“Valley of the Moon” is ten minutes drive from San Pedro. As described in other travel guides, we expected to see the sunset in the evening with changing colours of the landscape.
Licancabur volcano
And so we are more than surprised to be told at the entrance of the National Reservation prior to the sunset that we would need a pair of trekking shoes, a torch for dark cave and several hours for exploring!
Lava ash sand dune
10 km into the park on a gravel road we reach the cave. It is endlessly long, narrow, in some positions only 50 cm wide, as dark as the night and low that we partially have to crawl along the rock to get out of this claustrophobic nightmare. Yes, it is! The only way to get out is to move slowly forward because in front of us there are hundreds of people and the same amount of explorer heroes behind us! No way to escape or step by side. Thankfully few of them have a functioning mobile phone which can be used as a torch to illuminate the one way traffic.
The organised sand smuggling
The moon landscape
One day before our departure from San Pedro, a traveller couple from Bremen moves into our hostal. They have already been travelling in Chile for 4 months and today they become victims of a coup by a group of gangs at the Calama bus station. They were stressed and set in distraction by different orchestrated actions, then a backpack, half of their belongings, was stolen while one of the couple stood just next to it. Then all of the gangs disappeared suddenly at once!