Moon valley

Volcan Licancabur (5916m) and Joan (1.52m)

Saturday 22nd December

Today is our last full day in San Pedro. We decided to take it relatively easy after two long days, so we visited the local museum. The museum charted the history of the local inhabitants, and displayed lots of stones, bits of pottery and textile. There was also some jewellery made out of gold for ceremonial purposes. The most famous exhibits, some ancient mummified bodies, have been removed in regard to the sensitivities of the indigenous population.

We looked inside the church where people were decorating the altar in time for Christmas. Outside was a large Nativity.

During the day the village is quite deserted as all the tourists (including ourselves) are out on trips. At night it all comes back to life with lots of bustling restaurants and open stores. There is a lot of construction going on in the village, for example new flagged pavements and what looks like a new coach station. One can not help thinking that if we came back in five year’s time, it would be a completely different place. In our hotel there has been a steady flow through of tourists, mainly European or Japanese, and menus and guides are available in lots of different languages. However, we have been warned that this may not be the case elsewhere. Nevertheless we have tried to avoid using English, and have done pretty well so far.

In the afternoon we went to Valle de la luna, the last thing on the tourist tick list. So far we have been used to everything being long distances away and also being on an immense scale. This was just outside San Pedro and we had driven through it before we realised we had missed one of the highlights, three stone pillars called the Tres Marias. However, to appease some of our most serious critics (see comments), we tried to take some photos with a point of reference in so you could appreciate the scale. Mr Kodak would have been proud of us!

Kevin reading the information sign. It was blank.


We also needed to use the 4X4 drive to get ourselves out of the sand. We then tried to find the Ruinas de Tulon, the vestiges of an ancient settlement that was partially excavated in the 1960s. We did find a sign, but after driving across the sands for a while we gave up. Instead we took a photo of the sign.

We filled up the tank at the petrol station ready for tomorrow’s long journey and headed back to the hotel for a beer. Here is a photograph. We put in Kevin so you could appreciate the scale of the beer bottle!!