Day 25 – Friday, February 20, 2026

This turned out to be a truly amazing day — one of the best ones on this trip.

I woke up in my so‑so accommodation a bit outside San Pedro (but then it was not too expensive), then took a look at my car — it was covered by dried sand after driving through that flood the previous evening. I had arrived in darkness — it was cool to see the garden of the hotel full of a plant called altafa.

This is how dirty my car got after riding through the flood

The garden of my accommodation

Then I took the bike out of the car and started discovering the surroundings on two wheels. We are in the border area of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina and there are huge mountains all around. From the town itself, no fewer than two volcanoes can be seen — one of them even puffing smoke. I was deeply impressed just after riding 2 kilometers.

Amazing views

...so nice...

Starting to discover the area

This road was veering up to Bolivia, to an altitude of 4,700 meters

San Pedro is quite touristy; every second house is a hostel, there are countless restaurants, bars and shops. There was even a café playing live jazz music. I had a croissant there with a single shot of espresso — and paid €7.

Jazz concert in San Pedro

I was in no particular hurry; I was enjoying the place, had small talk with some locals and then went to the tourist office. I had heard of a sight called the Valley of the Moon, but as I do not really prefer planning ahead, I thought it was just a stretch of road next to the highway.

Wrong. Valley of the Moon is an iconic gem of Chile, and is a protected and well‑managed national reserve, featuring otherworldly rock formations. An online ticket was necessary, which the guys in the bureau helped get — but there was an issue. Bicycles can be ridden only between 9 and 11 o’clock and it was 10:45 by the time I bought the ticket. The entrance was 5 km away, which meant I had just 15 minutes to reach the spot. I rode like a madman and got there at 10:59.

I had initially thought the Valley of the Moon would be a quick visit; it turned out to be an almost full‑day program. Once inside the park, there is a 22 km‑long stretch of road in one direction, with multiple stops. At these stops, you have hikes lasting from 20 minutes to over an hour. Ladies and gentlemen, I completed the full menu and was truly amazed! To make my visit even more dramatic, I listened to Orff’s Carmina Burana during the hike. O Fortuna! Incredible what Mother Nature had created — sand dunes, rocks sculpted by millennia of wind — and apparently even water. It really felt otherworldly — even though I have not yet been to the moon, I trust we can say it was truly a lunar landscape.

I doubt pictures can reflect what I had seen

Huge sand dunes

Wrinkles

Like in Utah

Like in Egypt...?

Having biked 44 kilometers and hiked some 5 further kilometers in deep sand, I was up for a treat. I found a friendly bistro, where I had a soup and a pork dish. To my surprise, the soup looked and tasted exactly like a Hungarian dish, called “tárkonyos raguleves”, a creamy meat soup with tarragon. I told this to the friendly waitress and we both had a good laugh.

Hungarian (?) soup

While I was enjoying my lunch/dinner, a weird phenomenon happened. The sky got overcast and a huge sandstorm came out of nowhere. It seems to have surprised even the locals, as they all ran and grabbed their phones to take a video of the event (just as I did). As I was capturing this, a layer of sand covered my cell within seconds.

Quite a large sand storm

This lasted about 20 minutes and what followed was even less preferable; a strong rainfall dropped on us. The power went out at the restaurant. San Pedro was unprepared for this event; its streets — which, to my surprise, are unpaved — were flooded, and even the following day you had to navigate around deep water holes. This — at the driest place on Earth.

The rain stopped for a while, but the storm did not; gigantic lightning bolts illuminated the mystical landscape. I went out to a hill above San Pedro to gaze at this phenomenon.

Rainbow

I did not adjust anything on this picture

Going back to the hotel, there were even larger lightning bolts and it started raining again. The power at my accommodation went out as well, and one lightning struck so close to the place that I almost fell out of bed... I admit, it was a bit scary...

It really was sooo huge!

What a day! I had experienced Nature in its purest form...