Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna (again!) Atacama

Our final bit of exploring was one of Ben´s favourites.

The first place we visited was the Valle de la Muerte (Valley of the Dead). We were on foot and only explored the first part of the valley because Ben spent so long disappearing from sight up and down all the small canyons he could find.

Tunnels and arches in the salt and clay formations – one of Ben´s favourite places – Valle de la Muerte.

The rock felt quite brittle and we could see down through gaps into hidden gulleys below. In some places there were hidden canyons which unfortunately we could´t climb up to safely.

Another tunnel for Ben to explore in – Valle de la Muerte.

The colours of the rocks and canyons were amazing although the bright desert sun bleached out a lot of the colour.

We think the main valley was an old riverbed with small gulleys coming off it.

  

The patterns and shapes of the rock that had been carved/shaped by the water and wind of the Atacama (it is really windy here!) were fabulous.

Cool columns like organ pipes made of clay and salt in the Valle de la Muerte.

Ben and Finn both loved the exploring and we spent a great afternoon up and down and in and out of gulleys, small canyons, caves and through arches.

 

 

It would have been easy to lose Ben here and perhaps he shouldn´t have gone exploring in his new Argentian football top (it is not quite the same dazzling white anymore)! There was always one more gulley to find and explore and difficult to keep up with such a mountain goat.

This was the one place Ben really wanted to return to but we ran out of time, because firstly we rescued two stranded Brazilians with a broken chain on their mountain bike at the end of the Valle de la Luna and then our car broke down (battery connections shaken off on the bad roads and corroded with all the sand and dust).

What an amazing place to have found, a perfect playground.

Hiking up the gullies in (Death Valley) – Valle de la Muerte..

Secondly we took the time to return to the Valle de la Luna as we had wanted to explore the caves there and had not had time before. Going in the middle of the day meant that we were the only people there and again it was a fabulous place to explore.

The caves and tunnels started with quite easy places to walk through. These tunnels were old water channels carved out  a long time ago as an underground stream.

As we went further the tunnels became smaller and lower and we really needed the torches we had brought.

Inside the tunnels there were amazing salt crystals and more amazingly carved rocks on the steep sides around us.

 

Finn and Ben loved the exploring especially when the tunnels were getting too small for us to follow. In many of the tunnels it was completely dark as we followed the meandering dry streambed under the ground (it was a good thing my camera has a powerful flash as I couldn´t even see what pictures I was taking).

Finally at the end of all the tunnels when there was nowhere left to crawl we came back out into the sun and hiked back down.

What fun!

 

 

 

Meteorite Museum and Astronomy night

We went to look at one of the largest collections of meteorites in the world which was in San Pedro de Atacama in one of the smallest museums and most interesting we have ever visited. The owner who had a collection of over 3000 metoerites was away on holiday but we were lucky enough to meet Steve, his very enthusiastic deputy from Belgium, on our first visit.

The collection of metoerites on display (we didn`t look at all 3000!) was set out in a space dome tent which had amazing state of the art technology to protect the meteorite collection (some of which were priceless rocks from outer space – one had diamonds in it).

The museum had many beautiful and amazing meteorites. Each display explained the different types of meteorites (where they were from, where they were found, what type they were and why they were of special interest or importance). The whole idea of the museum was also to help our understanding of the geology of our planet and how our (and every other) solar system was created! Simon loved the geology.

This display shows how when one large metoerite entered the earth´s atmosphere it was broken down into smaller fragments which scattered over several km on the ground. So if you can find one piece there might be lots more scattered around.

What Finn and Ben  enjoyed the most was being able to pick up the really large chunks of meteorite and feel how unbelievalbly heavy they were compared to normal rocks (because the meteorites were full of iron) and they also spent a lot of time sticking magnets to all the rocks too.

 

Finn and Ben checking out how heavy the meteorites were.

 

 Too heavy to pick up!

 

A slice of Imilac pallasite found by the owner  or the museum

This was one of the most beautiful meteorites, just a normal looking rock until you take a slice and look inside.

Widmanstätten patterns are only found on meteorites. They are amazingly intricate patterns of lines of long nickel iron crystals and look incredible (too small to see in this picture sorry!)

Steve was just beginning to think that he should run meteorite hunting tours up in the desert which we would have loved to do. Instead we could only follow his wonderful advice and set off out the next day armed with our magnets to go meteorite hunting ourselves. It was great fun looking for any odd-coloured and mis-shapen rocks although as you can guess we only found what Steve called ´meteor-wrongs` (he did say he would have picked them up and checked them himself so we felt quite proud of our efforts). The Atacama is one of the best places to look for meteorites in the world as it has been a desert for so long and has had no rain so the metoerites that fall just lie there!

 Our meteor-wrongs

Having met Steve we decided to come back the next evening at 10pm and visit him and his museum again on one of his astronomy workshops. We started in the museum again but this time with the resident expert able to explain everything. We learnt so much we just wish we could remember even half of it.

Later we used telescopes with Steve. He had his large telescope for us to look through but also many small beginner scopes that we could share to learn how to use a telescope ourselves. Finn and Ben were amazingly quick to learn and really enjoyed looking for different types of stars (including blue giants), nebulae (where stars are born), stars clustered round a black hole and lots more.

His enthusiasm was infectious and we loved spending an evening with him and were still looking at stars at 1 am in the morning!

We finished the night by looking at the craters on the full moon which was amazing (craters caused by meteroite impact).

 The full moon through Steve´s telescope

It was a fabulous evening and one of our very special memories of the trip.