Monday, February 14th-

This morning I haggled a few companies for a big group discount on tours of the Atacama desert. We ended up with two tours: the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) tour today, and Lagunas Altiplanicas (high-elevation lakes) tour tomorrow.

Valle de la Luna is just outside of San Pedro. It’s a wholllle lot of crazy rock formations caused by violent tectonic and volcanic action over the past six million years.

Our guide was a bit nuts, having led these tours for 12 straight years. He rocked the glacier goggles pretty well.

Rock strata in three directions! Crazy!

This rock made little crumbling sounds when we were really quiet, which was disquieting in a safety sense.

Erosion explosion.

Sunset over the valle.

Julie hales the moon.

All is quiet.

Sweet tour. Tomorrow morning at 6:30am: high-altitude lakes and flamingos!