Chile, Atacama Desert, June-July 2011: Valle de la Muerte, Valle de la Luna, Pukará de Quitor, El Tatio Geysers
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It's true, the Atacama Desert is one of the driest places in the world, with the possible exception of certain areas of the South Pole. However, San Pedro de Atacama is part of the Atacama salt pan, just outside the Atacama Desert, and does get a bit of rain. In fact, it would rain several times later in my trip. |
 The variation of textures and colors were fascinating, one of the reasons that I am attracted to places like the Atacama Desert (or, yes, Iceland). |
We ran down them. Our feet sank deep into the very soft sand in a way that produced laughs from our group. We ran, hopped, walked down two series of dunes. |
 The sand dunes of Valle de la Muerte looking back at the top where we'd been moments ago. |
 Me on one of the dunes at Valle de la Muerte, with Licanbabur Volcano and the snow-capped Andes mountain range, and beyond that, Bolivia in the distance. The closer mountains are part of the Cordillera de Sal, made largely of salt, and just behind beyond that, the little pueblo of San Pedro de Atacama, population 5000. |
 Again, note the beautiful variations of color and texture in Valle de la Muerte, a place that I liked so much that I later kept coming back, sometimes riding a bicycle from San Pedro, about 4 or 5km away. |
 Much of the region is also made of salt, often creating odd formations. In the late afternoon or early evening, when the mountains of salt begin cooling, you can hear them making deep crackling sounds. One of the times we went, it was windy and you could not. |
I returned to Valle de la Luna later in the trip. I liked those photos more. You'll just have to wait. :P |
 At Valle de la Luna, a couple of guys kept assuming odd poses while yelling "Facebook!". Here, one of them is a human see-saw. Or he's...never mind. |
Regrettably, they didn't fare so well against the Spaniards. In 1540, the Spaniards, led by Francisco de Aguirre, attacked the fortress with 30 horse-mounted soldiers, covered in armor, carrying firearms and supported by around 1,000 yanaconas. The natives had not seen armor, horses, or rifles, and were wholly unprepared. The Spaniards got through the first defensive wall. The locals surrendered, and their leaders had their heads lobbed off and displayed on the walls of the fortress, perhaps as a deterrent for other Atacameños considering running for office. |
~~~ 26 junio, domingo (not pictured): I went to the local museum and took a space tour in the evening. Not a hallucinogenic luau, "SPACE" means "San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Explorations", which conducts fascinating observations of the stars. Due to the 2400m (8000 ft) altitude as well as the dry climate and perfect atmospheric conditions, the Atacama Desert is one of the best places for observing the stars. In fact, many prominent observatories are nearby, including ALMA (which stands for "Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array", but also cleverly means "soul" in Spanish). Apparently astronomers in this region love their acronyms. A very humorous Canadian, Les, from Ontario, Canada, conducted the tour. He used a laser pointer to point at various stars, constellations, the milky way, and other heavenly bodies, pointing out the Southern Cross, the center of our own galaxy, Alpha Centauri, and Saturn. The Big Dipper appeared very low in the horizon, something a bit different for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. We also peered through eight telescopes. Saturn had us all buzzing. You could very clearly see the rings!!!
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The cheap alarm clock worked. It was 3am and time to wake up to go to the El Tatio Geysers, which I had been excited about seeing. Why would anyone wake up so early to see the geysers? Because the best time to see them is at sunrise when the geysers give off steam that condenses in the bitterly cold morning air. The steam plumes disappear as the air warms up. And at 4200m (about 13,800 ft), the air gets darn cold. -8ºC (17 F), to be exact. |
And woe to the tourist who does not pay attention to where s/he walks, as more than one has gotten hot foot when crashing through the thin crust. |
 Getting hot foot is one thing. But the story that the guides told me was quite another, a sort of new French Soup.
"Some of the locals call this the 'French Geyser'," they said. It seems that maybe about 10 years ago, a French guy stripped down to a bathing suit and hopped in to one of the steaming pools. Problem is that it was 85 degrees. And that'd be Centigrade. Then, too, were the arsenic fumes from the steam rising up. He screamed for help, but no one helped him for fear of falling in (the ground is often weak and crumbly near the pools). Now, this just smacks of urban legend. It doesn't pop up with a quick Google search, but several tales of tourists slipping and becoming human fondue abound.
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 A close-up of one of the bubbling pools of arsenic and steam and other odiferous goodies. |
Ken's photos of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung
San Suu Kyi, as well as photos of Peru, Burma, India, Morocco, China, Thailand,
Ghana, Ecuador, and elsewhere, have appeared in many books, magazines,
websites, and galleries. Visit the Ken Lee Photography Website. Some of Ken's select photos may be
purchased through his Imagekind Store.
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Chile, Atacama Desert, June-July 2011
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We were at the top of an enormous cliff overlooking the sand dunes of Valle de la Muerte. But not for too long.
The warm rays of the desert sun shining on Licanbabur, a volcano dominating the horizon near San Pedro de Atacama, as seen from Valle de la Luna. 
25 junio, sábado: I walked about 4-5km to Pukará de Quitor, an ancient pre-Incan fortress built around the 12th Century. Some of the locals describe it as a "mini Macchu Picchu". It was constructed by the Atacameños to defend themselves from other villages.
A mortar and pestle at Pukará de Quitor.
27 junio, lunes: Beep!! Beep!! Beep!!
There are 70 geysers at El Tatio, one of the highest fields of geysers in the world, containing about 25% of the world's geysers.
