Day 40 – 31st December. Valle de Le Luna.

Valle de Le Luna near San Pedro de Atacama. Click on the image and note the people on cliff top to the right to give an idea of the scale.


Antofagasta – San Pedro de Atacama 323 kms

Total Distance So Far: 10,290 kms (8,520 kms by Land, 1,770 kms by Sea)

We woke, packed and left as soon as possible. We did not trust the kitchens in a hotel full of bugs so we skipped breakfast. Our last view of Antofagasta was a 12m tall statue of Michael Jackson standing proud over the city’s slums.

Today was spent gradually climbing from the coast to the Andes. We were heading due east to San Pedro de Atacama which sits 25 kms from the Bolivian border. At 3,500m Lidy said she felt a little short of breadth so that will be something to watch when we go higher in Peru.

The landscape was very bare for the first two hundred kilometers, changing after we passed the mining town of Calama.

The last 100 kms into San Pedro was fantastic. First crossing the Valley of Patience and mysterious looking terrain of cracks, small plateaus and rock walls. Twenty kilometers out of San Pedro we saw a constant line of 4 x 4’s heading over some rocky hills so we followed them and chanced upon an amazing view of a rugged valley called the Valle de La Luna (The Valley of the Moon). Being New Years eve it was a bit of a party atmosphere there and everyone waited for sunset and the full moon rise. We joined a Brazilian crowd who insisted we drink copious amounts of El Vino.

It was a greet couple of hours, although the few kilometers back over the rocks to terra firma with large drops everywhere was a bit tricky.

We quickly found our hotel (it was now 11pm) and looked for a place to eat and see in the New Year. Everywhere was full, so after much pleading one restaurant that was having a mixed meats barbeque set us up a little table right next to one of the fires that were doted amongst the place. A great evening was had, and a party atmosphere was all over the town. All the main streets and bars were full, and full out onto the streets as well. I was staggered at just how many people had made the trip to this little mountain village. I knew it would be busy as it was difficult finding a room when I tried to book in Santiago. I tried about 10 hotels before getting success.

Anyway with a hundred different versions of "auld lang syne" and other songs ringing in my ears we eventually left the all-night parade and crashed.


A train on it's way to one of the large mines around Calama. It's pulling wagons of Sulphuric Acid used in the process to seperate the copper ore from the crushed rock.


The tyres of the monster mine trucks are 4 meters high.


The enormous buckets that sit on the back of the mine trucks. We were told a couple of days later each can carry a load of 200 tonnes of rocks. These would have been handy in Easter Island a few hundred years ago!