Finally getting to the last day of Atacama! We had to wake up early to catch a tour of the Salt lakes with flamingos, and the Lagunas Altiplanicas in the morning. The bus came to our hostel, picked us up, and we left for a 40 minute drive to what looked like absolutely nothing...
Except that when you arrive you see a flat landscape full of white chunky rocks, which actually turns out to be a bunch of salt! We learned that areas of this valley/plain used to be a huge lake, and when it dried up all of the salt was left behind. There were some areas with water left, and the mini ecosystems that live there were very strange. There are flamingos, some kind of shrimp, and a lot of microorganisms. It's a strange environment to live in, and they obviously have to be able to handle a lot of minerals, especially salt.
Many of us in the group kept saying that this is a place that should not be pretty, but it surprisingly is!
So much salt...
From afar we can see Volcano Lascar. It's still active, and was smoking all day! Very cool.
After the salt lakes we started driving up into the hills, towards the mountains to reach a second set of lakes (Las Lagunas Altiplanicas). The views were stunning!
The surroundings were so strange to me. The ground wasn't the dirt we'd been seeing all weekend because plants were actually able to grow, but it still was desert. The mountains looked like ones I was more used to, but still lacked vegetation, so it was just a different world to me. I've never seen anything like it.
We drove by a fox!
The lake colors were very cool! (Look close below).
On the way back to San Pedro, we stopped in a little town to get ice cream and look around. They had a cute plaza and church, and that's about all that made up the town.
By the time we got back into town it was about 2pm, and it was very hot in San Pedro. We took a break for a bit at the hostel. Most of us had some sunburn despite the fact that we had all put on sunscreen multiple times. The desert is going to win that battle. We never got to feel clean or cool. There's always dirt, sweat, and sunscreen. I guess that's the nature of the Atacama. Kaylin and I decided to go rent bikes again and go back to the area we had gone the day previous, and see if we could make it to the church we had seen from afar. We ended up finding out from the rental service that there was another canyon area we hadn't explored, so we were pumped to try some new routes!
These red canyons were gorgeous, and so fun to ride bikes through! There were a lot of natural tunnels and caves around, and I hardly could keep my eyes on the path because I just wanted to look around. It reminded me a lot of Red Rocks.
Funny enough after about 2 hours of biking we ended up at top of one of these huge rock walls, and looked around... we were not anywhere near where we had meant to be. We hiked around a little to see if we could find a way out, but there were a lot a different ways, and we didn't want to risk getting lost in a random canyon. So we went back, and connected with the main road to try and make it to the church. It took all of 15 minutes to get to the church, which was tiny and sitting on a hill.
Kaylin and I went back to San Pedro and returned the bikes after about 4 hours of biking. It was such a good end to a great weekend in the Atacama desert. This place surprised me so much! I loved the desert, and it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been! I really enjoyed getting away from the big city and getting outside for a whole weekend. Though I could never live or stay long in a place like this, the Norte Grande of Chile sure made it's mark on my semester abroad.
Ciao!
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