The Valley of the Moon (and Death)

Eager to get our excursions underway and not spend too long in the pleasant but outrageously gringo-fied San Pedro, we booked the Valley of the Moon tour with the recommended Cactus Tours. The difference between them and the plethora of other tour agencies was the fact that we would do a trek of a couple of hours before watching the sun set in the Valley of the Moon.

Our slightly cocky young tour guide Oscar started by taking us through a small canyon to the Valley of the Death, so called because absolutely bugger all can live there.


It was quite a sight, particularly the strange eroded rocks. The large sand dune at the bottom left is the place where most of the agencies do their sandboarding excursions. Clairy didn't fancy the idea of that much.


The start of the trek took us along the top of a cliff dune. It was very hot and very dusty.


There I am. Oscar stomped off in front insisting we go at a fair old lick as distances can apparently be deceiving in the desert and we needed to keep to a tight schedule.


These little piles of stones are left to indicate the trails or a point of interest.


The shadows from the afternoon sun looked amazing.


'Oh hi! I'm not looking behind me.'


Oscar with a friendly Korean couple.


Nice shadows...and foot.


We crossed a broad stretch of sand and an exceedingly dry ex-river bed and reached the beginning of another canyon. Here Oscar got us to stop for a second and listen. All around there was a gentle creaking sound. We were at the start of a salt canyon. He demonstrated where the noise came from by pooring a bit of water on the crystals. As it was drawn in, the crystals creaked and groaned. This is due to the way they expand and contract with water absorption and evaporation.


There were lots of different crystal formations.




Eventually we reached a partly open cave we had to duck to walk through.


Oscar insisted on us all getting a group photo. Go strangers! The couple on the right were Brazilian and whipped out a vast national flag for almost all their photos, in a quite outrageous display of nationalism. We commented on just how wrong that would appear to us if it were a union jack.




Around the corner was a nice chunky crystal worn smooth by decades of tourists fingers.




Towards the end of the canyon we reached the 'snow' section where the deposits are resemble the white stuff.


Snow. In the desert! Whatever next.


Oscar insisted we all squash into this precarious looking hole for another group photo. Fortunately ours didn't come out so Clairy took this nice one without anyone spoiling it.


Yet more nice portrait shadows.


When we reached the other side of the canyon we bumped into another couple of tour groups and were glad we went with one that actually took us on a very nice walk rather than driving the van into the canyon and having a 5 minute look at it. After this we headed off to the Valle de la Luna. This was rather played up on the ticket/information that we recieved and although pretty, could have been pretty much anywhere in the surrounding desert. There are some interesting geological features, and a walk you can do, but most people use it as a means to get up quite high to see the strkinig colours that are revealed as the sun goes down.

The walk was short, but fairly strenuous, as you had to climb up the side of an enormous dune. The dune itself is now protected after they noticed that it seemed to be getting smaller as thousands of tourists traipsed off into the distance with a fair amount of it filling their shoes.


The Valle de la Lune.


'I'm really not going to fall down there sweety.'




'Alright we can have our photo a bit further away from the edge.'


I was a tad sceptical about the apparent beautiful colour change but it really was pretty darn gorgeous.


The base of the volcano on the horizon started to really show dark greeny hues.


And the gnarly rock formations in the foreground really set off the colours.


Lovely stuff.


After this we all headed back to the minibus. Naturally, I had a race with Oscar down the steep side of the dune that you were allowed to trash. It was most fun, but I lost though, only because the git had a head start.

It was a very nice introduction to one of the driest places on the planet.