El Valle de la Luna (''Valley of the Moon'') is located west of

San Pedro de Atacama San Pedro de Atacama is a Chilean town and commune in El Loa Province, Antofagasta Region. It is located east of Antofagasta, some 106 km (60 mi) southeast of Calama and the Chuquicamata copper mine, overlooking the Licancabur volcano. ...

, in the north of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

in the Cordillera de la Sal, in the

Atacama desert The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the w ...

. It has various stone and sand formations which have been carved by wind and water. It has an impressive range of color and texture, looking somewhat similar to the surface of the moon. There are also dry lakes where the composition of salt makes a white covering layer of the area. It presents diverse saline outcrops which appear like man-made sculptures. There are also a great variety of caverns. When the sun sinks it defines the landscape while the wind blows among the rocks and the sky passes from pink color to purple and finally black. Valle de la Luna is a part of the Reserva Nacional los Flamencos and was declared a Nature Sanctuary in 1982 for its natural environment and strange lunar landscape, from which its name is derived. The Atacama desert is also considered one of the driest places on earth, as some areas have not received a single drop of rain in hundreds of years. A prototype for a Mars rover was tested there by scientists because of the valley's dry and forbidding terrains.

Gallery

Cordillera de la Sal, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, 2016-01-31, DD 01.JPG, Valle de la Luna, Salt mountain range. Anfiteatro, Valle de la Luna, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, 2016-02-01, DD 176-178 HDR.JPG, The Amphitheater. Duna Mayor, Valle de la Luna, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, 2016-02-01, DD 167.JPG, Big Dune. Valle de la Luna, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, 2016-02-01, DD 171.JPG, Sunset in the Valley of the Moon. File:Atacama desert - Luna valey.jpg, A landscape resembling a moon crater

References

External links

* Valleys of Chile Atacama Desert Landforms of Antofagasta Region {{Antofagasta-geo-stub