Stef and Matt

We left Arica late – around 10pm, on an all-night bus to San Pedro de Atacama, in the highest and driest desert in the world. The next morning, we stopped for an hour in Calama, and then continued the remaining hour to San Pedro. Our bus slowed after a half-hour, cruising at walking pace along the side of the road, and then stopped. We waited in the middle of the desert highway for about 30 minutes while they fixed the water coolant system.

Once it was repaired, we finished our trip to San Pedro.

What a touristy place!
San Pedro is super-touristy – the food and the hotels were more expensive than any place we had visited yet. And we only found one really decent restaurant in the whole town (granted, there are maybe 10-15 restaurants there). But we did have some fun:

• Toured the Valley of the Moon (Valle de la Luna) with a great tour group, and saw some really cool landscapes!



• I rode a mountain bike across 5 rivers to an amazing canyon, rode up the side, and saw some of the desert:
• A really incredible tour of the night sky. Our tour guide was a crazy French astronomer, who explained how every culture has always believed that it is at the top of the world (and how France is at the middle of the world), and what we perceive in the night sky. He showed us all of the constellations of the southern hemisphere, and over the course of the night we saw how their positions in the sky changed. And he helped me get this great shot of the moon!

It was really hot during the day, and really cold at night. And of course, it’s the desert, so it’s always really dry – there wasn’t any rain while we were there.

Check out the rest of our photos around of the Valle de la Luna below:

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