Laguna de Aguas Calientes, Laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miñiques

May27

25th November 2015. Salar de Atacama, Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

We set off to visit three salt lakes high in the Atacama Desert.

This image was take from the moving bus. I was struck by the lenticular cloud over the volcano.

We had stopped and got out of the bus for this one.

… and the reason was to photograph this vicuña, grazing by the side of the road.

This image and the next one, we are en route. I’m not sure whether they were taken from inside or outside the bus.

And now we have arrived at Salar de Aguas Calientes.

In other words, the Lake of Warm Waters, presumably due to the volcanoes towering above.

There was also quite an array of lenticular clouds.

The area was designated a wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention in 1996.

This is windswept foam gathering at the edge of the lake..

We are at 4,850 metres, or 16,000 feet.

We are on our way again now, still with lots of spectacular lenticular clouds around.

I was clearly out of the bus for this one.

And now we have arrived at Laguna Miscanti.

We’re a little bit lower here, at 4,140 metres or 13,500 feet.

The lake is up to ten metres deep.

It has no surface outflow.

Looking back at Lago Miscanti, as I walk to Lago Miñiques.

I didn’t have any problem with the altitude, even with a photographic pack of about 16kg. No prospect of running, though. You have to take things a little bit easy.

This is Laguna Miñiques, at 4,300 metres or 14,000 feet, with Miñiques volcano towering above it.

On the way back, we stopped at the village of Toconao. This is a tour bus from a different company, whose passengers were wandering around the town and had been for some years.

And this is the door of the bell tower.

Flamingos

May25

25th November 2015. Laguna Chaxa, Salar de Atacama, Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

Chilean flamingo in front of Licancabur volcano.

Chilean flamingo along with two kelp gulls, maybe.

Probably a young flamingo. They get their colour from the algae they eat and are paler when young.

Andean flamingo.

This and following flamingos are all Andean flamingos, one of the worlkd’s rarest flamingos. The easiest way to tell them apart from the Chilean flamingos are that the Andean flamingos have yellow legs, whereas the Chilean flamingos have greyish legs with pink joints.

We are at Laguna Chaxa in Salar de Atacama, which is the largest salt flat in Chile and third largest in the world. All three are in South America. Salar de Atacama is 3,000 km² in area and 100 km x 80 km (which doesn’t seem to add up but that’s what Wikipedia says). It is 2,300 metres above sea level and 55 km south of San Pedro de Atacama.

For those for whom this may be of interest, all images on this page were taken with a Nikon D800 and a 300mm f2.8 lens, mostly with a 1.4x teleconverter, and using a tripod.

Laguna Cejar and Laguna Tebenquiche

May21

24th November 2015. Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

Continuing on from the previous post, this is the group I am travelling with. It is an ordinary tour, not a photographic tour, but there are plenty of opportunities for photography.

We are now at Laguna Cejar.

I was setting up to photograph some flamingos when some people came running along the boardwalk towards me crying out “Flamingo! Flamingo!” Of course the flamingos flew off and I didn’t get the photograph. (Sigh). These are much further away. Not to worry, there are some better flamingo images coming up in a later post.

There are three lakes at Laguna Cejar and the main purpose of stopping was to offer the chance of a swim in a salt lake. The concentration of salt is higher here than the Dead Sea so floating is not difficult. I wasn’t interested in that though, I had come for the photography. You may need to click on this image to see it at a better size (though still a bit small because it’s very long).

This image and the next one are also at Laguna Cejar.

We are now at Laguna Tebenquiche but you can’t see it yet so we are looking at Cordillera de la Costa.

The rest of the post shows images of the salt lakes and salt flats at Laguna Tebenquiche and the mountains behind, as sunset approaches and the sun recedes.

There is a bird here amongst the salt – of what kind I have no idea.

Clearly the sun is getting lower now.

It seems to be after sunset now.

We were eating dinner before heading back and there were birds flying round. The light was very low so I experimented with slow shutter speeds at high ISO.

Cacti Canyon

May18

24th November 2015. Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

This afternoon, we headed off towards Laguna Cejar. You’ll see that in the next post. This post comprises images from the journey there.

Here we have two vicuñas near the side of the road, from the bus window.

Vicuñas were protected under the Incas but after then, hunting reduced the population to 6,000. Now they’re protected again and the population is up to 350,000. Their wool is even more valuable than that of alpacas, so to discourage poaching they are caught each year, shorn and released again. Vicuñas are coloured as you see whereas guanacos (the other wild South American camelid) are variable in colour and have larger rounded ears rather than small pointed ones.

