Valle del Arcoiris (Rainbow Valley), Atacama Desert

looking across the high plateau to the volcanoes beyone

San Pedro de Atacama, though small, is one of the larger towns in the heart of the Atacama Desert.  Surrounding it, the desert is enormous, cut up by gorges, some very deep, wide canyons and broad valleys.  The colors of the desert rock are warm, salmon to rose pink to mauve, shot through with white, gray, green and black rocks.  The volcanoes beyond are dark gray to deep purple, with shots of snow on their higher reaches.

colorful rocks in Valle del Arcoiris

Today, we drove northwest out of San Pedro, climbing high up onto the plateau above the town (high point of 11,500 feet) and diving down precipitous grades through steep gorges and wide canyons to the Valle del Arcoiris (Rainbow Valley), to hike and see its multi-colored rock formations.  It is an astonishing place, a series of deep canyons with jagged walls backed by gray-green mountains. 

side valley, Valle del Arcoiris

You can see that the area has been beset by huge upheavals in the earth because the rock plates are contorted and thrust up nearly vertically.  Erosion has carved deep gashes in the softer rock.  Different kinds of rock from different eras blend together with their multiple colors—green, reddish brown, black, white, powder blue, warm gray.  Some of the rock looks like it has been extruded during volcanic eruptions, which obviously were frequent and massive here eons ago.

looking at Valle del Arcoiris from side valley

We hiked up the jeep road to several rugged side canyons, to the point where the road has been blocked off at the entrance to a steep valley.  High up the valley, we stopped to listen.  There was no one else there.  It was absolutely quiet.

llama in Valle del Arcoiris mildly interested in me

Walking back to our car, a well-marked trail led off to a canyon that paralleled the main valley.  It was full of llamas who looked at me with mild interest, but mostly kept munching on the bushes that grow there. 

We decided to continue on to the village of Rio Grande, at the bottom of a very deep gorge with a river running through it.  Though the road from the main highway has been paved very recently, it is still a daunting, but beautiful, drive.  Once you arrive at the edge of the gorge, you descend on a very narrow road, somewhat like the Independence Pass road in Colorado, peering over the cliffs on one side to the river several thousand feet below.  The road is very windy and very steep, so we stayed in second gear and crept down to the bottom, where the road turned into a single track that goes out the other side of the gorge and, ultimately, to a graveled road leading back to San Pedro.  I would not enjoy this road in a winter snowstorm.

gorge above San Pedro de Atacama