Of all the places we visited in Chile, San Pedro was by far our favourite. The beauty of the Atacama desert landscape is breathtaking and is a must-see place for anyone who loves to travel. Although northern Chile is a desert, you have mountain ranges and volcanoes surrounding it. And the sky! It is such an intense blue, like you're looking at the world through the polarizer of your camera. And did I mentioned that this is the first time we have seen the moon so clearly during the daytime!
On our first day in Atacama we booked
four tours to see the big highlights of the area. On the first tour,
we went to Laguna Cejar, a salt lake where it is impossible for you
to sink. So like all crazy tourists, we had to test it out for
ourselves. Well let me tell you its winter here and the water is
Freeezzing cold. So cold that your feet go numb after a minute in the
water and when you get out the salt and cold burns your skin.
Everyone on the tour, stripped down into their swimsuit shivering,
hesitantly walked into the water shivering even more, and ran back
out in 5 minutes as soon as they had tested that “yes you do
float”! The Laguna Cejar is saltier than the Dead Sea and it isn't
even the most salt-concentrated lake there. There are other ones
which are too salty to swim in! These lakes are salty because the
Salt Mountain Range is nearby and there is a flat plain which is made
of salt crystals, the Salar de Atacama. This is where we went next!
The next day we saw more of the
geographic features of the area, the town of Socaire, the Altiplano,
which is a plateau region with two lakes, Lagunas Miscantiy and
Miniques, and the Salar de Atacama, a salt plain where you can see
pink flamingos grazing in the water for hours. We also saw vicunas,
a type of wild camel on the plains and other native birds in the
lakes. The thing about San Pedro is that the landscape is epic! You
see animals in their natural habitat, stunning lakes and landscapes
in vibrant colour, all with the backdrop of a chain of mountains and
a chain of still active volcanoes, the Licancabur. Everywhere you
look seems to be taken out of a postcard.
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