The colours would be enhanced at sunrise and sunset, but the Atacama Desert landscapes are still majestic.

We stopped at a village and this is a llama belonging to one of the villagers.

You can tell it’s not a wild vicuña or guanaco because they’re not very skilled at tying ribbons. Alpacas are about half the size of the llama and have much finer wool. They are all camelids and evolved in North America, leaving about two or three million years ago at about the same time as the ancestors of the dromedary and bactrian camels, who went east rather than south. North American camelids became extinct quite recently (geologically speaking) due to either ice ages or humans or both.

Here is the village.

While it is a “tourist village”, it is also a traditional village where people live.

We later stopped to explore a canyon lined by cacti.

This is not a known tourist destination but you can easily find it by driving along all the roads in the Atacama Desert and stopping to explore every hundred metres or so. Probably shouldn’t take more than a few months.

Members of our group heading down the canyon.

Heading back now.

And as we depart, some of the cacti wave goodbye.

El Tatio

May15

24th November 2015. Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

There was a very early rise this morning for the 90 minute trip from San Pedro de Atacama to the El Tatio geyser fields so that we could arrive before dawn.

El Tatio is said to be the highest geyser field in the world and the largest in the southern hemisphere.

The sky is bright but it’s still before dawn because there are no shadows,

Now we have shadows so the sun is up.

A large fumarole.

This is probably the largest geyser.

The sun is starting to rise behind it.

And now it’s peeking through

… leaving reflections in the surface water.

It’s remarkable how the geysers manage to throw out lines of differently coloured rocks just at the point where it becomes unsafe to walk.

There is a ruined building on the site but it’s not ancient. It was probably associated with sulphur extraction many decades ago.

Silhouettes in the steam.

Darkness and light.

The field once included 67 geysers and 300 hot springs.

Geysers once reached 10 metres in height whereas now they are up to a metre. Individual geysers are larger in New Zealand, Iceland and the US.

Drilling for a hydrothermal energy project in 2009 caused a steam blowout 60 metres high that was not capped for a month. The subsequent outcry led to the banning of such projects.

In 2010, El Tatio was declared a protected area.

Valle de la Luna

May12

23rd November 2015. Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

This and following posts are from excursions with Cosmo Andino Tours, who offer a great service. This excursion was to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley).

Coyote Leap.

I saw the cracks before I ventured there. I assume from the fact that I’m writing this that I survived the experience.

Valle de la Luna is about thirteen kilometres west of San Pedro de Atacama.

It is a part of the Cordillera de la Sal (Salt Mountain Range).

It is also inside Los Flamencos National Reserve and part of the Atacama Desert.

Some magnificent viewpoints are available.

Licancabur volcano, creating the moon in a virtual eruption.

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… and the moon flies away like a balloon.

Valle de la Luna is comprised of sand, stone and salt. It is a totally arid area without any precipitation.

The dramatic shapes were created by geological folding under a dry salt lake.

Colours are heightened by the sunset.

Tulor and Pukará de Quitor

May9

23rd November 2015. Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

In the first morning of my visit to the Atacama Desert, I joined a local archæological tour.

First we visited the ancient village of Tulor. As the sign says, the village dates from 800BC to 500AD.

The area is a desert environment today but would not have been as dry when people lived here.

We are walking towards a couple of recreated houses.

Inside, we can see something of the way they were built.

This woman may have been sitting at the empty fireplace for a very long time.

View through the door (as the guide was trying to hurry me on).

Remains of the actual dwellings. The village was at an oasis and was abandoned when the oasis dried up. It is not well protected and is slowly eroding away.

I think this is a llama (rather than an alpaca). In the oasis near our next destination.

And that is Pukará de Quitor, which the Spanish conquistadors besieged and took in 1540.

The fortress was built around 1200 by the Atacameño people, who occupied the land from around 8,000BC.

The Tiwanaka people were overlords from 400 to 1000AD and the Incas shortly before the Spanish Conquest.

As you can see, it it a large fortification, protected by a gorge on the other side. The Spanish took it with the aid of Yanacona Indians. They then executed 300 of the local defenders and displayed the heads on poles. At that time, it became known as “the City of the Heads”.

The oasis it was built beside is still there.