Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) Tour in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
My Salar de Uyuni tour dropped me off in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. It’s a small town near the Bolivian border and, while there isn’t much to do in the town itself, tours around the area abound. I spent an afternoon on the most popular tour in San Pedro de Atacama: exploring Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley.
Valle de la Luna is located in the heart of the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile and the landscape is ripe with jagged rock formations that make it feel like you’ve traveled to another planet…or, at least, to the set of a Star Wars movie.
To start the Moon Valley tour, our bus picked us up in town and we made a few stops to check out the death valley landscape. There were the Cuevas de Sal Cañon, the salt caves, full of narrow tunnels to explore. There was a drive through the Valley Of The Moon, and its breathtaking scenery. There were beautiful white sand dunes to hike among.
And it was all a glorious appetizer for the main event, the main draw of the Valle de la Luna tour: sunset.
Just before sunset at Valle de la Luna, we climbed to the top of the hill for a higher viewpoint over the valley. There we could see all the land we just hiked through from a bird’s eye view. The craters, the jutting rocks, the dips and the peaks. And while we were all tempted to watch west as the sun itself dip below the hills, the real magic happened when we turned around.
All of those rocks, all of those craters, all of those dips and peaks were glowing in pink and purple and orange hues, lit by the sun hitting the horizon.
Photos from the Valle de la Luna tour in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile:
(While in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, I also took a SPACE star tour where I went stargazing in the desert.)
Jade Lee Wright
October 10, 2014at7:54 amOh wow. Chile looks amazing. So beautiful and volcanoes are high up on the list of things I would love to see – lucky lucky lady!!
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