San Pedro de Atacama is one of those towns that pretty much exists for tourists. I am sure it hasn't always been that way but that is how it is today. The streets are lined with restaurants, cafes, travel agency's and souvenir shops. Despite that it has a certain charm that I quite like. What people come here for though is the amazing landscape. San Pedro is on one end of the Atacama salt lakes. The third largest in the world apparently, the largest is in Bolivia followed by the great Salt Lake near Salt Lake City in the US. The plains are at around 2000 m I think and volcanoes standing over 5000 m surround it. I am not going to write too much because words can't really describe it, hopefully the photos will help. I arrived on Thursday so in the evening went on a star gazing tour which was really interesting. We were driven around 20 minutes outside San Pedro and then were given a guided tour of the nights sky by a Canadian astronomer. It was also of course very cold, what do you expect at 2000 m in the desert under clear skies in late Autumn. This was followed by time in the telescope garden, there were about 10 telescopes all set up to point at different objects in the sky. Saturn is visible at the moment and the rings were clearly visible through the telescope which I think was a highlight.It was about midnight by the time I got back to the hostal so was glad to crash out and also glad I hadn't arranged anything the next morning.
Friday morning I was able to lie in and then go have some breakfast. In the afternoon I had arranged to go on a tour to the Laguna Cejar. A salt water pool with a higher concentration than the Dead Sea. We were able to watch the sunset while drinking a glass of fine Chilean red. The light on the mountains was amazing and gave some interesting effects in the salt pools. A few picture are below.
This is going to be the cover for my next album (the difficult second one!).
I'll be updating more when I get some time.
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