The Driest Place in the World

So the trip through Salar de Uyuni salt flats and the South-Western highlands of Bolivia was well worth the effort! I am adding the flamingo to the ever growing list of my favourite birds, thought these giraffe of the lakes are slightly camera/people shy, so no great shot will follow.

I couldn't make my mind up at the crossroads to Argentina and Chile, but turned both ways. First right to San Pedro de Atacama, Northern Chile. Smack bang in the middle of the Atacama desert, the driest desert in the world, this touristy little village is sunbaked and at a mere 2300 meters or so, gives sweet relief from the huffing and puffing of higher altitudes.

In San Pedro, just sitting in the sun was a pleasure for a change - though after about 10 minutes I needed to make a bold dash for shade. When it's hot in San Pedro it's hot! Average daily temperatures are around the 28C mark, and the village is high enough for the sun to pack some punch. This makes for lazy days. Even the street dogs here were sleepy, well fed and mild tempered.

 

The price level in Chile was, as expected, much higher than in Bolivia or Peru, and a -cafe con leche, could costs as much as any cuppa back home. The food also, but it was real cordon bleu compared to the food I've been eating so far.

 

There are benevolent and perfectly conical volacanos overlooking the village and life is laid back. One major site of interest was the valle de la Luna, Moon Valley, which has been designated the driest place in the world. White substance, which looks like, but is not, salt pushes through the sand. I was told it's sulphur, though I always though sulphur was yellow. The bicycle ride up to the valley must have been the hottest 40 minutes of my life, though I had waited past the strongest  glare of noon/early afternoon.

The real item of interest for me were the astrological tours, which are organized in San Pedro. Unfortunately the nearby Alma, the giant station for listening to space and one of the worlds most expensive scientific endeavours (the particle accelerator in Cern being the other) is closed for visitors. However several tourist observatories have sprung up, one of the largest of which I visited. Aparently once the first radio telescope was installed in Alma, it already revealed a fact, which was previously unknown: at the centre of the Milky Way there is a huge black hole, into which out galaxy is slowly but surely being sucked in - swirling around like water in a toilet bowl being flushed down. Now there's a happy thought.

The telescope used during my tour enlarged space 150 times and was about 2 meters long. First we had a look at the storms on Jupiter, then at the middlemost star in  Orions hunting knife - which isn't a star at all but a Nebula of gas clouds and space dust and suns - and awfully pretty to boot. Then we ogled a cluster of suns (18000 suns to be precise, situated about 150000 light years away from earth) that looked like a spiders web or a magnified image of a cell. It was actually riveting stuff. I am now a fully fledged star enthusiast.

But after two days of fine dining and heat stroke in San Pedro, it was time to hit the road again. Turning left this time and ending up in Salta in Northern Argentina.