On the day after the excursion to the moon valley I I got up at 3:30 and went to a tour to the Geysers of Tatio, also at a height of 4300 meters. You leave so early to get there in the dark. The temperature when we arrived was 7 bellow zero! At daybreak, when it starts to warm up, dozens of Geysers and fumaroles ( where no water but only steam comes out of the earth, to a height of many meters) start to be active. It is a fantastic sight. Our real cute guide Alfredo told us there are only 7 places on earth where geysers exist and this is the highest one . They are at the foot of the almost 6000 meters high Tatio. There is one place where there is a natural pool with thirty and something degrees hot water and while I was walking around with pullover, warm jacket, woolen scarf and hat some people really took of their clothes, put on aa swimming suit and had a bath. I wonder what they felt when they stepped out of the water. i used the time for a walk amng the Geysers and fumaroles.
The scenery is stunning.
On the was back through this stunning scenery of volcanoes we stopped at a beautiful river which even had a little water, the Putana river.
Then at a tiny little village witth a beautiful church , Machuca, where 8 families used to live, now there are only two. They make a living from the dozens or may be hundreds of tourists who stop there every day. One of the villagers stood there and made the most delicious Lama churrascos. On the left, our guide Alfredo.
With bad conscience, as I love these cute animals, I ate 2 of them. We passed the smallest village consisting just of 2 houses and stopped at a beautiful viespoint which overlooks the whole Salar de Atacama on one side and the High mountains and volcanoes on the other. Aldredo explained us that the Andes are subdovided into the precordillera between 2500 and 3800 m height, th Cordillera , between 3800 and 5500 m and the ala cordillera, above 5500 where it rains and where all the water comes from. In the part of the Azacama desert where it never rains, the deserto absoluto ( Alfredo said it hasn't rained there for 400 years, another gde said 50), there can be ranges of temperature from minus 10 at night to 40 at daytime during summer, but as Alfredo likes to exaggerate, I am not quite sure about that. It is true that in San Pedro it got very cold at night and during day I believe it was around 32-35 degrees.
Alfredo is a very cheerful and nice person. We went with a little jeep, a group of 7, I had the advantage of sitting in the front as he picked me up first. He told us we should sleep until we arrived in Tatio as it was dark and we wouldn't se anything anyway. He turned on some beautiful Chilenian and Bolivian folkmusic and accompanied it singing loud, I loved it. On the way back we also saw some very interesting cactuses called. That grow just one cm a year, some of them up to 12 m height, so they must be 1200 years old! The indigenous people used them for building roofs when they were dry.
When I came back from Tatio at noon I slept for 2 hours and went on my last excursion, with Patricio and a French couple. My last day in Atacama.
Patricio stopped on the way to show us the 2 endemic trees of the regiom of Atacama. The first, the Algarrobo, is a long living tree ( the one in the picture is older than 1000 years!) and has a great capacity for life in the desert because of its ability to capture nitrogen and water by its long roots.
The second endemic tree of the Atacama region is the Chenar.
This tree has dorns by which it absorbs humidity from the air ( which is very low in Atacama, still it can get some water this way). It has a fruit which is very important on the diet of the Atacamenian natives. It grows in the dryest regions of Chile.
We went first to the beautiful Cejar lagoons, in the middle of the salar. In one of them you can bath, and because of the high salt concentration you can float like in the dead see. While the others were bathing I preferred to walk around the prettiest of the lagoons and enjoy every secons of this stunning scenery.
Next we stopped at the Ohos del Salar, 2 small and deep lagoons with cold water where some brave tourists jumped in. And last, we went to.
Where there is a salar with a gorgeous lagoon and waited there for the sunset.nI sat for an hour on a salt stone and just looked at the beaitully colored water, the white salt, the pink mountains at the background, my favorite, the Licancabur, this perfectly conic volcano, getting redder and redder. While I was there sitting and looking, trying to internalize the beauty of this scenery, Patricio came and brought me a glass of Pisco sour, the traditional alcoholic drink here in the Andes. It was so sweet of him. We stayed until the last rays of sunlight had disappeared and the whole landcape tuned pink.
The Atacamenos used to worship the volcanoess as Gods. All the churches in the region have roofs in the form of a volcano. It is fascinating how the people of the Andes, who were forced by the spanish conquistadores to become Catholics, managed to bring in elements of their religion into the churches.
Patricio also told us about the difficult relationship between Bolivia and Chile since the war of the Pacific, where Chile conquered the region of Atacama that used to be Bolivian territory. The energy supply to San Pedro ( which consists of several Oases) is gas, which used to come through pipes from Argentina, that also imports gas from Bolivia. Bolivia threatened Argentina that it would stop its gas supply if Argentina delivered gas to Chile. So overnight gas delivery from Argentina to San Pedro was stopped! Now they have to buy gas in bottles.
These 4 days in Atacama were so far the absolute highlight of my trip. I recommend anyone who loves to travel and beautiful aceny to come here for a week. I want to return. Hopefully rent a car in Calama and visit my favoite places again, the Laguna Tuyaito, the the laguna Chaxsa, and sit ther and look at it for hours.
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