the chilean north.

"Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out... and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water... like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It's so beautiful."

-Forest Gump

I'd never been to a desert before, so I guess I didn't really know what to expect. The snowcapped mountains were a surprised, and the fact that it wasn't flat in the least. The last week I was in Chile, we traveled to the north of the country and stayed in San Pedro de Atacama. We watched the sunset from Valle de la Luna, which is the closest thing on earth to being like the surface of the moon. We went to hot springs at over 10,000 ft, and to Valle de la Muerte, where we ran down huge sand dunes. We went to the world's third biggest salt lake, Chaxa, where we saw 3 types of flamingos, to the tropic of capricorn (a stick in the middle of the desert..), and horseback riding through the desert town of Sequitor. We saw ancient Incan ruins, and part of the Inca trail. It was a week filled with adventures and sight seeing before heading back to the US!