March 23 Valle de la Luna

 

Breathtaking vistas at Valle de la Luna

In the morning the weather was still a little uncertain so the National Park was going to close at 4pm. As a result our day tour to the Valley of the Moon was brought forward to an earlier departure time which was no big issue for us.  We love deserts so to us Valle de la Luna was quite breathtaking in an almost brutal way. The erosion covered vast areas. Silent, stark and otherwworldly with strange alien salt and clay shapes carved into the landscape everywhere you looked. Salt, pulverised rock, wind-worn sculptures – a moonscape, if one could imagine what the moon might look like. 

You could walk, cycle or drive - you guessed our preference!

Lindsay, our other passenger and our guide walked around this quite large hill while I stayed to explore the salt encrusted rocks

Give a rock formation a name and people will visit. Creative erosion

An abandoned salt mine

We climbed to a couple of old abandoned salt mine: salt was a huge commodity here. The sparkle and weird clustering of salt was quite ‘lovely’. 

It's a landscape that needs to be be seen to believed 

Under the rock crust were quite cavernous holes caused simply by wind, water and salt over time. 

We ended the day parked on a high stretch of road at ‘Piedra del Coyote’ which looked over the convoluted Valle de la Luna. Here our jolly driver served us wine and cheese and our delightful guide sang us a plaintive love song in the setting rays of the sun. Very romantic.  She is the daughter of a Shaman and has taken on her father’s healing role so that the craft is not lost from their family.  Amongst other things, she makes herbal remedies. She is also a music therapist.  Her English was not brilliant – and our Spanish was worse - but we all managed, with the help of the other passenger, a Brazilian whose English and Spanish were very good.   Somehow you always manage.  

Happy hour with a magnificent view