Go North, young man (and woman and boy and girl)

...All the way past the Tropic of Capricorn, to Calama in the Atacama Desert.

We arrived Sat. mid-afternoon, and Sunday we went out to explore the surroundings. We went to Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) which is famous for its stark rock and salt formations and its sand dunes and for an almost total lack of vegetation. We got some nice views over the big salt lake nearby. We took a hike up a canyon that turned into a tunnel - Bert particularly enjoyed that part, but Gabi wan't so sure about being in the dark underground. She needed a lot of time in the safety of Papa's arms after that hike. Berto was a perpetual motion machine climbing and jumping all over. He has proven to be a very good hiker / adventurer in Chile.

Throughout the tunnel we could see sparkles from salt crystals (we were in the Cordillera del Sal = Salt Range), and most of what we thought were rocks were hunks of salt with a little dirt mixed in. We could see where raindrops from the rare rains falling on vertical surfaces would dissolve a groove in the salt and leave a little salt stalactite on the bottom. Later we explored an old salt mine. We could see the vein of white salt that the miners had followed into the hillside, and the ground underneath was riddled with small holes where rain had dissolved tunnets into the salt. Sure glad we weren't the ones chipping salt under the summer sun! It seemed like life there would be hard - nowhere to go and nothing to do but dig, eat, and sleep. We also hiked up a 750 foot high dune and took in some of the many odd rock formations that seem like modern sculpture dropped in by the Gods.
In the middle of all the dry, arid, big sky ; we felt moved to leave behind a Sugarloaf sticker. Sure hope all this petty vandalism gets us a free lift ticket or at least a bragging rights beer at the Rack.





We went back to Valle de la Luna Monday night to watch the sunset, but most of the stars were hidden behind heavy clouds. Oh well...

Monday Mike hooked up with his friend Lyman (proof of Lyman's intellect = he married a woman named Lisa Olson) to check out his observatory (Atacama Cosmology Telescope Project: ACT) on a shelf high on the slopes of Cerro Toco (5604m = 18 400') at an elevation of 5150m = 16 900' - at least, that was the idea. (That's Volcán Licancabur (5950m = 19 500') across the way; the top is the border with Bolivia.) We weren't sure that we'd be able to head up the road, because the day before the road had been closed because Pasa Jama into Argentina was closed. We sailed past lines of parked trucks with no problem - the problems came later. We turned off the main road onto a narrow dirt track and before too long were into the snow. The drifts got thicker, and finally we got stuck (at an altitude of about 4500 m = 15 000'). It took us about 45 minutes to get the trucks out and turned around, and back down the hill we went. We did see wild guanacos and a little creature vizcacha that looks like "a rabbit with the back part of a squirrel". It's a relative of the chinchilla.

While Mike was trying to get up to the observatory, Lisa, Berto and Gabi went exploring up about 1500 feet up from San Pedro. Not quite to snow, but noticeably cooler and a bit wetter. Berto checked out the cactus. They may look soft and fluffy from afar... All three had fun poking their fingers in the ice cold snow melt stream.

The following day it snowed again, so poor Lyman had to go back to the U.S. without getting up to the site. The good part for us was that he was able to join us for wine and snacks after the kids went to bed and drown his sorrows. It was fun to hear his stories. He (and several other people around town) told us that it was the coldest and wettest it had been in 10 years or so. Glad we could bring a little bit of Chiloé with us!


Tuesday we bid the hostal adieu and took a turn off the road to Calama toward the little settlement of Rio Grande, 90 km (60 miles) in the middle of nowhere. As we drove along we could see fresh snow just a couple of km from the highway, and low clouds and raindrops came by all day. We didn't make it to Rio Grande, but we got as far as a rock outcropping in a glorious river valley with numerous petroglyphs. Lisa and Mike found them fascinating, Roberto enjoyed climbing over the rocks, and Gabi enjoyed pointing out all the llama poopie. Something for everyone!

After an overnight in Calama (we don't feel bad that we couldn't spend more time - although we did get a glimpse of the tailings piles at the world's largest mine at Chuquicamata, and we enjoyed an actual salad-based meal with vegetables at a fun Chilean chain restaurant, Schop Dog (schop means beer on tap)), we flew back to Santiago and turned around to fly north again to La Serena. (Virtually all flights in Chile start or end in Santiago.) More on that next time!