{"id":7722,"date":"2025-04-06T15:31:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T19:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=7722"},"modified":"2025-04-06T15:31:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T19:31:55","slug":"amazing-atacama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=7722","title":{"rendered":"Amazing Atacama"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"214\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/DSC6823_Original.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7723\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/DSC6823_Original.jpeg 214w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/DSC6823_Original-201x300.jpeg 201w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px\" \/><figcaption>The Milky Way<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Last Sunday afternoon, our guide took us to the Valley of the Moon and Death Valley &#8211; it felt like we were on another planet. The next morning, we saw gorgeous geology in Rainbow Valley, and then Devil\u2019s Gorge in the afternoon. That night, we had a late dinner and then went stargazing a little outside of town &#8211; I\u2019ve never seen stars like that! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tuesday our guide Cris drove us two hours to Red Rocks, around 13,000 feet above sea level. We walked over red rocks to get to a big salt flat. After that, we visited two incredibly blue lagoons nearby. During the day we saw flamingoes, giant grebes, lots of vacunas (like a small llama), and two foxes! John spotted one on the side of the highway so we got a really good look at him up-close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wednesday we went to 14,000 feet to the geothermals to see the geysers, another amazing sight \u2014 and we had some great birding along the way at two roadside lagoons. Cris sat up a fancy lunch for the three of us overlooking a gorge with vacunas and water birds eating algae from a stream. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on our patio and reading (\u201cMore,\u201d for me). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"213\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_8814-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7725\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_8814-1.jpeg 320w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_8814-1-300x200.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We really had a great vacation &#8211; the customer service, lodging, food, and wine at Awasi was wonderful &#8211; honestly one of the very best places I\u2019ve ever stayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thursday was our travel day, and made our way home via Santiago &#8211; it\u2019s alway good to see little Flavia again! John and I finished \u201cThe Residence.\u201d I got caught up on \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d and binged on some true life crime while I nursed a cold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Sunday afternoon, our guide took us to the Valley of the Moon and Death Valley &#8211; it felt like we were on another planet. The next morning, we saw gorgeous geology in Rainbow Valley, and then Devil\u2019s Gorge in the afternoon. That night, we had a late dinner and then went stargazing a little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7726,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions\/7726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}