North to South in Chile

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Friday, 5 October 2018 - Got up before dawn to photograph Moon Valley at sunrise, hiked into the lunar-like gypsum and sand dunes with spectacular desert vistas, tasted salt crystals from the old salt mine, saw volcanic landscapes like "Coyote's Lookout," packed up and headed to Calama Airport for a flight to Santiago, then drove into Chile's wine country to stay at Viña Vik where we enjoyed evening wine and dinner.

Up early in the dark to photograph Moon Valley at sunrise. Everyone else slept in.

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Moon Valley
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Valle de la Luna is a part of the Reserva Nacional los Flamencos and was declared a Nature Sanctuary in 1982 for its natural environment and strange lunar landscape, from which its name is derived.
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A prototype for a Mars rover was tested here by scientists because of the valley's dry and forbidding terrains.
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Breakfast at 7:30AM of poached egg and bacon with freshly baked bread and/or croissants from the local French bakery in San Pedro. A 29-year-old Parisian was hiking and traveling through San Pedro, fell in love the desert and proceeded to sell French baguettes on the street. He later opened a French Cafe in San Pedro which sells the best coffee and pastries in the town.

We packed our bags and headed out to Moon Valley where we hiked into the valley, saw the gypsum strata and the incredible sand dunes.
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This area first existed as a salt mine but stopped operations in the 1990's. It is very fine sand and soft rock (0.0-2.5 hardness).
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This is a salt crystal just off the parking area for a trail. Our guide scraped the dirt away and poured water on the crystal so we could taste the salt.
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The salt walls of a canyon make a popping sound as they heat up during the day and then cool down at night.
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A towering dune with a small rocky ridge at the top.
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Leaving Moon Valley, we could see a view of the volcano, "Peoples' Mouth" in front of us. Before leaving for the airport, we saw "Coyote's Lookout" or "Coyote's Stone".

At Noon, we were off to the Airport at Calama which was an hour plus drive and we said goodbye to Sebastian and Macarana at the airport.

We flew from Calama to Santiago where we were picked up and driven to the wine country about a 2.5 hour drive. We arrived at Vina Vik after dark and after a quick shower, we sat down to a glass of Vik vino and a relaxing dinner.
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