Pointless early beginnings

Wednesday 30 March 2012

Today we arose at the stupid hour of 4:00am for pick up at 4:30. Having been picked up we then drove around town for half an hour picking up other people (we went within 20 metres of our hotel 4 times). Then off to see the Geyser del Tatio. All the tours leave at this time and we didn’t think that our car would make it on the rough roads (Lonely Planet’s words). Turns out the roads weren’t that rough, but don’t know if our little car would have made it. It turns out that he reason they leave so early is not for a spectacular sunrise, but so that it will be colder (well below zero at 4,300 metres), and the geysers will look more impressive due to being steamier. What? That’s stupid! I could be asleep you ar….oles, not stuck on a bus with loud rude French people.

Being absolutely knackered really took the gloss off the trip. It was pretty, and water did spurt out of the ground, and a dip in the thermal pools was nice until the French started yelling to each other at the top of their voice (they were 2 metres apart) and barging anywhere they wanted to go.

We also saw a few Vicacha (look like daggy long tailed rabbits, but are a member of the Chinchilla family) mucking about, and plenty of Vicunas, both of which looked delicious.

We stopped at a local village on the way back …

… and a valley with some cool cacti in it.

But we were both a bit over it. Back at 13:00, we dumped our stuff and went and had a nice lunch and a couple of ales which improved our moods.

A quick wander around the local museum and a nap filled in the afternoon.

Salty flamingos and high lagoons

Thursday 29 March 2012

We went for a drive today, this time south of San Pedro de Atacama. Our first stop was Salar de Atacama and Laguna Chaxa (the Atacama Salt Plains and Chaxa Lagoon).

The Salar de Atacama goes for miles, it’s 5000 hectares and roughly 80km long and 30km wide, flanked on one side by the Cordillera de la Sal and Cordiller de Domeyko and the other side by the Andes with its huge hills and volcanoes.

Laguna Chaxa is a salt lake and is home to flamingos, three types, Andean, Chilean and James’. We only saw the Andean. This place is full of salt ‘rocks’, the flamingos feed and breed in the shallow lagoon here.

We also found out here that Volcano Lascar likes to go off regularly, there was a sign there that listed all of its eruptions since 1848. Of particular interest was that it had erupted every year since 2000 (twice in 2002) to 2006. I reckon the sign must be about 6 years old.

From here we headed to the high altitude lakes of Laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miniques, which are a reasonable way UP into the Andes. The Laguna Chaxa is at around 2,500m above sea level and we crossed over 4,241m above sea level to get to the Lagunas.

Now this is quite a hike up for the little 1.3L car that we have. It doesn’t do up very well, especially in the thin air here. I spent a lot of time in third gear going up, then second gear going up and was crawling up in first gear at 20km at the end. But we made it.

Gosh! Amazing! Beautiful! Spectacular! Sensational! This was another place that was so stunning that it bought tears to the eyes. This place beats everything we’ve seen (except Antarctica) for stunning views and amazing place to be fortunate enough to see. You’ve gotta come here, and to San Pedro de Atacama.

The two lagoons were once a river, but volcanic eruptions (about 1000 years ago) put an end to that and they became lagoons.

We stopped by Laguna Miscanti for lunch. Words can’t describe how amazing this place is.

Then we to the Laguna Miniques which was just around the corner. There was a family of Vicunas (relative of the llama) wandering around, snacking on the grasses.

Time to head down the big hill and to home. The car found that journey much easier, and it was quicker. Going down you get fantastic views over the Salar de Atacama.

We stopped in the little town of Toconao on the way as it is supposed to be pretty. It was. We worked out that Toconao copped a lot of the ‘Bolivian winter’ rain as we drove through it. There were streets that were no longer there, just mini gorges with bits of houses sticking out of it. This then made sense of what we saw on the way home. There is a lot of road work being done, flood causeways being reinstated, sand piled high on the side of the road and bit of road fallen away.

Early night tonight as we have a very early start tomorrow.