Valley of the Moon

Yesterday we woke up feeling better, PTL! We walked around the little town for a few hours. We visited a Spanish colonial church built in the 1700s with adobe brick. They used no nails for the ceiling structure. It's all lashed together with natural fibers.
We ate lunch at Delicias de Carmen, recommended in our travel book as an authentic local place. I asked what is most typical and when she said "pastel de choclo" I remembered that Estela and Rebeca, two of my Peruvian students at UNI, had made that dish for our family. This was very different, with a corn mixture on top instead of mashed potatoes, but very delicious. Marc had an empanada.
In the afternoon and evening we took a tour to the Valley of the Moon here in the desert. We went with a tour group in one of the ubiquitous white Mercedes Sprinter vans. We think the tour companies must use them interchangeably since very few are marked with their name and logo.  It's hard to choose a tour 'cause they all offer basically the same options and no way to tell who stands above the crowd. So we just picked one and weren't disappointed. They picked us up right here at our BnB.

It wasn't far from our town of San Pedro.  We did a couple hour hike in the hot sun up to the top for the grand vistas. Sand, rocks, desert views, relentless sun! So beautiful and unlike anything I've seen on this scale. It's high desert combined with volcanoes everywhere and mountain ranges in the distance, protected by the Lascar volcano which frequently erupts and normalizes the pressure. 
Amphitheater 
Near sunset, they set the table for our cocktails or juice (a year ago it was sundowners in Kenya!) and snacks for our group of 11. We chatted with each other as best we could with our various languages. Around 8:30 pm we saw the sunset along with all the other tourists..several 100 maybe. When the sun disappeared everybody clapped and went back to
their vans. :) A shower felt good after a hot dusty afternoon.

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