Once more into the desert...


Back again...this time with a glass of water and a random ballet performance playing on the television in the background.

I believe I left last after having set the scene of the desert in which I spent just under a week. As I mentioned previously, I went on a number of tours in the desert to the different sights. The first few were to surrounding cliffs and valleys --such as death valley-- which required a great deal of walking through , or attempting to walk through dunes of sand. After the many excusions, I managed to snap a photograph of our feet. If you'll notice, the toes of our shoes are at least three shades lighter. We also each took home a shoefull of sand each night.

Here are a few shots to give you an idea of how expansive the desert really was. You're going to notice a theme through out my entire trip of seemingly endless roads, of which I encountered many. I've become rather fascinated with the expansiveness that is implied by a road with no visible endpoint.
These last few shots are of Valle de la Luna, or literally, Moon Valley. I was able to come here one evening to watch the sun set, and was astonished enough with the daylight that when the sunset came, I was in awe. The area is blocked off by this enormous sand dune on one side. If one didn't know any better, he might mistake the are for a place somewhere in Egypt. The combination of the wind and flying sand made the ascent of the dune rather difficult, and with such a thin line at the top of the dune, I didn't even attempt to traverse to the other side. But the view from the one side was plenty... Standing at the top, I felt as though I had just walked out of a page from a National Geographic magazine. For those of you video buffs out there, I actually took about an hour and half of footage of my entire journey, including the sunset at this location. I have yet to watch it, but I'll be sure to post my thoughts once I have...


This photo signifies the end of my stamina for yet another night. I apologize for being so short winded, but my parents are actually here visiting for about a week and I've been up early every morning to show them around the city. Tomorrow we're taking a wine train through one of the main wine valleys. And if happen to not know much about wine--Chilean in particular-- let me inform you that Chilean wine is absolutely fabulous. I'm not the hugest of all wine drinkers, but Chilean wine is definitely fabulous in my book. The spices from all of the peppers grown here actually seep into the earth and up into the grape vines to give the wine a bit more of a kick than wine from any other countries... In a word...fabulous...