Our Great Adventure: Valle de la Luna Day 245 21/05/2015

After learning the night before that breakfast was between 8 and 10am we decided to have a bit of a lie in. When we awoke there was some confusion as our iPads, set on auto time update, showed it to be 8am and our watches at 9am. Knowing the clocks hadn't changed between Chile & Argentina (checking online to be double sure), we went out into the hostel's courtyard to enjoy breakfast al fresco. Noting our tour that day was due to start until 3pm, we walked into town. San Pedro is an oasis in the middle of a huge desert of salt flats. On one side are the high peaks of the Andean volcanos (including the symmetrical Licancabur at 5916m), through which we passed yesterday and on the other (western side) are the Cordillera de Domeyko and Cordon Barros Arana ranges. It didn't take us long to walk round the few blocks that make up the centre of the town, so we headed back to the hostel to sort out the usual trip admin. At 2pm we walked back into the centre to have a couple of very expensive sandwiches for lunch before heading to the tour agency to be picked up for our afternoon/evening tour to Le Valle de la Lunas (Moon Valley), about 35 minutes drive away. On the tour were another 14 people, a mixture of Europeans and Chileans. First stop was to some caves which we had to twist and turn through (it reminded us of parts of the Wadi Rum we went to in Jordan a few years ago), followed by a walk around the back of a large sand dune, Cordillera de la Sal, where we had stunning 360 degree vista taking in all the different shapes and colours across the barren landscape. The red desert is covered in a sprinkling of white salt, which resembles snow. Next we drove along a short road to see Las Tres Marias, which are vertical fingers of rock, 2m high shaped by the wind. There are now only 2.5 Marias as one broke when someone climbed on it a few years ago and has since been cordon off to stop any more "unnatural" erosion taking place! We then went to the Valle de la Muerte, a name which has possible 3 reasons for being so. We only had time for a short walk along it as the shadows were lengthening and we drove up to a high point to look across the whole valley so we could take in the whole changing lights and colours of the sunset. The place was very busy as it is a popular destination and we soon saw why. The falling sun produced an array of wonderful browns, yellows, oranges and purples over the exquisite landscape. Very beautiful and very romantic too! The short journey back to town meant we were able to back at the hostel by 1930 and after a refreshing shower headed into town to eat. We choose a restaurant called Ckunna, which served homemade pasta but as we saw they also did stir frys we opted for that. We got back relatively early as it was going to be an early start the following day for our second trip to the Altiplanic lagoons.