We spent our week-long spring break up north in the area around San Pedro de Atacama. This was an absolutely amazing area. We did everything from sandboarding to watching neon-pink flamingos flying in to eat at the brine lake up in the salt flats. We flew up there for the week and camped with a couple of friends and their babies. It was an incredible experience to be hanging out in a desert area at high altitude. That combo makes for some crazy plant and wild life. We spent some time in an area known as Valley of the Moon, which was surreal and made us feel like we were...well, on the moon. The little town of San Pedro is known as much for its food as it is outdoor endeavors. We gorged ourselves all week on phenomenal vegetarian food, which, as you can imagine, is a bit hard to come by in these parts! On our final morning there, we headed up with a friend to the field of geyesers for a sunrise viewing of the steaming hot fountains. The geysers were great, but the real treasure of that trip was taking the back road down into town. We trapsed over roads and through farms that were stunning. The emerald green fields were a brilliant background for the dozens of llamas, all of which were adorned with colorful blakets and ribbons. Apparently, instead of branding their animals, the farmers deck them out in colors that signify which farm they belong to. All of this with the Andes framing it in the background. It is a mental image that is forever sealed int my mind, which is lucky, as our camera ran out of batteries that morning. Many of you inquired about the large-scale earthquake that shook parts of Chile in November. The epicenter of the quake was in Calama, the nearest town to where we spent our vacation week. It did a fair amount of damage to the roads and infrastructure there, but luckily there were very few deaths for an earthquake of that size. We're hoping to get back up to the region at some point during our time in Chile.
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