The Driest Place on Earth

Valle de la Luna

At the end of October, our group took a 5 day excursion to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.  I’m always up for traveling to new places and getting a break from school, but to be honest, I didn’t have the highest expectations for a trip to the desert.  I mean, it’s a desert.  Just a lot of heat, sand and flatness, right? Wrong. The Atacama is a geographical wonderland— hot springs, geysers, salt beds, dunes, 3 mountain ranges and multiple volcanoes.  The most amazing and memorable parts of my trip were the unreal views I experienced and are impossible to describe with words, but here are a few of my other highlights!

Valle de la Luna:

The first day, we had a hot afternoon tour of Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley in English.  It got its name from its striking resemblance to the moon. NASA has even tested spacecraft there before sending it out into oblivion. Sitting there surrounded by towering dunes, twisting canyons, and deep caves made of sand and salt, I listened to our tour guide talk about the ancient history and geography of the place—like how the indigenous people survived in this incredibly extreme and barren environment, or how the geographical phenomena can be explained by the fact that it used to be part of Pangea.  The tour also included Death Valley where they supposedly dumped the bodies of the “disappeareds” during the dictatorship in the 70s 

and 80s.  Disturbing. The tour ended watching the sunset on a cliff.  The view was surreal. 

Geysers del Tatio: On Halloween morning, we woke up at 3:30am to embark on a 2 hour off-road bus ride through the desert. Goal: arrive at Geysers del Tatio in time to watch the sunrise and witness the geysers during their most active time of day.  These geysers, at almost 14,000 feet above sea level, make up the highest geyser field in the world, and this was definitely noted in our group.  Three girls fainted, had to take oxygen from a tank, and get bussed back down to the hostel pronto.  Despite the elevation chaos, it was an awesome experience.  For the ancient inhabitants of the desert, this was like their Mount Olympus—a sacred place where their gods lived.  With the geysers’ steam swirling everywhere, it really did have an eerily divine feel.  Right next to the geysers lies a “hot” spring, which wasn’t quite as hot as I would have liked, considering the outside temperature at this elevation and time of day was around 15 degrees.  But it was exhilarating nonetheless :)

Hot springs!

The geysers

The Lakes: On the last day, a few of us decided to explore Atacama’s few bodies of water.  First we went to Laguna Cejar.  This lake was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.  It’s so incredibly salty (saltier than the Dead Sea) that everyone who enters automatically floats with no effort. It was a crazy feeling. Next, we went to Los Ojos del Salar, two freezing little ponds plopped in the middle of the desert--both 120 ft deep.  Our last stop was Lake Tebiquinche—a vast, salty lake that is ankle deep throughout its entirety.  This site, with the backdrop of the Salt Mountains, was by far my favorite of the day.  

                               
 This trip was hands down one of the highlights of my entire semester.  New life goal: return some day.