From the plane

This is yet another Chile-from-the-air post, because: mountains.

This is San Cristobal Hill and our house is nestled up against the side of it.  If you think of the part of the hill that's in the center of the picture as a clock-face, we are at 4 o'clock.  

This picture shows San Cristobal from a slightly wider angle to put it in context with the bigger mountains behind the city.  The long snaking line is only sometimes a freeway---when the freeway goes underground, it's the riverbed (in the area nearest our house, the freeway is underground).  The greenbelt alongside it is our pedestrian thoroughfare to get to our most frequented destinations.

More mountains to the North of Santiago.

We're pretty sure this one is Alconcagua (the highest mountain outside of Asia at 6960.8 m (22,837 ft.)

As we came over the desert, the colors, designs in the sand, the shadows of the clouds, all worked to create an endless shifting painting.  I couldn't turn my eyes away from the window!

This is one a several HUGE mines we spotted.  In the bottom right corner you can (barely) see the red- and white-roofed buildings, to give a sense of the scale.

We are now descending into Calama.  The horizontal line is a substantially large canyon which we think is the same one we were able to see later in the trip.

Wind farm along the drive to San Pedro de Atacama

The road was peppered with sometimes elaborate and colorful graves/shrines.

There was a lot of flat desert along the hour drive, but also a surprising variety of interesting hills as well.

Our first view of San Pedro....

We knew we were in for a treat when we started seeing things like this as we neared the town.