Walking on the moon

So yesterday after I updated we took a walking tour through the driest desert in the world. It looks like the surface of the moon and is absolutely beautiful. We did the tour through a small company called Cactus tours and ended up with a group of four; Emily and I and a couple from Dallas. I ended up finding out that the guy went to Tech and graduated a couple years ago. It was pretty weird considering we're in northern Chile in a tiny tiny town. We hiked through a ravine and then took a bus to catch the sunset over the Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley.

Through talking to the couple from Texas we found out about a stargazing tour that night. We got back to San Pedro and booked the tour and headed out to the small observatory outside the city. The desert here is so dry that clouds very rarely form and the conditions are near perfect for star watching. The man who owns the telescopes is French and speaks Spanish, English and of course, French. Our tour ended up being in Spanish and was very very enjoyable. He told us all about the stars and pointed out tons of different constellations and planets. We then got to look through the different telescopes at Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, a star cluster, a nebula and a high resolution shot of the moon. They even let us take pictures of the moon. Here's the one I got on my camera

After the tour they gave us hot chocolate and told us a little bit more about the stars. We then went to dinner with the Texans and got to bed early as we were leaving for a tour of the geysers at 4 AM.

4 AM in San Pedro de Atacama in the dead of winter is not a fun time. When we woke up it was probably about -9 degrees celsius. We got on our tour bus and headed out to the geysers just before dawn, where the temperature still read -9 celsius. It was FREEZING, but totally worth it. The geysers are the highest in the world. In the world, our guide told us, there are just over 1000 geysers, half of them located in Yellowstone. The field here is home to 40 of those 1000. I know I keep using the words ¨incredible¨and ¨beautiful¨but thats just how it was. The tour then took us to the thermal pools which were anywhere between 25 to 40 degrees celsius. We almost didn't get in because it was still bitter cold, but decided it was the only time we might get to do something like this and took full advantage of it. Although it sucked getting out, we were much warmer once we got our clothes on than we were before we got in the water. The tour then took us through the valleys to a small village where we sampled llama meat. It was pretty tasty, I must say. We say a wide array of flora and fauna in the area and overall it was a great but tiring tour.

Tonight we get on a bus to head to Arica in the far north of Chile to cross into Peru. This will probably be the longest and hardest leg of our trip but we should be in Arequipa by tomorrow night. We'll sleep on the overnight bus tonight, hopefully, though the bus won't be the lap of luxury we've come to know in Argentina. Here's the same link to the San Pedro de Atacama Album I've put up on facebook but I've loaded a lot more pictures from the tours in the last two days:

San Pedro de Atacama

Hope everyone is well, miss y'all!