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.

Atacama: Geisers del Tatio , Laguna Ceja and Laguna Tebinquiche

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.

First days Chile

I left Atins by boat and had a chance for another wonderful walk in the dunes during lunch stop. Then to Sao Luiz, nothing special, next day to Sao Paulo and the day after to Santiago where I unfortunately had only 22 hours time, but I got to see quite a bit of this beautiful city. Some beautiful old buildings, a beautiful cathedral and very beautiful modern skyscrapers concentrated in a part of town nicknamed Sanhattan. One thing I loved was that there are beautiful large trees along many of the streets downtown.

From Santiago I was supposed to fly to Arica in northern Chile and from there I wanted to travel to San Pedro de Atacama. I hadn't studied th map well enough when I bought my South America air pass and didn't know how long the busses take. I tried to change my LAN flight to Iquique but they said a destination change was not possible with this air pass. After I handed in my luggage and went to the gate I saw the plane was landing in Iquique on the way, which was much more convenient. I asked if I could get off in Iquique and the Lan agent at th gate said no. In the plane, I asked the stewardess again and she said it was not allowed. As I have learned in life never to give up, I explained her how adventageous it would be for me and to please let me get off. She promised to ask. In Iquique she said I could get off but without my suitcase. I explained her I really needed my suitcase, it was red and might not be so difficult to find. She was real nice, asked a worker at the airport and he found it. Otherwise I might have made it to San Pedro at midnight and probably not ven found my room, which at daylight, at 5:30 in the afternoon, took me one hour to find in this little town. But it was worth every effort.

San Pedro is a ridiculously expensive little town. Not only because of the thousands of tourists who come there, not only because they have to bring everything from far away, but also because of the mines nearby. While an average salary is about 400.000 pesos a month, the miners earn 5.000.000 and as they rent rooms to stay this has also driven the prices up.

I wras very lucky to find a room at a nice hostel, Hostal Talar, whose owner, Marcelo, knows some very good companies who make excursions with small groups. The companies regcommended by Lonely Planet are big companies who travel with large busses with 25-28 people. You can forget about them.

The region around San Pedro is absolutely fantastic.

Yesterday I made an excursion with 4 more people and a real good guide to the most fantastic places I have ever seen!

In the region of San Pedro thre are 16 volcanoes, 7 of them active but there has not been any major eruption for a long time.

During my flight from Santiago to Iquique I was already amazed that the whole region north of Santiago is 98% desert. San Pedro is one of the dryest regions on earth. It rains about 5 days a year, but when it does everything gets flooded. This February, one dy it rained for 45 minutes. The cars that were on their way got stuck in the mud and the people had to walk back to San Pedro. Some of the cars were atuck in the mud for a week. Jessica, Matcelos wife, the owner of the hostel where I stayed, told me they had guests from Belgium, an older couple, who had rented a car and gone to Moon Valley, which luckily is not so far. They got stuck in the mud and had to walk back and arrived at one o'clock at night. They had already alarmed the police.

In spite of being desert, in the region of Atacama there are some fantastic lagoons which, I am not sure, originated partly from melted snow of the Andes, I can't remember from what else. The tour yesterday was to the Altiplano lagoons . Most tours go just to 2-3 of them and I was extremely lucky to get a tour with a company called Andeswide ( for whoever of you wish to come here-highly recommended, with the guide Marcello. I speak Portuguese and he speaks Espanol so we communicate in Portunol. He is a very knolegeable man and told us so many interesting things on the way and showed us so much.

On the way from San Pedro he first showed us how the vegetation changed as we got further into the desert and a place where the government planted several long ros of special trees, Tamarugos, which grow 5 meters high but their roots go down up to 80 meters into the earth to find some water. The trees were supposed to stop the dunes from expanding and it seems to work.

When the Spanish conquered Chile they brought with them donkeys to work but these could not adapt to the slippy ground in the salar and the stones. They used to fall when carrying heavy luggage so they abandoned them and started using the Lama like the indigenous people. That's why you see only wild donkeys here, the descendants of those Spanish donkeys. There are 4 types of Cameloids living here. The lama and alpaca, which have been domesticated, and the guanacos and vicunas, which are wild. 

