San Pedro De Acatama is a town where people use as a
base to explore the Acatama desert and Bolivia. The
town is old colonial and the streets are lined with
adobe. At night the streets are flooded with young
backpackers giving it a youthful feeling. We do not
see many american tourists here, they are mostly from
Europe espcially France.
On day 2, we hired a guide to give us the tour of the
Salar de Tara (salt flat). Salar de Tara is not as
large as Salar de Acatama but we want to go there to
see the unsual rock formations. It is 150 km from SP
to Salar de Tara, 50 km is off-road. The guide is also
the driver. I admire him for his sense of direction
and ability to drive off-road. There is no road
whatsoever and the terrain is immense with tire´s
print going in all directions. I do not see how he got
the right direction. On the way we saw the Lincancabur
volcano up close. It is grey and red. The off-road
terrain is flat and immense and there are rock
formations that look like statues or monuments all
over the places. The rock structure is very different
from the ones in CA desrt because these are volcanic
rocks. We took many pictures. We are sending 4 this
time. The first one is one shape of rock. The 2nd one
is the Monk of Pacana, the background is the Salt
Flat. The 3rd one is called the white monk of Pacana.
The 4th one is cathedral rock, it is very close to the
salt flat. Notice how blue the sky is. There was no
cloud and you can see (in the picture)the moon in
broad day ligth. When we got to the Salt flat and I
had minor altitude sickness because it is 4600 meters
(over 14,000 ft) above sea level. There were many
flamingo at the salt flat. We had lunch at salt flat
and visit the milky lake. At 4PM we went back to the
hotel, I stayed there and anh Vinh continued on with
another excursion, swimming in the salt water lake as
salty as the Red sea (we forget the name of the
place). His body was floating he said. The sky is so
clear in SP that we saw so many stars, there were so
many that they look like Christ mas lights in the sky.
Until the next e-mail.
Love,
Vinh and Duyen
Day 3
On day 3, we left at 4:30 AM for the Tatio Geyser
tour. We had to get there at sun rise when the Geysers
are most active. The road was unpaved and very bumpy,
it was dark outside we could not see the landscape.
When we got there (before 7 AM) it was 17 degree F.
Inside the office building near the entrance, there
were beds set up for people who has serious altitude
sickness because the Geyser field is at 14,600 ft ASL.
I did not get sick this time. The geyser field is 10
km square and has over 100 geysers, these are geysers
who produce steams. We are sending 4 pictures. The
1st one is the Geyser field. 2nd and third ones are of
the thermal pool where people can swim. The water is
very warm. We saw a dozen people in there. The 4th one
is the biggest geyser in this field. On the way back
we could see the landscape and the animals who live
there. There was a portion of teh landscape that look
similar to Arizona desrt with cactus.
We will fly home tonight, the trip was a wonderful
experience. Chile has such diverse lanscsapes, they
are amazing. We did not have time to visit Valparaiso,
the lake areas and the wine country. We will have to
wait for another time. We already are looking forward
to another adventure.
Love,
Vinh and Duyen
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