Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Valle del Arcoiris - Rainbow Valley

Our Sunday tour, from 8:00 until 2:30, brought us into the Domeyko Mountains.  We had a fabulous tourguide, Sophie, who had her own intersting life history (orignially from France, she mentored with a sculptor in Checkoslovakia, and ultimatley ended up in Chile where she leads tours and does ceramics) and a wealth of information about geology, history, cultural practices, and local flora and fauna.

She was also great about re-routing to keep us away from other tour groups as well as adding stops along the way.  

Our first stop was the village of Rio Grande.  

While currently only having about 96 inhabitants, it is located in the basin of ¨big river." Although it now has added electricity through generators, it is still pretty similar to its early pre-Hispanic era origins. Sophie explained that it was, becuase of its location, the forced passageway for caravans of indegenous groups traveling through the area.

Look close and you can see the moon to the left of the cross.

We learned that prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, churches where always kept separate from the bell towers-the church being seen as "feminine" and the belltower as "masculine."  

Jim did his "masculine" thing and climbed the bell tower.

The river was edeged with ice.

The remaining residents either work in the mines, or have small plots of land for sheep, agriculture or crafts.  Sophie actually bought a bag of garlic from the woman who had these sheep.

The yellow berry of this plant is used for laundry soap.

Yellow and red quinoa also are grown.

As we left and headed to our next stop, Sophie explained that the vegetation in the Atacama, what little there is, varies based on the altitude.  So, the Cordon cactus will be seen at one elevation.

The type of plant available for food will also dictate what animals will be able to survive.  There are domesticated Llamas

 and  wild Vacuñas

Sophie was apologetic that we were missing seeing San Pedro´s archeological museum which is closed for remodeling, so she added a stop in the tour at one of the more recent areas being researched which shows evidence of some sort of early fortification.  It is also in the Rainbow Valley area aptly named for the many color variations in the rocks and cliffs due to the oxidation of the various ores.

We then had ample time to walk around varous parts of Rainbow Valley.

Our final stop, where we ended with a picnic snack supplied by Sophie, was at Hierbas Buenas.  This place was used by the ancient caravan travelers as a place to rest on their expiditions in search of exchange of goods.  Here we could see well preserved petroglyphs, carved by the Atacameno people, dating back over 10,000 years. Messages carved in the stones included shamanic forms as well as animals.

With that, it was time for our caravan to return to San Pedro.  

There were many tours to choose from and this one did not make the first cut. We had originally planned to go to the Tatio Geysers. Convinced that the experience would have been revelatory, we were prepared to endure the 4:30 AM departure, risk altitude sickness due to the rapid steep ascent to 14,000 feet, brave temperatures well below freezing, just to run half-naked from a changing shack to a cauldron of bubbling mineral water for a 30 second dip.  As we say in Chile: "Ya es suficiente" "Enough is enough"  Given how stressful the thermal springs experience had been we determined that the geysers would have been even harsher.  It was not an easy decision for us as we are always ready to take on unique and challenging experiences, especially to places we may never see again but sometimes wisdom is the better part of valor or as my Italian grandmother use to say, "Don't be a f*****g idiot!" We decided to scrap Tatio and subsituted it with this trip.  A brilliant decision as it turned out. The landscape was astonishing and Sophie was a character out of a Hemingway novel.  If she claimed to have fought in the Spanish-American War we would have believed her.  As we walked back to the hotel for a much needed hot shower, we were convinced we had made the correct decision - what a beautiful and amazing day.