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We crossed the border and arrived in country number five; Chile. Our first stop was the very chilled-out town of San Pedro de Atacama - an oasis in the desert. This place is dry ... very dry. In fact, the Atacama desert is the driest desert on earth. There are some areas that have no recorded rainfall! Basically, it never rains and unsurprisingly the landscape around San Pedro is very harsh with no vegetation and obviously very hot, just dry sandy rocks for hundreds of kilometres.
But that doesn't mean there's nothing to do. One activity is "sand-boarding" and we decided to give it a go. Just like snow-boarding, you strap yourself to a board and ride down a massive slope ... except the slope is a 150m high sand dune. To get to the dunes we hired bikes and rode the few km to a place called "death valley" - appropriately named as it was scorching hot with no shade. We waxed up our boards and climbed the massive sand dune. It was so high the view of the desert from the top was worth the gruelling climb alone. Sand-boarding turned out to be more like sledging than snow-boarding. Due to the friction of the sand, it's only possible to "nose-dive" straight down (no turns), but the climb back up the dune was a killer. Where's the ski lift when you need it?! But all good fun, made even better by the fact that we had the place all to ourselves. Obviously we were the only ones mad enough to be out there in the middle of the day!
The cloudless nights also make the Atacama desert an excellent place to view the stars, arguably the best place in the world. At 11pm we headed out to a remote spot in the desert for a star-gazing tour. The tour was popular - we were joined by 20 others keen for a glimpse of the best night sky on earth. Astronomer Alan and his wife pointed out the main stars, planets, constellations and galaxies. They had 9 huge telescopes enabling us to get a closer look. As expected, the visibility out in the middle of nowhere was second to none due to the thin air and lack of light pollution, and we even managed to get a couple of good photos with our own camera.
The next day we set off on a trip to "Valle de la Luna" (Moon Valley). The landscape was an incredible sight - just like the surface of the moon ... harsh, baron and void of all life. We climbed a huge ridge and settled down to enjoy the spectacular sunset. The distant Andes mountains turned a brilliant red as the sun crept below the horizon. A great sight and a great finale to our trip to San Pedro and the Atacama desert.
Check out ‘Chile - San Pedro’ at http://gallery.me.com/peterjprice/101895
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