Tl;dr tour to the Rainbow Valley, lunch at La Picada Del Indio, World Cup watching at ChelaCabur, and shopping, Moon Valley, and dinner at La Picada del Indio – 4 activities and 15,601 steps
Activity 1 – Rainbow Valley
This tour takes you through the valley between the Salt and Domeyko mountain ranges and has a stop to view some petroglyphs. The pickup time was around 7:30am and after a short drive we went for a quick hike while the tour guide made breakfast (same breakfast as the day before). See pictures of the Rainbow Valley below:
And pictures of the Petroglyphs:
I’ll let you go on this tour and learn about the meaning and significance of the glyphs.
Activity 2 – Lunch, World Cup, and Shopping
We got back to San Pedro around 1pm, so I quickly grabbed lunch. I went back to Il Picado del Indio, but this time I got the lunch special, which is probably the best deal in the entire town. You get a small salad, small entree, and dessert.
After lunch, I caught the end of a World Cup match, but wanted to spend my time preparing for the tour I had lined up for tomorrow – a trip to the geysers. I had heard from other travelers that the the temperatures can hit -10* celsius because you reach the Geysers (around 4,200m above sea level) for sunrise. I decided to buy gloves, a hat, and leg warmers (they were cheap enough and nice enough that I would wear them back home).
After my little shopping spree, I ran back to the hostel to drop off my goodies and prepare for my next tour – the Moon Valley.
Activity 3 – Moon Valley
The Moon Valley was very cool. I definitely recommend this tour. We did some exploring and saw the Three Marys. They used to let you slide down the sand dunes, but they stopped allowing people to do that a few years ago.
After leaving the Moon Valley area, we hopped back in the van to drive to a snack spot. The snack was nice: Pisco sours, cookies, cheese, meats, crackers, chips, and *a block of cream cheese covered in sesame seeds sitting in a pool of soy sauce. Yes – it was exactly as described. You scrape a chunk of the mixture onto a cracker and enjoy. It was…interesting. I didn’t hate it, but can’t say that I want to have it again.
For the final portion of this trip, we went to a lookout point to watch the sunset over the dessert. If you ask me, we left too early. We saw the sun go down over the horizon, but the beautiful orange cover I that took the sun’s place across the sky was much more impressive (as seen in the last picture).
Activity 4 – A fast dinner
We got back to San Pedro around 8:45pm. I decided I needed to be quick with dinner since the Geyser tour has a 4:30am pickup. I went back to La Picada del Indio and did a dinner special (basically the same as the lunch special). It was fine, I was just happy to get some fuel quickly and get ready for bed.
I made it back to the hostel and got ready for bed. I think I tried going to sleep around 11:30, but even with how tired I was, I wasn’t able to fall asleep very quickly.