After exploring the greater Santiago region, we took a two hour flight north to Calama, Chile. Again we were graced with the beautiful presence of the commanding Andes mountain range below us as we flew. Unfortunately neither of us had a window seat but the guy next to me didn't seem to mind too much as I peered out the window. After we landed we had over an hour ride to our destination: San Pedro de Atacama, a small town in the heart of the desert. As we drove the 100+ kilometers I was surprised at the landscape. I've never seen so much sand in one place before. On each side of the paved road was barren landscape. Once in awhile you'd see a turnoff with several cars parked and some sort of foreign structure. I believe that these were mines. Do you remember the Chilean mining accident back in 2010? It happened in the Atacama desert. If you don't recall, it was the mining accident where 33 men were trapped 700 meters (almost half a mile) below the surface and all of them were successfully rescued 69 days later. We learned that mining is Chile's number one industry and the country produces more than a third of the worlds copper and has 40% of the worlds quantity of lithium. I heard that tidbit of information on a tour and when I went to do some research, I came across an interesting article which talks about, "How South America's lithium triangle is gearing up to feed our battery addiction". The triangle is made up of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. Fishing and agriculture are the country's other top industries. In fact, Chile is the second largest producer of salmon in the world. We look forward to catching some down in Patagonia on a future trip. Did you know that today 60% of the worlds salmon is farmed? Obviously we want to catch a wild one, not a farmed one. Chile has both. The other leading salmon producers are Norway, Canada and Scotland. If you'd like to read more about that, check this out. Unfortunately, my pallet still does not care for salmon. Obviously this has nothing to do with our time in the desert but I found it interesting and wanted to share.
Anyways, the surrounding landscape made us feel like we were on the moon. However, before we knew it, it switched to red rocks and canyons everywhere which made us feel like we were on Mars. Our Air B&B host in Melbourne grew up in Chile and had recommended that we visit the San Pedro de Atacama desert and explore the area via many day trips. It was cheaper to book the trips with a tour company versus rent a car, so once we got to town we booked three excursions with Cosmo Andino. The town of San Pedro de Atacama is 2,409 m (7,900 feet) above sea level and several of the sights are much higher than that. I was worried about altitude sickness but luckily other than being noticeably out of breath on a few of the excursions, I felt OK. Jake had a headache one day but it didn't bother him too much.
Kind of looks like a Western movie set, doesn't it?
Our first trip was an afternoon in the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) and Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley). We started in Death Valley which looks like Mars. In fact, we were told that the man who named Death Valley attempted to name it Valley of Mars, not Death Valley. In Spanish, the word for Mars (Marte) sounds very much like the word for death (muerte) and so people thought he was naming it Death Valley. Whoops. We ran down the sand dunes there which was fun and unexpected and followed by dumping out about a pound of sand from our shoes. We saw people sand boarding which I had never seen before. I think my brother would have loved to do that.
Next it was on to Valle de la Luna which is a great place to watch the sunset but unfortunately the day we went it wasn't very spectacular. We still enjoyed it though but man it gets cold once the sun goes down! On this trip we also saw salt in the wild for the first time (that sounds funny, doesn't it?). As you'll see in the photo below, it looks like things have been dusted with snow but it's not snow, it's salt. Doesn't it look like the earth has been glazed with icing? Yes, it is known that I have quite a massive sweet tooth.
Valle de la Luna
Salt, not snow nor icing!
Valle de la Luna
Salt, not snow nor icing!
On the second day we visited the the Reserva Nacional Los Flamencos and I saw flamingos in the wild for the first time as well as vicuñas. I had never heard of the vicuña before but have since learned that it is quite an interesting animal. They are a wild animal that is native to Peru, Northwest Argentina, Northern Chile, and Bolivia. A relative of the llama, they are shy creatures that live at altitudes of 3,200 to 4,800 meters (10,500 to 15,750 feet). They are one of two wild camelids found exclusively in South America. This was the day where Jake had a headache as we traveled up to 4,400 meters (14,436 feet).
Vicuña sighting in the Andes
Apparently there are six species of flamingos and three of them live in South America. Those would be the Chilean flamingo, the Andean flamingo and the James flamingo. When you look at pictures of them they look incredibly similar so I can't be sure which we saw, we may have seen all three types. Either way, it was special. We saw them in lagunas and saw no more than a dozen at a time. We were told that in the summer months there are sometimes hundreds of flamingos in the lagunas. That would have been quite a sight to see. I was surprised to learn that flamingos are only pink (or orange, except I've never heard of an orange flamingo) due to what they eat. They are born with grey feathers and then because of their diet, their feathers are tinted accordingly. Their diet consists of brine shrimp and blue green algae. These things contain a natural pink dye called canthaxanthin (a keto-carotenoid pigment) and due to the fact that flamingos eat approximately 17 hours a day, they consume enough of it to change their color.
Jake took this incredible photo during our first of many flamingo sightings.
Flamingo in flight, so cool!
On the third day we woke up at 4AM to get ready for our 4:30AM pick up to go see the Geysers del Tatio. Most of the tour companies go there for sunrise versus later in the day because its when the geysers look most impressive as the steam condenses in the cold air. It was -8C (17F) when we arrived around 6:30AM. The geysers are located in the Andes mountain range and are said to be the highest geothermal field in the world at 4,320 meters (14,173 feet). There are over 80 active geysers making it the third largest geyser field in the world behind Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Valley of Geysers in Russia. We were pretty underwhelmed. We definitely didn't need to get up so early to go do this and could have skipped it altogether. Oh well, if we didn't go we never would have known.
The rest of our time in San Pedro we did some worst case planning for Galapagos (if we can't get a deal on a live aboard) and caught up on writing blog posts. Of course there was also our night of sky gazing. If you missed my post on that you can read it here. From there we headed into Bolivia which has blown away my expectations so far. Stay tuned for Jake's post on that. To see all of our photos from San Pedro de Atacama, click here.
~ Jesslyn
Sources:
http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/why-are-flamingos-pink
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canthaxanthin
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiapó_mining_accident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chile
http://globalsalmoninitiative.org/about-us/about-farmed-salmon/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/23/battery-lithium-south-america-chile-argentina-bolivia
http://www.livescience.com/27322-flamingos.html
http://www.explore-atacama.com/eng/attractions/tatio-geysers.htm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geyser
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicuña
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelid