It was our first day in the Atacama Desert. We had driven an hour’s dusty road from sleepy Cálama to sleepier San Pedro, eaten lunch, and dropped our bags at our hotel. After stopping at the only gas station in 200 miles (truly) and filling up on diesel* and Gatorade, we headed to one of the region’s most famous sites: Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley. *yes, our car only took diesel As I’ve explained in prior posts, the Atacama Desert is one vast, expansive, uncompromising desert. It is so similar to an extraterrestrial landscape that scientists from all over the world perform experiments on its soil to learn…

The vastness of the sky, the clarity of the air and the flat, endless horizon are disorienting. It's hard to tell which direction you came from or where you're going. Everywhere you look, the earth is a rough, grainy field of rust-colored salt deposits.