In the North, every Chilean village has a Christian Saint as city patron allocated by the Spanish, in an attempt to fuse local tribal religion with Christianity and allowing the citizens to continue their traditional annual celebrations under the pretext of celebrating the city patron. If you happen to be there, these festivities are a nice way to experience local customs and dances, and you get multiple chances as every village holds a different patron. For San Pedro, the patron is obviously St. Peter whose date I happen to be familiar with as it falls on my birthday. As my birthday was approaching fast anyway, we made sure to arrive in time for the festivities. San Pedro itself is a fairly little village (if you don’t count the countless tourists), and the celebrations were rather small, but you could tell from the efforts of the locals that the date still holds a high significance for them.

[See image gallery at 2young2simple.debraaf.eu]

The day of San Pedro is actually a national public holiday and as it fell on a Monday this year, many Chileans were in town for the long weekend. We met quite a few from the neighboring mining city Calama, who regularly escape their not-so-pretty town for a weekend in San Pedro. Luckily it is otherwise low season here and we still managed to catch the last room in one of the nice B&Bs. Once the weekend was over we had the whole house to ourselves

San Pedro is not famous for the festival though, but instead for its stunning desert and mountain landscapes, clear skies and outdoor activities. There are several excellent day tours you can choose from and if you add on a few activities like sand boarding, horse riding, mountain biking etc. one week will pass very quickly. I had two personal must do’s – top one being to indulge in the crystal clear skies at night and go on an astronomical night tour and top two traveling to a big geyser field called “El Tatio Geyser”. Both turned out to be quite a bummer … – but the rest made more than up for it!
After our first scouting of the travel agencies, it became quickly clear that our great timing of the San Pedro festival was at the same time the worst timing for star gazing. During full moon the sky is too bright to do any meaningful sky watching and tours usually stop for a six day period…  which had just started.

Instead we opted for an easy bicycle ride to the “Valle de la Luna”, situated in a large salt field, whose rugged landscapes really make you feel like on a different planet. It was Yang Ke’s first bicycle ride since a long time and we traveled at a leisurely pace through the hilly scenery, while the sun slowly set behind the mountain range.

Next day we took a day-long tour to the mountain range next to the Argentina border. The whole journey already rewards with beautiful, varied scenery, from extremely dry plains to grasslands in different shades, all with stunning mountain panorama in the background. Half-way we stopped by large clear lagoons within the vast salt planes, winter home to three different species of flamingos.

Another highlight was a few mountain lakes up on 4’000m with stunning background and some even with vicunas grazing around.

Here another surprise animal visitor. Can you spot it?

We finished the trip with a visit to one of the last remaining mountain villages, also slowly dying except for a few surviving on the tourists. Boring place but the best lama-BBQ we had so far!

We kept the most challenging excursion for the last day – getting up at 5am to experience the geysers at sunrise – at a temperature of -10 to -15’C! We didn’t pack any serious winter clothes so just put on all layers of clothes we had in our bags, hoping for the best. The underground water, heated up by the magma pockets lying below, boils through the earth crust and erupts as steam or water fountain. The bubbling water and the steam fountains are a pretty sight, but far from the image I had in mind of large water geysers exploding 10m in the air. Most pictures you see advertised are from the past, before the underground water reservoirs were reduced from global warming and failed experiments by a company to produce thermal energy from the heat. Nowadays there are only two miniscule water geysers left and the majority is just steam. There is a thermal bath nearby, for those brave enough to face the freezing air temperatures. The guide was somehow in a hurry and we used the little time left to further explore the fields instead. Anyway too sissi to remove only one layer of clothes

We relaxed the remaining day in the comfortable hostel with a bottle of Chilean red wine, nice gesture from the hotel for my birthday