The vicunas live above 3800-4000meters. They live in families, one male with up to 7 females. The young males, when they grow up, are expulsed from the family and form groups where they fight with each other to decide who is the dominant one. Here in the picture a vicuna mother with her young one.Vicunas are protected animals in Chile and you get 5 years in jail if you kill one.

And here a sweet Alpaca we met on our way.

On the way we saw some gorgeous volcanoes. One of thm, the Licancabur, was always thought to be an inactive volcanoe until they found out it has a lake with hot water on top. San Pedro is about 2400 meters high and the Licancabur almost 6000, not easy to climb.

The first lake we went to, laguna Tuyaito, is the most beautiful place I have ver seen. It is such a pity I cannot capture th panorama in pictures, only a little bit of it so it is difficult to grasp the beauty of this place. I would have liked to sit there nd look at it for hours, something unfortunately impossible on a tour. If I ever come bck to this lace, I hope so, it will be in a rented car on myself.

The laguna Tuyaito is surrounded by a fantastic salar.

The second place we went, also stunning, was pedras rossas, a huge agglomeration of red rocks of volcanic origin near a gorgeous green lake.

From there to th Lagunas Miscanti and Miniques. Miscanti and Miniques are 2 nearby volcanoes, near each a gorgeous lagood in a deep blue color. On the way, fantastically colored mountains.

Here a little part of the laguna Miscanti, named after the volcanoe Miscanti at its side. Do you realise how lucky we are, that our eyes can see the whole scenery, while our poor cameras always only show us a little part of it? I wish I could show it all to you, but you will have to go there.

And here a little part of the deep blue Miniques lagoon, also named after the adjacent volcanoe.

Doesn't it look like a drawing?

And the last one was the lagoon Chaxa, one more beautiful than the other. It is a lagoon in the middle of the Salar de Atcama, around the lagoon all white salt and in the lagoon Flamingoes and other birds. The water changes color from lightblue to pink to reddish, probbly depending upon th minerals in the bottom. It is undescribably beautiful. I think this was one of the most beautiful days of my life.

On the next day I also had the luck of being able to participate in a tour which does not go frequently, to the Salar de Tara and flamingo reserve.

We left early in the morning and stopped for breakfast at a gorgeous little lake with flamingoes and Andean ducks at a height of about 4300 meters. As the guide had to prepare breakfast we had more time to enjoy this gorgeous lake.

The next stop was at the Monjes, pillars of volcanic origin in all kind of bizarre forms. As our car broke down there we also had plenty of time to walk around and explore the region, also at about 4400 m height.. The highest point we crossed was about 4800 m.

After a back and neck braking drive through the desert we arrived at Salar de Tara, a heavenly place. A light blue lake surrounded by reddish and pastel colored mountains, with thousands of flamingoes. It is interesting that they live at such heights ( about 4300 m). It is not allowed to walk at the shore of the lake, only about 10-20 m away , not to disturb the flamingoes. As our guide prepared lunch at this place that also gave us about 1,5 hours time to enjoy it.

Next day I went in the afternoon to the Valle de la Luna, the moonvalley. It really looks like on another world. Pink mountains, partly covered with white salt ( you might think it is snow) in the most bizarre forms. It was a small group, a cute Japanese girl, 2 Brasilians ( who planned to hike up the Licancabur volcanoe, 8 hours to go up to the top, 5916 m high, and 4 hours to go down!) and me. Our guide, Patricio, the owner of the company Andes Wide, an extremely nice and knowlegeable man, who makes excursions with few persons because he enjoys it more and charges no more than the big companies who go with busses with 25-28 people! If you ever go to San Pedro, I very much recommend this company.

We first went to this beautiful viewpoint overlooking part of the valley. Doesn't it look like on another planet?

All the white you see is salt, not snow.

As you might have noticed, I am absolutely in love with this landscape.

And here the Licancabur, my favorite volcanoe, in the background.

Before sunset we hiked up to a beautiful viewpoint. At this time of the day there are hundreds of persons hiking up to all the possible viewpoints to admire the sunset from above.