As mentioned at the end of the last blog we had managed to book ourselves into three tours for today. The timings we hoped would work out just about ok but in the end we had more time between tours than expected which was good. The first tour/trip was sandboarding in the dead valley. Sandboarding is essentially snowboarding but on sand. You use the same equipment. Some of it was a bit shoddy - my shoe fitted but the heel was odd and felt very uncomfortable. The board was in good condition though.
We drove into the dead valley and found the sand dune that would be our play area for the morning - excellent. We got the equipment ready and walked up the sand dune at an angle for ease. The guide went through how to do it then it was our turn to just have a go.
The first effort was very slow. The weight balance was very difficult to understand for people who had never snowboarded before. The amount of pressure needed onto either the toes or the heel was odd and the leaning back or forward. Nevertheless we made it down the first time. After that it was a process of trying to speed up and gain more fluidity. The second time went better but the third was a little different. I tried to go a bit faster and ended up face-planting the sand. Thankfully the sand doesn't hurt at all. After a couple of hours of this we were told it was time to head back to San Pedro. Normally this would have been a bit sad but we knew of the subsequent tours to look forward to. We grabbed some fresh smoothies (strawberry for Emma and kiwi for me) and a pisco sour flavoured ice cream before heading back and getting ready for the next tour - Valle de La Luna (valley of the moon).
This tour was only 5 miles away so a fairly swift bus journey later and we were there. Our first stop was the three Maria's. Three rocks that apparently look like praying people. Personally I couldn't see the resemblance but according to our guide, one of the Maria's had been partially destroyed by a clambering tourist (sounds like something I would do). Due to recent rain a lot of the surface was white with salt - awesome.
Our next task (on the apprentice) was to climb around the back of a massive sand dune (larger than the ones that we used for sandboarding). They wouldn't let you on the actual sand dune or indeed a lot of the area of the valle de La Luna. After the freedom of Bolivia where you could basically do what you wanted, this felt like a breach of my independence and human rights (no idea how I'll cope in England). Just the fact that you weren't allowed on a lot of the areas made me want to go on them so much more... Nevertheless the views from the designated zones were fantastic. Showing views all over the salt encrusted valley with the backdrop of the Andes.
The third part of the moon valley tour was the salt cave. I was particularly intrigued when the guide told us to leave our bags in the bus for we would need the space to crouch. We entered the cave which was more of a tight passage between rocks with sparkling salt on the walls. After a little while the guide told the oldest member of the group that he could go no further (excellent, he was holding us back) and for us to continue. Suddenly the cave became more of a challenge, and with it, more enjoyable. The angles you'd have to contort yourself into just to avoid either banging your head or scraping your bag were shapes I didn't think I was capable of. This was great fun.
The sun was close to setting so it was time for the last aspect of the tour - driving to the top of the cliffs and viewing the sunset. Unfortunately this was the idea of pretty much everyone who was staying in San Pedro. It was packed! One plus of this was that we managed to see our Spanish friends from the salt flats tour again though. We sat and absorbed the last rays of sunlight before it went behind the hills and only exposed light onto the mountainside of the Andes, transforming the colours into purples and oranges.
When we arrived back in San Pedro we only had less than an hour before the pickup of the final tour of the day (as if we could have managed any more tours in a day though). The final tour was all about astronomy. San Pedro and the atacama desert in general have a reputation over the ability to stargaze. This is mostly due to the insane number of cloudless nights there - well over 300 per year. Naturally it was very cold but this was countered by a blanket of cotton and one of free Chilean red wine.
We were subjected to a talk about what we could see - a lot! They started with the moon before zooming into it with a telescope. It's not often that you get the chance to see the craters of the moon so closely. This was followed by the large Jupiter but the incredibly impressive Saturn. The ability to see it's rings was simply astoninishing. We were told about constellations and the shapes we could see, along with some mythology to support it. Thus concluded the day of triple excursions. Due to doing so much it was very difficult to pick a highlight of the day! Hard to look past Saturn though. We'll struggle to do a day so jam-packed for a while though.
