Valle de la Luna

Tea for two and two for tea. Well, two for breakfast, that is. The hostel has been evacuated following the weekend and so the breakfast table was set for us alone to enjoy the tea, bread and, incongruously, Nutella all to ourselves.

Today we had an afternoon tour booked, so K conjured a filling meal at lunchtime of a magnificent stuffed courgette out of the large, aubergine-shaped zapallo italiano from the market.

I like my food stuffed with other food

Filled with rice, onion, herbs, soya mince, with a salad of avocado, tomato, and cucumber, it set us up for the trip to the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon).

San Pedro inhabits an oasis in the desert between two mountain ranges: the Cordillera de los Andes, which runs down the eastern length of the country, and the Cordillera de la Sal. The latter is so named because of its high salt content, left behind from the ocean that was here 65 million years ago.

The covering of salt is first noticeable in the Valle de la Muerte (the Valley of Death), where the deceptively soft ground sports a layer of dried and cracked white salt deposits.

A salty death

I visited this area two days ago to attempt sandboarding on the dunes found in the valley. Despite my conjecture on the origin of the name - i.e. its inability to support life in the harsh conditions - it is in fact a misnomer resulting from the mishearing of Belgian pastor, Gustavo le Paige (of museum fame), and was previously known as Valle de la Marte (the Valley of Mars). The red crumbly rock sculpted by wind and water, and baked by the sun, stand testament to this monicker.

Terraforming makes good progress on Mars

From Mars, we travelled to the Moon, entering the official national park and into another alien landscape.

Salty plains

Here the hills are made of crystalline evaporite and covered in an opaque dusting of salt. Natural forces have carved out caverns that twist through the salty structure and our guide led us, stooped to the point of almost crawling, through the dim passages and clambering up the other side.

Do we have wormsign?

Scaling the "Great Dune" gave us a stunning view over the salt lake and out to the Andean range, dominated by the conical form of Licancabur. However imposing this volcano appears, it is one of the less dangerous in the region. The honour of most active volcano in northern Chile goes to its close neighbour, Láscar, which has woken from its long dormancy in the past twenty years, beginning a new series of eruptions in 2006.

Licancabur

While the dusty, rocky surface does indeed give the impression of being on the Moon, the name of the area was apparently given by Gustavo le Paige in recognition of the selenite mineral that is to be found there, whose name in turn is derived from the Greek word for moon, selene (σεληνη).

#Faked

Having been awed by the otherworldliness of the vista, we passed by the "Three Marias" - a trio of natural stone sculptures that are said (at least by our favourite Belgian priest) to resemble figures in prayer - before heading to Cari's Broken to await sunset.

Cari's Broken seemed to me like an odd name. The Chilean name is Quebrada de Ckari, and while quebrado/a does mean broken (from quebrar, to break), it also means ravine, gorge, or mountain pass. Ckari is Kunza (Atacamenian dialect) for 'new'. Beware literal translations.

As the sun went down to the west, lengthening the shadows over the ridged plateau of "Cari's Broken", there rose in the east the full bright disc of the moon.

Moonrise of Moon Valley

In spite of last week's introduction to astronomy and planetary motion, we managed only fortuitously to book this tour for the date of the full moon. What luck. It certainly rounded out the end of the day in a manner fitting to the name of the area.