To paraphrase our dear president visiting a tiny village in the deep France, he didn't know what to say and as soon he met a person, he shook his hand adding : "it's far but it's great !" A short, precise sentence I borrow to him to talk about the El Tatio geysers, the death valley and the moon valley.

To sum up what we learnt today : geysers are water ejections from the ground, those ejections are more or less anarchic, these kinds of natural water spouts bring out smokes ; plain smokes without water gushing from the earth are not geysers. We can find geysers in only five spots in the world : in the Yellowstone park in the United States, in Iceland where the name comes from, in the Kamtchaka peninsula, in New-Zealand and here in El Tatio. These ones are the highest in the world, 4300m high.
The day begin at 4 o'clock and by night we drive 85 km away from San Pedro. The smokes loom while the sun is rising. The place is surrounded by dunes and valleys, a typical scenery of the Altiplano. The sky gets clearer and clearer and we snake through the smokes, the geysers haven't a regular activity, they switch off and switch on alternatively depending on the location of underground water currents. The geysers are not really impressing, the highest one hardly reaches one meter high but this field of smokes is worth seeing it.

Welcome to the surrealist landscapes of the Altiplano, the geysers are one among other ones : the perfect cone-shaped Licancabur volcano looks over us while we are going back, the drought of the salar of Atacama and the white of the salar of Uyuni, the colors and gentle shapes harmony which sketch mounts and valleys, fringes of sharp stones in the death valley covered from time to time by sand rivers.

The frustration is great inside the minibus, not to be able to pace in this intrepid adventurers paradise. On the road, we stop to take a bath into hotspring waters. Up to go back to San Pedro, we'll contemplate the sequence of the surrounding volcanoes.
In the early afternoon, we leave San Pedro eastwards to reach the death valley. The valley contrasts the smooth landscapes we saw in the morning. There are quite only French people in the group and the ambiance is really delightful. The valley is a kind of shrill rocky blades canyon. A kind of canyon backgrounding by a volcanic range.

A sunset ends the day in the moon valley, the Altiplano glows and falls asleep whereas the sun is disappearing beyond the skyline.