25th November – Valley of the Moon and Rainbow Valley

Just look at the salt!

This morning it was just the 3 of us accompanied by our rather attractive guide, Catalina.  The Valley of the Moon is very close to the lodge so after a short van ride we were there.  It is set in the Salt Mountains, which is a range lifted some 32 million years ago and are about 3000 metres high.   As the name suggests, these mountains were mined for their salt starting in the 1950’s until 1975.  You could see the salt everywhere glinting in the rocks like diamonds and where it was particularly concentrated, it looked like snow.  We drove up the length of the valley and then stopped off to see various highlights.

The first stop off was The Three Mary’s, one of which has fallen from grace by the hand of an eager acolyte (read tourist) who tried climbing it only for it to fall over. Nowadays you can’t touch the stones.

Abandoned compressor in front of a ruined house

The second stop was the site of a former mine. During the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s the salt was mined here for iodine. This was carried out by the local population and was done in a very rudimentary way – they dug a hole, put some explosive in and bang! The result is a bigger hole full of salt rocks. This ended in 1975 when better ways of making iodine were used. Catalina said that if we were quiet we could hear the salt crystals cracking as they expanded in the heat, and yes you can. Apart from holes in the ground there are various bits of debris around including boots, shirts, car parts a large compressor which are just left to slowly degrade in the heat and dryness.

View back over the Salt Mountains

We then moved out of the park and onto the main road between San Pedro and Calama, this took us around the back of the Vale de la Luna and above it. The views back into the vale were superb. This is where lots of people come to watch the sun go down and gets quite crowded.

Back at the hotel we decided that after lunch we would spend some time enjoying the facilities and used the outdoor Jacuzzi. I decided to take the plunge and jump in to one of the 5 outdoor pools, yes, that is correct 5. As we lay there drying off we were surrounded by up to 9 members of staff either doing maintenance, or taking pictures of themselves (with us in the background) or standing around chatting. We looked round the other pools and there were only people sunbathing, obviously we must be something exotic!

Rainbow Valley

At 4:00pm we set off for the Rainbow Valley also known as the Vale de la Mars or Death valley. The name confusion come from a Belgian priest who toured this area in the 1950’s and use the French name for Mars which sounds to like muerta in Spanish which is word for death to name the valley, hence Death valley. This was in the Domeyko range of mountains which were raised up over 90 million years ago and are about 4000 metres high.

Llama petroglyphs

On the way we stopped to look at some petroglyphs. These are on a series of rocks and have a central theme of Llamas (more likely the more prevalent Guanaco which is larger than the Llama). Our Guide, Anjela pointed out the outline of the carvings in the rocks. Initially it’s quite difficult to make them out, but we soon got our eyes into spotting them. As we walked along the rocks the carvings became more prevalent and sophisticated. Some showed Llamas with small ones inside and this is associated with what is believed to be a calendar. There are also round markings that is, believed to be, a way of counting down the days. There are also carvings of foxes and a snake. Towards the end of the rocks we also saw pictures of shaman probably high on mescal with images of more llamas, a monkey and other reptiles. To view these images required scrambling up the rocks in places. Walking back, Anjela picked some obsidian, malachite, and pottery shards out of the sand.

Finally we got to our destination, the Death Valley. The valley itself isn’t that long, but it has deposits of copper (green rocks), sulphur (yellow), iron (red), and white (calcium carbonate/gypsum). The colours were amazing and looked lovely in the sun light.  Anjela believes that sadly this valley will eventually become a mine as the deposits at Calama are exhausted.

Tamsin and Gill felt tired and went to bed. I went out to onsite observatory with 8 other guests. The guide was Luis, a very enthusiast person who soon had us looking at through the Meade 2000 reflector telescope. The first observation was of the moon which was a waxing and in a fine crescent shape. This filled the eye piece and several people took pictures using their smart phones. The next object up was the Orion nebula. As the telescope is already programmed with these objects Luis just needed to tell it what he wanted to look at. We also looked at Uranus (no comments please) before going outside to see two Megallanic Clouds and the Zodiac constellations. I left as everyone else went back i to look at Mars and Andromeda. The skies here are fantastic and very clear which is why the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) is based this is a research facility run jointly by ESA/NASA and Japanese funding.