Valle de la Luna

Began the day collecting my clean laundry - which interestingly enough charged by weight, rather than by item, and was also a bike hire shop! The afternoon was spent doing a tour of the Valle de la Luna, a lunar landscape with colourful geology. We found interesting rock formations composed of naturally occurring minerals, including Las Tres Marías (but just looked like a rock outcrop) created by wind erosion over decades. One of the stops was an abandoned salt mine, full of crystal and salt. We were told the salt has no iodine? but was used in copper mines which were not far away. We stood there for a while and the silence was amazing (hard to explain!) We went for a walk to see some of the views and at 3000m the advice was to not over exert. At the end of the day, exploring on some really bad tracks, we watched the sunset from a vantage point overlooking the valley and the oasis which is the town. The Atacama Desert can't be described in words (so I have put some pics below) but it was nice to watch the sunset with a Pisco sour and nibbles. Tomorrow I leave for Santiago on my way to Peru.