San Pedro De Atacama: A land of wonder and extremes

As I look out over the desolate dry landscape of the Atacama with it’s valleys, canyons, huge sand dunes, and salt flats, I can’t help but think that it’s one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. Sure, Iceland had great scenery, Death Valley was cool, but what makes the Atacama so amazing are it’s extremes. As I glance out the window again, I gaze upon the amazing stretch of snow capped mountain range that makes the Atacama número uno in the scenery department for me. I’m sure that there aren’t too many places on the planet where you can see sand dunes beside a huge frozen salt lake. Luckily for me, we got to spend a solid four days in San Pedro, a perfect base for seeing all the wonders of the Atacama.

Right now I am on a plane departing from San Pedro, roughly 30,000 feet in the air, and I am really hot. I am wearing long johns under sweats, and two pairs of socks. One of which is made from alpaca wool. The reason for me dressing like the Michelin Man while it is mid 70’s is due to the fact that it was probably -5 degrees Celsius when I woke up this morning. We were pretty much just glamping in our little adobe house and it was only a few degrees warmer because no one had made the fire yet. Yesterday, the temperature reached -8! It is really important to dress in layers here because of the extreme temperature fluctuation. I go to sleep wearing long johns, sweats, two pairs of socks, one shirt, and two jackets. When I wake up, I simply put on a second pair of pants and a third jacket to be ready to go.

Speaking of waking up, we spent two of our four days with a tour guide named Alex. When we went on his tours, we had to wake up really early because he wanted to avoid the police, who set up checkpoints at 7:00. Basically if it was too cold, the police wouldn’t let you go into the mountains, so we woke up at 6:00 the first morning and 5:00 the second. Regardless of the start time, the tours were really great. Alex took us around to all of the best places, even the ones people don’t go to that often, which I’ll tell you about in the next few paragraphs. Even though Alex spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, he left a little to be desired in his English. I’m not complaining or anything, I’m just saying that Alvaro was essential for understanding Alex. And now I’ve just realized that you have no idea who Alvaro is.

Alvaro Cox is our Chilean friend who we met a few months back with along with his family, in Chang Mai. If you need a refresher you can always read my old post about Chang Mai. Anyways, after meeting up with the Cox’s in Santiago for a few days, Alvaro tagged along with us as our much needed translator. Things would have been a lot more difficult had Alvaro not been there with us, and not as much fun either.

While in the Atacama, the top things we did were sand boarding, and sightseeing. Things we saw include the moon valley, a frozen salt lake, the geysers, the hot spring, and the awesome scenery you see every time you look out the window while driving in the Atacama. My favorite of all these things were the geysers. Hundreds of holes in the ground that spout steam and boiling water that evaporated in mid air. We were at the geysers during sunrise, which was the most beautiful time to be there because the temperature makes more steam, and watching the sun rise over the mountains through the steam was absolutely amazing. Plus, since it was early in the morning not to many people were there. We had lots of fun taking funny pictures through the steam and with the little geysers.

The moon valley was really cool too. It is named the moon valley because of it’s apparent resemblance to the lunar landscape. There are lots of sand dunes, hills, tunnels, and salt crystals. Another thing about the moon valley is the fact that the ground is completely covered in salt in some places. This gives the moon valley the odd appearance of being covered in snow. It was a super cool place.


Sand boarding was also pretty fun. We biked a couple miles out to the dunes where people board on this awesome path that wove in between the hills of the lunar landscape. Then we would hike up this massive dune, rest, and take a 30 second ride down. The boarding was cool, but my favorite part was the scenery. When you got on top of the dune you had this awesome 360 degree view of the desert with the mountains in the background.

All and all, the Atacama was great. The people were nice, the weather was refreshing, and the scenery was strait up amazing. After a short flight back to Santiago, we had to say goodbye to the temporary addition to our family, our dear Alvaro. In honor of all the memories we made with him, we named our new bag we got after him, and that’s quite an honor. All our bags have names. There’s Carrot, La Boat, Lu Lu, Grey Whale, and now, Alvaro.