Vapor Trails: San Pedro De Atacama

The bus drops you in San Pedro, after having gone through the border. San Pedro is an oasis in the middle of the Atacama Desert - one of the driest places on earth. The village is really geared up for travelers, so there´s plenty of stuff to see and do.

Here´s a pic of the rather pleasant main square:

I´d planned to leave after one day, but the bus didn´t leave until Sunday, which I was really glad about, as it was a perfect excuse to hang out for a while.

I found an awesome vego restaurant and had an incredible Christmas Dinner (the menu even had a "meat options" section - which was amusing).

After a good night´s sleep I rented a bike to cycle up to Devil´s Canyon. I´d read that there´s an incredible mountain biking trail there - and having really enjoyed biking the World´s Most Dangerous Road - decided to give it a go.

On the way, just out of town, there are some Pre-Inca ruins, and a look out way up on top of one of the hill´s.

Here are some picks of the ruins, and the look out:

The green is San Pedro - everything else is desert:

From there I biked to the canyon, and on the way there´s a river you have to ride through - here´s a pic taken by a couple of German girls:

(Yep...I got wet feet - although I made it all the way accross...)

Once your in the canyon - it´s absolutely incredible. A tight path leads through the canyon walls, and in places it was quiet hard to cycle, as the ground is thick sand, and the bike slides all over the place.

I biked up to the end of the canyon (which took just over an hour), where it opens out. The only problem - everything looks the same with channels leading off, and I realized that I was lost. It´s baking hot, and I´m trying to find my way back, with the "Voice Of Reason" telling me that I should have stayed on the main path.

Eventually I see some bike tracks which I´m pretty sure are mine, and so I follow them up one of the channels, and after about 5mins, I recognize one of the tunnels.

It was a pretty hard climb out to the main track, but once your there I realized the path slopes down, and I was able to pick up a fair bit of speed, using all the techniques I´d learned on the World´s Most Dangerous Road. With the occasional spot of very deep sand, and riding into the canyon wall because I was going too fast, I made it back to the start. Awesome.

It all looked like this when I found I was lost, with channels all leading off to either side:

A cool curve taken at high speed on the way back:

At the end of the road for the canyon, I met a guy called Miguel, who was a Jazz Pianist, and we sat chatting for about 30 mins. He´d played all over Europe, and had decided to open a Hostel in San Pedro...it´s just that kind of place.

Here´s a view of the ride back to San Pedro, just by the spot I met Miguel:

That night I´d booked myself onto an astronomical tour - they take you into the desert and look at the stars through large telescopes. It´s one of the clearest places in the world as there is no light pollution and the air is clear because of the lack of rain and the altitude. It´s also well known for having very few cloudy nights. Except for this one and sadly the tour was canceled.

The next day I tried to go Sandboarding, but I´d already booked a tour to the Valle De La Luna, for 4pm and didn´t have a enough time. Not a problem - as part of the tour took us to the sand dunes and the boarding didn´t look that exciting (it actually looked really hard work - there´s no lifts - so it was a few moments of going down and a long walk back up the dune!)

Here´s some pics from the Valle De La Luna:

This is a pic of Death Valley:

This is a monster Sand Dune which is really steep - you can see my footprints where I ran down. It took about 30 seconds to get from top to bottom, bouncing along the sand - giant steps are what you take: