Chile: High and Dry in the Atacama

 

The Tatio Geysers Field, about two hours north of San Pedro de Atacama, is the largest
geyser field in the southern hemisphere and the highest geothermal field in the world.

     When we decided to go to Chile in November/December 2024, we were influenced by earlier vistits that year to Joshua Tree and Death Valley, two desert areas in California. Both were interesting, and Death Valley had two superlatives: lowest elevation in North America and highest recorded temperature (135 degrees Fahrenheit or nearly 58 degrees Celsius) ever on the planet.

     Atacama, the 40,000-square-mile high desert of northern Chile, has its own superlative: dryest place on earth. Some places in the Atacama have never recorded rainfall. And, like Joshua Tree and Death Valley, it seems as if it's on another planet, some place in the Star Wars universe with foreboding landscapes and a sun that is too bright. 

       It turns out that the driest part of Atacama is not where we were, though there was little evidence of rainfall at the San Pedro de Atacama Explora lodge, where we stayed four nights. And, although the Atacama's usually cloudless skies led to the establishment of one of the world's most important radio telescope complexes nearby (ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), we had overcast skies as we scanned the heavens two evenings using Explora's own large optical telescope. Turns out that the winter months, July and August, are best for stargazing. 

    What we did have were volcanos, most inactive, one after another marching to the horizon. Geysers. High-altitude salty lagoons with brine shrimp that three species of flamingos dined on. Rheas running ostrich-like across rocky fields. And vicuna, the wild camelid that lives in the altiplano, elevations between 4000 and 4700 meters (about two and a half miles to almost three miles above sea level).          

       The Explora lodge is in the village of San Pedro de Atacama (elevation 7,900 feet or 2,400 meters), but as far as the guest experience is concerned, you wouldn't know it was there. San Pedro has an archaeological museum, a meteorite museum, an historic adobe church and, according to one of our guides, excellent places for empanadas and ice cream. We saw none of these, with excursions instead focused on higher elevations, the area's volcanic mountains, geysers and other natural wonders. In retrospect, I wish we had taken time to wander through the village. 

      At Atacama we met a Brazilian food journalist who told us that the executive chef at the lodge is  celebrity chef  Virgilio Martinez of Lima, Peru. His restaurant Central was considerred in at least one ranking to be the No. 1 restaurant in the world a couple of years ago. The waiting time to get seats at his restaurants in Lima is so long that this food journalist chose the Explora lodge here just to taste his cooking, which stresses local and unusual Andean ingredients. Explora has posted an interview with Martinez about his cooking. We stayed at three Explora lodges in Chile, but this was the only one with exceptional food, though no empanadas.

      All three Explora lodges, however, had amiable, well-informed guides and well-planned excursions, half-day and whole-day, guaranteeing that guests leave with some appreciation of the different regions'  landscape, ecology and history.

     Here are some photos.

Our first Explora excursion in the Atacama was to the Gran Salar de Atacama,
Chile's largest salt flats, about an hour south of San Pedro. The flats, about
1200 square miles, are bounded on the west by the Cordillero de la Sal or Salt
Mountains, which can be seen in the distance. To the east are the Andes.
The mountains allow no drainage from the flats, so when there is water here,
it sits until it evaporates, leaving behind salts and other minerals. Lithium
is now being mined here.

Our first wild flamingo sightings were in briny pools
at Gran Salar. These are all Andean. The Chilean
flamingos are the same size but lack the black markings.
The James flamingo, the other species here, resembles
the Andean but is smaller.  

Fabian's Lizard is one of the few denizens
of the Atacama salt flats.

Here we are in the Cordillero de la Sal, west of the salt flats, which can be seen in the
middle distance. Those far-away mountains are the volcanos that form the Andes.

We stood quietly in front of this rock face at
Cordillero de la Sal so we could here the ticking
sound of salt crystals cracking deep within it.

Salts and other crystalized minerals were easy to 
see during a short hike in Cordillero de la Sal. 

White crusts that look like salt crystals were formed as salty water 
leeched out of mineral-rich rocks in the aptly named Salt Mountains.

It was on our second full day at San Pedro de Atacama that we headed north from the 
Explora lodge to see the Tatio Geyser field. On the way we stopped at a large lagoon
to enjoy countless flamingos, mostly the Andean ones. 

I tried and failed to get good shots of flamingos in flight, in which they resemble the
 great blue herons I used to see daily on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The flamingos fly
to migrate between different elevations and different parts of Chile.  Eggs of the
 brine shrimp that they feed on attach themselves to the birds' feathers and
 thus move from lake to lake with the flamingos.

After watching the flamingos and other birds, we continued north toward
 the geysers and encountered several vicuna beside the road. They're much
 more skittish than the guanacos, which are found a lower elevations.   

        

The Tatio Geysers field is the world's third largest group of geysers, the world's
highest geyser field, and the largest geyser field in the southern hemisphere. It
accounts for 8 percent of the world's geysers. Visitors are warned to stay on 
paths lest they crash through the not-so-safe surface and into boiling water. The
geysers here seem smaller and less energetic than those at Yellowstone National
 Park in the United States and in Iceland. Nonetheless, an amazing place to visit.

The mineral-rich waters leave a crystalline crust. In the past
a spa was set up here to let people bathe in the waters, but
that ended when some of the chemicals in the water
were found to be carcinogens.

Those are the bubbles and steam of boiling water in one of the many pools at Tatio Geysers.
Ferrous minerals probably account for the orange and red colors, which reminded me
of the Paint Pot thermal field at Yellowstone.

On the way down from the geysers, we encounted
a group of wild donkeys. This is at about two
and a half miles above sea level, so these 
must be very hardy animals. 

Several of the donkeys appeared to be pregnant.

About halfway back to the lodge from the geysers, we stopped at theTermas
de Puritana, a series of hot springs. Explora has established a conservation area
here, which gives its guests exclusive access to this pool. All the other pools are 
downstream and open to the public. Explora provided us with
a changing area (we had brought swimsuits) and robes. Since this
was a "full-day" excusion, lunch was served to us on this terrace
beside the pool. Much warmer and with easier access than
sinkholes I used to jump into in Florida a half-century ago.

The Atacama, a desert dotted with briny lakes and natural springs, is full of surprises.
Jane spotted this dragonfly on the steps leading to the hot springs pool. 

Our guide noticed this burrowing owl near the road and had the driver stop so I
could take this photo. It seems to surveying its domain, the great Atacama wasteland.

The dry and rocky hills of the Atacama seem suitable only for cactus. These
resemble the giant saguaro cactus of the American Southwest. There seemed 
to be dozens of different kinds of cactus here.

The bell tower of the Church of San Lucas was built in the mid-1700s of stone
and clay. It's in the village of Toconao south of San Pedro. On a full-day excusion on
our last full day in the Atacama, we were on our way to see high-altitude volcanos 
south of San Pedro when our guide departed from the itinerary to bring us here. 

Our guide said San Lucas is the second-oldest church in Chile.

The church was partly made of cactus wood.

These llamas were at a farm south of Toconao.

This was our first glimpse of a rhea. I don't think I had ever before seen this
large, ostrich-like bird, which had absolutely no interest in us.

Our guide said rhea sightings aren't guaranteed in the
Andes, so we felt lucky at seeing several of these birds,
including one that stayed still long enough for me to
focus a telephoto lens.

After encountering the rheas, we pressed on to one of our destinations of the day, 
Laguna Lejia, which is surrounded by volcanos. This dreamscape is 4.325 meters
(2.69 miles) above sea level. What looks like water is largely a shiny salt flat. 

These llamas at Laguna Lejia are free-range but 
not wild. They were part of a group of maybe
50 that probably belong to a village
hidden somewhere in the mountains. The bits
of ribbon on the llama on the right were 
placed on it as a gift, a way that people
honor these essential animals.

This photo sort of sums of the Andes for me: volcano, llamas, a salty lake with a
crusty shore, and, in the distance above the llama, flamingos on the water.

We had seen piles of rocks like this along roads, especially south of San Pedro.
Carolina, our guide whose last name we didn't learn, said they're for offerings
to the volcanos. You pour an alcoholic beverage (here it is a nice Chilean lager)
on the stones and leave the bottle or can embedded in the rocks. After
Carolina's demonstration, Jane and I each made our offerings. 

Cerro Overo Maar is a monogenetic volcano, meaning that it was created by
a single eruption, which left a cinder cone and a crater that we see here
from its rim, which is at 4,555 meters (2.83 miles) above sea level. The mostly
round crater is 600 meters in diameter, making this a relatively 
small volcano for the Andes.  Jane came home with tiny piece of
 obsidian that was spewed out by the eruption eons ago. 

During our tour of the volcanos we were the only guests, so it was just us, our
wonderful guide Carolina and the driver Sebastian as we stopped at the little 
church, stopped to see the rheas and made it to the rims of volcanos and 
various miradors. Here, at a mirador (overlook), where the view is of
a deserted village at the bottom of a canyon, Carolina and Sebastian
set up lunch for us. It might have been a bit awkward being catered to
 like this, but it was more like a picnic shared by friends. Fortunately,
 not all of the cold beer had been offered to the volcanos. 

Peru: Colca Valley, Colca Canyon

      Our hotel in Arequipa, Casa Arequipa (click HERE for website), helped us arrange an overnight visit to the Colca Valley and the Colca Canyon, a four- or five-hour drive from Arequipa. We were picked up by a guide in a van that eventually picked up seven other people for the trip.  On the way out of town, we made a stop at a small grocery where our guide instructed us to buy coca leaves to chew to fight altitude sickness. Later that day we'd be more than three miles above sea level.
     On the way to the Colca region we passed Ampato, the mountain where a few years ago the more-than-500-year-old frozen mummy of a girl, 11 to 15 years old when killed as a human sacrifice, was found near the top of its 6,290-meter peak. We saw the mummy itself in Arequipa, where it is exhibited in a museum devoted to the girl's story. She is known as Juanita, named for Johan Reinhard, one of the men who discovered her. We also passed through a wildlife preserve dedicated to restoring the mountains' population of vicuna, a camelid related to alpaca and llamas. Vicunas, whose wool is said to be the world's finest, are being brought back from the brink of extinction.

