Day 123 : Laguna Cejar

I will be having company for the next 2 weeks, as Pedro, my friend from Rio de Janeiro, arrived yesterday afternoon to join me up north towards Bolivia.

As there is a free day in San Pedro de Atacama before we depart for Bolivia tomorrow morning, I signed us up for a tour to Laguna Cejar, which also includes spots such as Ojos del Salar (Eyes of the Salt) and Laguna Tevinquinche.

Laguna Cejar

We arrived at Laguna Cejar and found a number of people already in the lagoon floating away.  “Floating” because the salt content in the water is extremely high (said to be 7 times more than normal sea water), and thus makes one extremely buoyant.

We had 50 mins in this area, and since I had previously experienced similar in the Dead Sea and being lazy to strip off in the hot sun, I decided against going in and was happy walking around taking pictures, while Pedro went in for a dip. 

In my opinion, the place is just so-so as the Dead Sea is definitely much better, however for those who do not have the opportunity to visit the Dead Sea, this is a good alternative.

Ojos del Salar

Ojos del Salar basically comprises of 2 huge holes appearing in the middle of the desert, with water suitable for swimming.  There were 2 different theories to how the holes came about.  The first being meteorites, and the second is deep mining. 

I was definitely not impressed with this spot, as there was no character to this place.

Laguna Tevinquinche

I personally felt that this was the highlight of the tour.  From far, it looked like a white sandy beach, but on closer look, the so-called “white sand” is actually pure crystallised salt.

The view here was magnificent, with the reflection of the surrounding mountains reflecting in the water surface.  I took the opportunity to walk into the shallow waters, and the bottom of the lagoon bed was covered with more crystallised salt!

I walked up towards our tour van, where the driver-cum-guide had set up a table with some food and pisco sour, and Pedro noticed that my legs had turned all white from the salt water!  AMAZING!

We stayed here for a while to watch the sunset before heading back. 

On overall opinion of the tour, I found this tour just so-so, and thus if one only has time to do 1 tour in San Pedro de Atacama, I will absolutely recommend doing the Sand boarding & Valle de la Luna tour, as it is more unique to this town and I have not seen anything similar in other places that I have visited so far.