Putre and parque Nacional Lauca

	26. Mär.

20.3 morning I took the bus from San Pedro to Calama at 8 and at 11 the bus from Calama to Arica arriving at Arica at 20:30. There is only one bus company, Frontera de Norte, that has busses that go to Arica during daytime and this also only Tuesday and Wednesday, all others have only night busses.

No time to see Arica, a city near the sea, as I took the bus to Putre, at a height of 3500, next morning at 7.

Putre is a small town located in a region close to the parque nacional Lauca and some other gorgeous places, which, interestingly, have no yet been discovered by tourism.

In Putre there is an Italian couple, Flavio and Patricia, who have been living her for 3 years, have a little cute hotel with 5 rooms, the only one with decent heating inPutre. Unfortunately I had to spend the first 3 nights somewhere else as they were full and freeze.

Flavio is a very interesting and nice man, a professional photographer, and a real good one, and the best tour guide you could wish for. He has lived in several countries, among them Portugal, Indonesia, Lituania, now 4 years in Chile. He is a nature and animal lover, has a small 4 wheel drive car and makes the most wonderful tours with maximum 4 persons. I think he enjoys his tours as much as his guests do. He stops at every spot where one can take a good photo, he knows so much about the animals and plants of the region and makes a real effort to show and explain you all of them.

Life in Putre is not easy. There is no gas station, so Flavio has to drive 1,5 hours to Arica to get Gasoline. He fills his car and can take an extra 80 liters with him. There is no dentist in Putre, one doctor who travels around the villages, no supermarket, just a few little grocery stores where you can get the basic groceries. If Patricia has to go to Arica to the bank and to buy things she needs for her guests she has to take the 14 o'clock bus, arrives in Arica at 17 o'clock, too late to do the things she needs, and as there is only one bus a day to Putre, at 7 am, she has to stay 2 nights in Arica!

Our first trip, on March 21, was to Parque Nacional Lauca, where you can see , among others, the gorgeous volcanoe Parinacota , 6342 m high, and the lake Chungara ( picture above), 4517 m high, supposedly the highest lake in the world.

The whole region, the Altiplano, is over 4000 meters high.

We stopped at a lot of places on the way. It is incredible how many animals live at such a height. There are the darling Vizcachas, the Andean mountain rabbit, which hides between stones , you can see lots of them if you know their places.

Then there are lots of lamas. We saw a pair of lamas on the way, making love.

They chose a beautiful spot

But the amazing and funny thing about it was, it was on the side of the road, where there are all the time trucks passing on their way to Bolivia. These trucks passed may be half a meter from this lama couple, but the male was so extatic that he did not even seem to register it! I was afraid some truck would roll over its tail. In other situations they would not even let a person come this close!

There are lots of alpacas. Flavio has made friends with some of them and feeds them every time he comes by. When he calls them, they come running.

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And there are the beautiful, delicate vicunas, you see lots of them above 4000 meters.

Besides those there are the suris, the small Andean ostrich

And we even saw a fox. There also are pumas, which are night hunters, so a trek at moonlight is a bit dangerous.

Then there is the Andean goose, that builds floating nests on the lake

And thousands of flamingoes living in the Altiplano lakes, up to over 4500 m.

And it is really cold in the Altiplano. At night it gets down to several degrees below zero.

One interesting phenomenon is that there is snow on the mountains only during summer, the rainy season, which lasts about 3 months, from December to February. The strong sunrays let the snow or most of it melt before winter comes.

From Lago Chungara we drove to the Cotacotani lagoons, several beautiful lagoons, supplied with water coming underground from lago Chungara.

For lunch we drove to the small village Parincota, about 4200 meters high. . At the time there are only 2 families living there, one of them having a restaurant for the few tourists that come by. We met only about 5 that day. Life must really be hard at this altitude. This Parinacotan girl does not look very happy.

Every village, even if there are only 2 families living there, has a church!

The little cemetery in Parinacota is interesting. People put on the graves of their relatives cans of Cola and other drinks or foods their relatives used to like

And decorate the graves with their modest means

On the way we could also see one of the active volcanoes of the region which, curiously, has its craters on the sides instead of on the top and is all the time expelling fumaroles

It was a wonderful day.