Atacama Wanderings in the World's Driest Desert
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2007
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86
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Trip End
Jun 01, 2012
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Some of our highlights while exploring this mysterious altiplanic landscape were...
Spending the end of a day watching three variant species of flamingoes (a world total of 6 exists) wade throughout the laguna chaxa, a surreal lake surrounded by coralesque mounds of salt crystal formations and rimmed with mountains dotted with distant volcanoes puffing volcanic smoke. Watching the flamingoes fly low overhead as they came into the laguna to spend the night was a sight seen out of a BBC documentary... well worth coming to this remote part of the world.
Hiking along a creek that wound it's way through the slot canyon of the quebrada de guatin... a multihued land of high cliffs draped with massive cactus, some over 30 feet high and with only growing 1 cm per year... well crunch the math on that one and you'll find the age of these sentinels of the desert. The cold mountain runoff created a sort of air conditioning in an otherwise hot and dry landscape.
Driving high into the Andes Mountains that ring the eastern border of San Pedro... watching fattened llamas graze on the lush grasses surrounding alpine ponds... herds of guanacos (a south american camelid) skittishly run from our approach... villagers scuttle into their adobe homes as we drove by their small villages found well over 12,000 feet into the fresh mountain air... past puritama hot springs, where we stopped for awhile to take a soak in the various hot spring pools that spilled down a canyon as the spring found it's way to a icy river flowing off of the snow capped peaks of the mountains above... driving past steaming fumeroles vents cracked into the earth's surface from one of the world's largest volcanic geyser fields... and driving past ancient llareta mounds... many over 3,000 years old (check out this website for a pic and a bit of info on this very strange plant http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/oldest-things/3).
Hiking out to the ancient Pucara de Quitor... a cliffside fort built by the ancient atacamena peoples in the 12th century, that later became a desert outpost for the Inca as they expanded their empire into the atacama desert of Chile. It is a complex of over 200 stone foundations surrounded by terraced fields spilling down the hill to a green valley oasis that is modern day San Pedro de Atacama. From this place we walked a bit on an old Inca road that wound through the cliffs... catching glimpses of various lizards and hummingbirds.
Exploring the adobe village churches with their cactus wood ceilings, unusual ecclesiastical icons as well as exploring the tiny villages that they resided in. Walking into many of these buildings was like entering into the past... with very little changes from what they would have looked like some 100 to 300 years ago.
Taking mountain bikes through the cliffs, up, over and through a few mountain peaks and down an ancient river bed onto the desert floor... with a few hours ride through a rocky landscape that tested the patients of us all...
Sandboarding the high sand dunes within the valley of the dead... it was most fun watching Carsten and Aidan cut and carve through the sand as they boarded down the dunes to the valley floor. Deb and I also took a hike in this area... following one of the dune ridges to a high cliff above... giving us stunning views of hundreds of miles of desert landscape in all directions.
Hanging out, during the heat of the afternoon, in an outdoor cafe off San Pedro's main square... sipping caffe latte's watching a rainbow of people and wild dogs meander amongst the deep shade of the thickly branched pepper trees foresting this inviting public space. [=coffee-italian-style.jpg]
Driving deep into the desert to a site where ancient shamans and travelers used as a holy site... scratching petroglyphs into the red rocks. Some of the most interesting were of llamas, flamingos and holy men sitting in yogic poses with stars shinning above. Close to this site lies a small village lost in time... where the locals still tend the meager terraced fields filled with citrus fruits and veggies patches that line a spring fed stream.
Heading out into the desert at night... to a astronomical center so we could take a tour of the celestial curtain that draped the landscape in it's entirety. Chile's atacama desert contains the highest concentration of astronomical observatories in the world... as it contains the best views of the celestial... with little to no light or air pollution. After our brief and quite funny lecture by a local scientist, we were given the opportunity to traverse around a dozen telescopes... viewing planets, stars, nebulas, distant solar systems and the moon... followed by a hot cup of cocoa, very welcome as the nights in the desert can hoover close to freezing.
Walking along the many salt lakes that remained of what was once an ancient inland sea that is now lies in the center of the desert. We also took a try at taking a float in these incredibly salty and crystal clear pools of water... it felt like it was close to freezing as our limbs turned blue, even under a burning hot sun...] very strange sensation.
And taking my early morning trail run into the desert and past Aldea de Tulor, a very ancient archeological site of round home foundations that was home to a people that existed in this place some 1600 years back. This desert is also the place where archeologist have unearthed the oldest mummified bodies ever found... some 7000 years old... much older than the Egyptian ones found on the other side of the planet.
I even enjoyed blowing a tire on our rental truck... while deep into the desert on a deserted road ( I love how the word desert so fittingly rests into the word deserted) with only about an hour of daylight left... this was only due to the boys mounted excitement as they engaged the emergency blinker and hoisted up a red emergency flag. They also loved figuring how to disengage the spare locked under the truck, taking off the lug nuts and putting the spare on. With a few high fives and a drawn out "shiiit!" we drove into the valley of the moon to take in the magic of the area as it exploded into color, turned on by the setting sun.
For those interested in a very unique travel destination filled with stunning landscape, friendly people, unique animals and ancient archeological sites... this is the place to experience.
