San Pedro de Atacama is located amidst spectacular scenery and is northern Chile's number-one tourist draw. It is an oasis town with picturesque adobe streets and a postcard-perfect church. The town sits within the Atacama Desert, the driest hot desert in the world, where some weather stations have never received rain. Volcanoes, fields of steaming geysers and a host of otherworldly rock formations and cool layercake landscapes surround the town. There is an incredibly quiet and relaxed atmosphere despite the ever-increasing tourist infrastructure.

Valle de la Luna lies 15km west of the town and takes its name as the consistency of the rocks is supposed to be very similar to that found on the Moon . Its lunar-like landforms have been eroded by episodes of flash-floods and wind, and we enjoyed exploring these rock formations, canyons and giant sand dunes. Later we watched the sunset across the accidentally-named Valle de la Muerte, apparently 'Mars’ pronounced in English was misinterpreted as ‘Muerte’!

The following morning we were up too early at 3.30am in order to make the bumpy 80km journey out to El Tatio geyser field, the world’s highest at 4,300m. It was a surreal, very cold scene at sunrise as we witnessed 64 gurgling, steaming geysers and around 100 gassy fumaroles set against the crisp altiplano backdrop. We saw the sun striking the surrounding volcanoes as we ate our breakfast amongst the swirling columns of steam, and were grateful when the sun finally reached us.

Once the sun sets the desert becomes a magical place illuminated by the starry skies. It is one of the best places in the world to observe the night sky and is host to the ALMA project, the most ambitious radio telescope that the world has ever seen at 16km in diameter! We visited an astronomy base where we received a detailed explanation of the night skies by a Canadian astronomer with his powerful laser pen, during which we were lucky enough to see shooting stars and a comet. We also had a chance to look through a few chunky telescopes. Sightings included Jupiter and 4 of its moons, distant galaxies, nebulae and star formations. The distance figures shared with us were bamboozling and we left feeling very small in this huge Universe.

Onward overnight bus to Bahia Inglesa, via Copiapo and Caldera, 14 hours.