There are so many tours to choose from here and each of them covers so many different places that it's hard to really know what you are getting. But slowly we started to understand the place and know which attractions were in which direction and we got an idea for the distances between the places. Today we were heading south from San Pedro.
This morning the Bus (another Econovan) picked us up at the right Hostel and we headed out straight to a little town called Toconao. This town was just a few kilometers away from San Pedro but as much different. There were no tourist accommodations and no western bars and restaurants here. The only touristy place we got taken to was a little souvenir show that sold all kinds of artesian handicraft stuff.
Essentially this town was a farming village that had been here for centuries. Being close to a creek that comes down the mountain slopes, people built
church and water channels more than 250 years ago to grow their crops. These little canals are still being used nowadays to supply their little patches of land, where they grow oranges, Lemons and other fruits, with water. The produce is then sold on markets around the area (for example in San Pedro).
The town was much quieter than San Pedro and after some time waiting in the little souvenir shop the local church (built in 1750) opened and we were allowed to have a quick peak around the place.
From here we drove on to the main attraction of the day. The Atacama salt flat (Salar de Atacama), at 3000 sq km the largest Salt flats in Chile. They sit in a valley and water coming down the slopes of the mountains surrounding it collects in the basin and then evaporates, leaving behind the minerals.
The salt stretches for what seems to be infinity but between the salty rocks is water, which attracts loads of flamingos. They live of the little shrimp in the water. These shirmp live of some sort of red algae, which in turn causes the flamingos to be pink.
Aside from plenty of flamingos the site was also populated with Photographers. Not your average FinePix Photographers though, these guys were serious. I'm sure some of the lenses that we saw out there were challenging brand new Dacia pricewise. Then again I am happy with the shots I got from my 300 € camera as well.
Sitting near these salt flats in the shade we had a little break with some cakes and of course the good ole coca tea.
Then we spent what felt like two hours on a very bumpy straight road over the salt flats to get to the small village of Socaire where we had a break and our driver arranged food for later when we were going to pass through this town again on our way back home.
We used the short break to stretch our legs and have a look at the old church there. It is a nice little green oasis in the otherwise extremely dry area.
Soon after that we started climbing again, we could still see the Salar de Atacama far below us but we where already over 4000m and passed Mountain Pass that was just the perfect representation of a High Andes Pass: Just wide barren landscapes with immense smooth mountains around it and a road winding through it.
Along the way we saw many local animals: Llamas, Alpacas, Desert foxes, more flamingos and some ostrich like birds called Nandu.
Very soon after this we arrived at Salar Aguas Calientes - The Hot water salt flats.
These may not be as large as the Atacama Salt flats but their mirror flat surface (of water) and the barren mountain range behind it that reflects within them and their altitude of 4000m make them more spectacular to me.
This was also the place where we saw the piedras rojas - the red stones. Just a few red rocks near the Salar - but pretty cool.
As if this was not already enough for one day we visited two more high altitude Lagunas on the way back: Laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miñiques - both above the 4000m mark again.
At the latter one we spotted some Alpacas or Llamas - I can't tell these guys apart.
Aside from a few cookies that we brought we haven't had any food all day and by now it was nearly 4 pm and all of us were pretty hungry.
So on the way back we stopped by the little town of Socaire again where we had previously ordered the food.
It was a relatively large clay building with plenty of tables in it and seemingly the whole family (at least three generations) cooked and served us.
The food was not particularly good but it was included in the price and we were very hungry, so it did the trick.
After we were all stuffed we, tourists, were pretty tired. Not so our driver of course. He brought us safely the remaining 100km home to San Pedro while most of us dozed off.
That was once again another packed day of adventure. Certainly not very relaxing but definitely very exciting and memorable.
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