 Stands selling sweaters, shawls and other
handicrafts are scattered along the Colca road. 

     The Colca Canyon is a largely agricultural area; it supposedly has more Inca-era (and earlier) farming terraces than any other part of Peru. Its indigenous population, the Collagua and Cabana peoples, were conquered by the Inca Mayta Capac in the 1400s.  A century later the Spanish drove the Collagua and Cabana into new settlements to work in mines or on plantations, and largely forgot about them, never building roads or establishing ways to communicate with the remote settlements.
     It wasn't until the late 1970s that work began on a road connecting the Colca region with Arequipa and the rest of Peru.  The new road connects a series of previously isolated (and thus preserved) Spanish colonial villages, the "new settlements" that the people were forced into. Each has a church, some more elaborate than others, and a central square. In the countryside there are signs of the communities that were abandoned when the Spanish came in. We spent the night at the Colca Lodge and Spa, which has hot-spring baths on the side of the river, as well as a llama and alpaca farm and an excellent restaurant. The next morning our van and guide reappeared and we were on the road again.

It's hard to read in my photo, but the writing on 
 the side of this stone says that the elevation
here is 4,910 meters. That's 16,109 feet or just
a little over three miles. The view from here
is shown below.

  The road eventually leads into the mountains where the Colca River has created a canyon more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the U.S.  The depth of the canyon -- at least 3,400 meters -- wasn't verified until 1979.         Although the area  is being promoted as an adventure destination, every tourist we saw was like us -- coming in by bus or van or car to see what we could see and then being driven out. No one was attempting the river's Class V rapids the day we were there.
     The road (narrow, gravel-covered and busy with tourist vans and large buses) took us to a viewing station overlooking canyon walls where Andean condors -- one of the world's largest fliying birds -- nest.  These vultures are so big that they become airborne by jumping off cliffs and looking for uplifting thermal currents that they can ride up. When they do flap their wings, it seems to be in slow motion.

This is the view from the mirador shown above.
The snow-capped mountains in the distance are
the central Andes; some are volcanos. You can
 see that we're well above the tree line.

Every few years these wild vicuna are rounded up
and shorn of their valuable wool. The government
maintains strict control of the animals and their
extremely desirable wool. 

Vicunas are slimmer and more graceful than
alpacas and llamas. They also produce less wool,
which is why they are not shorn annually like
most other wool-producing animals.

A handicrafts market is set up outside a church in one
of the Colca Valley's many Spanish Colonial towns. Until
the late 1970s, towns such as this were largely cut off
from the rest of Peru because there were no decent
roads in the region.  Below: A shrine in the church.
The triangular shape of the Virgin's dress echos
the shape of the area's mountains and conflates her
with Pachamama, the Andean earth goddess, one
of the ways in which the Catholic faith was made
palatable to the indigenous people.

Another scene from a Colca Valley village. Note the
 traditional dress of the woman on the right. We were
told that in the 1500s the indigenous women copied
the petticoats of the few women who came with the Spanish
conquerers but used their own deeply colored dyes to
create a unique style that's still seen today.

A woman herds llamas and alpacas in the highlands
of the Colca region. Llamas and alpacas are raised for both

their wool and their meat. I didn't taste llama, but I had 

alpaca tenderloin and burgers. To me it tastes like goat.

The Quecha word for dried llama meat is charqui, 
the source of the word "jerky," used in English usually
to mean dried beef.

The Colca Lodge and Spa as seen from the road
approaching it. Some of the terraces, which date
back hundreds of years, are still used for farming.
The small round pools on the far bank of the Colca
River are filled with water from nearby hot springs
and are a great place to soak. The flat-roofed
building at the bottom of the terraces houses a bar.
The pastures on this side of the river are used for
raising llamas and alpaca, which guests can visit.
 Click HERE for the lodge's website.

Waters from natural hot springs are channeled into
these pools along the Colca River at the Colca Lodge.

Most of the Colca Canyon lacks a well-defined rim 
with views of the river and the bottom of the canyon.

This trail offers great views.

This mirador or viewing station is the No.1 destination
on the Colca River. Set high above the canyon, it looks
down at condor nesting sites on the canyon walls. Morning
is the best time for spotting condors, so visitors by the
busload  have to get up very early -- most of the
 tourist accommodations are a couple of hours away.

I hope those binoculars provided this birder with a
better view of the condor perched on a rock than
 my camera gave me.