Petroglyphs and Little Towns in the Desert

HBomb gets his style on.

While in San Pedro de Atacama, our group got word that there were petroglyphs from a pre-Colombian society just outside of town.  The exact directions were "past Yerbas Buenas and in the Rainbow Valley."  Naturally, none of those things were on our map or our GPS, but eventually we got where we needed to go.

Kind of a monkey-looking thing on the rock.

The petroglyphs were on a rock formation in a large valley, but it was very hot and dry.  Hopefully, the valley was more fertile back in the days when the people who made these drawings were around.  Mark was quite sure that it was too dry to draw on these rocks in modern times.

Getting hands on with history

 The Chilean authorities did have the petroglyphs marked as an historical site, but they didn't set it up the same way that we would in the U.S.  For example, we walked right up to the drawings.  Some previous visitors had even made their own additions (mostly signatures and graffiti supporting some soccer team or other).

We climbed to the top of the first rock formation and saw several different drawings.  Some of the most obvious drawings were clearly marked, but we spotted a few others that the authorities had deemed too insignificant or too hard to see to be worthy of marking them for the tourists.

A two-headed bovine creature (the drawing, not HBomb and Mark)

Llamas on parade.

More llama drama.

The day we went to see the petroglyphs was a hot one and eventually, HBomb decided that we needed to move on.  So we did.

We took a drive along a reasonably well maintained gravel and paved road.

I expected the Rio Grande to be more grand.  Also, more rio.

The road followed the path of the Rio Grande.  Seriously, they call it the Rio Grande.  That is a photo of it above.  That trickle of water.  I guess it's all in the marketing, huh?

But on the other hand, the Rio Grande had carved a lot of this topography over a multitude of years, so maybe it used to be bigger?  I don't know.  Maybe they just didn't have any other suggestions for the name.  Trickle Grande doesn't have the same ring to it....but I digress.

The river provided enough water to support a small town at the bottom of the canyon.   It felt a bit like traveling back in time, as the people still live in humble houses that they appear to have built without many modern materials.  Upon entering the town, we saw a sign that gave instructions on how to drive in the town.  Upon entering we realized why - the streets were barely wide enough for one car, certainly not for two going in opposite directions at the same time. After touring the town, we turned around and headed back to the hotel.