Under the covering of brown sand and dust is bright, white salt.

Some pavements had as much mud as the roads did.

The water seemed to be a bit of a novelty for some of the stray dogs.

This stray dog wasn't moving for anyone once he'd found a nice dry spot.

Mud walls are fine until you get a lot of rain.

Now that is a rock garden, minimal maintenance required.

Stunning roof in the church of San Pedro, even the altar candles are electric, not taking any chance

Only problem with a mud roof and lots of rain.

Straw, mud and chicken wire, what more do you need to build a supporting structure!

Despite being surrounded by salt for 60 years, the near zero humidity means minimal rusting.

A little picnic before the hike to come, the pisco sours certainly helped.

The guide using his foot as a step for people to get down to the path to the cave.

Little did we know we were going up the slope on the left.

Traversing along the top of the slope we'd just climbed, it was steep in parts.

You can just see the path we traversed, just below the top of the ridge, looks easy from this angle.

After the mine in Potosi I thought I'm done with scrambling through tight dark places, and then..,..

A Stroll In The Desert

February 13 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

So apparently the Atacama desert is the driest non polar desert in the world. Though it was raining when we got to the oasis of San Pedro and it had also rained a lot the day before too. We obviously brought them luck.

The old area of San Pedro, where we are staying has been kept as original as possible. Mud brick buildings, earth roads, very narrow pavements. That's fine when you barely get any rain but after two days of heavy rain the place was a quagmire.

This afternoon's trip was to Vallecito. Millions of years ago this area was sea, then following tectonic plate movement became a massive lake and eventually dried out leaving huge salt deposits. The whole area is made up of 95% salt, rock thrown up from the tectonic movement and sand blown in from the surrounding areas. This almost zero humidity environment supports no life whatsoever, no plants, no insects, not even bacteria.

We weren't really expecting too much from the trip as it was a last minute change due to the weather. There was a nice little picnic with juice or pisco sours, no need to ask! Then we set off on what I thought was a 15 min hike but turned out to be 90 minutes. Taking those who wanted to go, through a tight cave and coming out on the other side, then up a steep but firm sandy slope, along a for a fair way on this sandy ridge and up to viewing points along a slightly easier ridge on top of the salt hills.

You could see rain and lightening in the distance, but fortunately we were back down well before it came our way. Afterwards, the guide admited that although he'd been in the area many times, it was the first time he'd done this route and he hadn't expected it to be quite that tough! Having said that it was good fun and the views from the tops were just stunning. Just as well I didn't do that cave straight after the cruise though or I might have not been able to fit through!Read more