Visit of Valle de la Luna

The valley de la Luna is a must do in San Pedro de Atacama and since we couldn’t get good information on whether we could buy the tickets on not, we decided to go there first thing in the morning.

At the entrance, there are 2 ticket machines ! What a relief, we had read online that without a ticket bought before hand, you couldn’t enter. After discussing with the staff, they confirmed that the online website doesn’t accept foreign credit cards. 

We started our visit of the valley. It might sound stupid, but I didn’t connect the dot of why the name “Luna”. Well because everything is salt ! A large portion of the valley is salt and white. It’s a beautiful contrast of white grounds, red rocks and sand dunes. The entire landscape is otherworldly and very unique. I am unsure the pictures will reflect the variety of colors that you see.

We were the second car in the valley that day. The first stop is the Duna Mayor – the longest loop to see the two viewpoints took us about 45min to 50min to complete. 

The second stop are the 3 miradors, but as we came down from the Dune, we saw a lot of people arriving and we decided to do the miradors on our way back. Indeed the third stop is the old salt mine. The staff at the entrance said that if you are quiet there, you can still hear the salt crack. To maximize our chance of quiet, we decided to go there while the crowd was still at the first stop.

The salt mine was unimpressive and not so interesting a stop. To walk around the remains, it takes about 15 to 20min. We didn’t hear anything crack. 

We continued driving to the end of the valley and the 3 Maria rocks. Unfortunately, the sun was right behind them, none of the pictures we took came out good. It’s three odd shaped pinnacles. All in all 5min.

We then drove back to the miradors that we had left for last. It’s one of the nicest thing to do – it took us one good hour to do the three miradors and walk the entire loop. We were the only ones, almost everyone stops at the 1st mirador. I felt like the 2nd and 3rd were the best. Especially the 2nd. But climbing back up the dune with the sand was not easy.

We started the visit at 8h30 and were finished at noon. There are some shaded picnic tables behind the ticket office, not far from the toilets. We took our lunch there.

We had time to go and visit the valle de la Muerte – but altitude was kicking in and we had that heat induced cloud head. We decided to call it a day, the wind and heat were picking up anyway. 

Back at the room for a good nap and quiet time before we decided to take the car back to the Ckari viewpoint for sunset. Obviously, it’s a famous spot and it got incredibly crowded. 
I found the sunset not so interesting from the Ckari viewpoint. The nicest part of sunset was the orange glow that illuminated the volcanos and highest mountains on the drive back to town. There were some low clouds with gave the sky a beautiful texture. These could be seen from town.

We found some parking close to town and walk to the money changer to get enough bolivianos until Sucre then tried Adobe restaurant. It’s one of the bigger one in town – the meal was pricey but quite good. We had a really good day.