Quebrada de Allane and Suriplaza

On my third day in Putre I made my last excursion with Flavio. We were only 2, Silke, a nice German woman from Hamburg and me.

First we drove up to 4850 m over a pass crossing the mountain Nevado de Putre.

It is amazing how many plants you find at this height.

The most fascinating of them is the Llareta ( read yareta). It grows only over 4000 meters and only on the sunny slopes, which are the north slopes in the southern hemisphere. It grows only one to few millimeters a year and as one can find gigantic Llaretas that are hundreds, the oldest up to 3000 years old!

The northern slopes at a height of 4500.4800 meters were full of them.

The plant in front of this llareta is called chachacoma and you can make a delicious tea out of it.

There is also a large variety of flowers at this height, most of the very small, like in the Alps.

We first drove to the Quebrada de Allane which is a beautiful canyon with a river at the bottom and rough, partly colored mountains on the sides.

The walls consist partly of small beautifully colored soft stones, more like sand stones. You can mix them with a little bit of water and make colors to paint with them.

Here part of the canyon as seen from the other side.

On the banks of the river at the bottom of the canyon, a lush vegetation and wonderful place for a picknick.

From there we drove to Suriplaza, a gorgeous plateau with reddish earth, beautiful colored mountains on both sides which make you feel you are on the planet Mars

Except for some beautiful little ponds of water .

On one side reddish colored mountains

And on the other side shades of grey, yellow and white and in between giant llaretas.

Some of which make a very comfortable bed.

This plant really fascinates me. It is very compact. When it dies, it starts dying from the south side where the sun rays don't reach it and the dead llareta burn well and are used by the local people as heating "fuel".

This all is at a height of about 4300 meters.

The earth is dry, as the rainy season is over. Notice the dark blue of the sky at this height.

This mountain really fascinates me.

On the way back we met some suris and alpacas, they seem to get along quite well.