Tatio it is a sanctioned event! (unlike Yellowstone). This geyser field is at very high altitude and as such, the air temperature is pretty cold – so getting out of the hot spring wasn’t all that enjoyable.

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On my second day in San Pedro de Atacama and following my Valle de la Luna tour I took a full day trip to the nearby Lagunas Altiplanicas or high plains lakes. For me, the main attraction wasn’t the high plains lakes at all, but rather the Salar de Atacama as an alternative to visiting the Salar de Uyuni (you may recall from my last post that I didn’t have time to visit Uyuni)

The early flamingo gets the….shrimp?

The tour departed at 6 A.M. in order to get to the Salar de Atacama (Atacama salt flat in English) early enough to view the flamingos in the salt lakes.

The Salar is a very interesting landscape. The high mineral concentration is caused by a lack of drainage and over the years minerals (amongst them vast amounts of salt and lithium) have been deposited in the basin by glaciation and runoff. This area is an extremely inhospitable environment, yet certain species have adapted to live here. Quite remarkable!

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So, after leaving Peru and taking care of the border formalities near Arica, Chile I really desired to press onward into Chile. I spent a few hours in Arica – basically killing time and drinking beer waiting for the next bus to the town of San Pedro de Atacama.

The trip to San Pedro was an overnight jaunt of about 11 hours. I arrived groggy and was more than happy to accept the first offer of accommodation, especially since it was very near the bus stop and much less expensive than I was led to believe prices would be in this desert outpost. A simple room cost me the equivalent of $8 (USD) and the place had free wifi….perfect!

My first order of business was to investigate tour options to Bolivia’s huge salt flat – the Salar de Uyuni. I had heard rave reviews from fellow travelers about it’s wonders and about Bolivia in general. The problem was, that the holidays were coming up and so I had, for the first time since this trip started, pre-booked transportation, so I was running short on time. The tours available were all three-day, two-night or longer and there was just no way for me to take one and still have time to get to Santiago for the next leg of my journey.

But Wait! Chile has alien landscapes too!

Valle de la Luna; near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

I opted, instead, to take some day-tours around San Pedro de Atacama. The first of which was an afternoon/evening trip in and around the Valle de la Luna. Our guide on this particular tour was a former miner and had learned a great deal from the geologists at his company. He was a wealth of information about the processes of volcanic eruptions and ash deposits, glaciation, erosion and plate movements – all the forces that have carved out this landscape. The tour was absolutely fantastic, interesting and educational and ended with watching the sunset over the desert. It was a pretty spectacular sight!

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