Zelma’s Trip

We woke up at the campsite and were greeted by the ever friendly Louis.  The previous night Louis had, helpfully, assisted me with my tent so that it looked like a large tree had fallen on it several times.  He appeared to have taken a shine to me.  That and a combination of being slightly bored meant that he appeared at every possible opportunity.  He also tried to speak to me, made comedy gestures and then did sad sighs and winks.  After the standard Louis encounter we headed into San Pedro.

The town itself was nice in its own way and we decided it wasn´t the hell-hole we had thought it was the day before.  It was touristy though with artisan stalls everywhere and places to stay and eat.  The food was surprisingly good with a lot of vegetarian options presumably catering for the hippy types but pleasing to me all the same.

From the town we headed to the rather reassuringly titled Valle de Muerta (Valley of Death) out of the town.  This is one of the places where people sandboard as there are huge dunes.  Having driven down a track, which we were grateful to have a significant amount of ground clearance for, we stopped as it got very sandy.  We got out momentarily, were sandblasted, and got back in the car.  The place was stunning but slightly too windy to enjoy a walk, unless you like having a faceful of sand continually that is.

So we drove out of the deathly valley and headed for the more friendly sounding Valle de la Luna (Valley of the moon).  There was an entrance gate where you could read informative signs, paid your entrance fee for the park and were given a map with suggested stop off points.  The first of these was an area of channels and caves through huge salt cliffs.  The place was amazing with sand covered salt banks and shaded channels between.  We walked through until we got to a very dark tunnel.  We couldn´t really figure out if it was a cave or whether it actually went anywhere and, as we didn´t have a torch, we headed back out.

After the caves we carried on through the park stopping at various other amazing places to look around.  You could see where the place had got its name from with awesome rock formations and lunar landscapes.  The final place to stop was the three marias which were three kind of towers of rock which, I guess were meant to look like the three Mary´s.  They didn´t.  Although Dad thought that one of them looked a bit like a frog.

Back at the campsite Mum and I decided to handwash some clothes.  This was of great interest to Louis who stood watching us.  We had another nice night at the campsite, enjoying the surroundings and quiet.