Salar de Tara

26th November 2015. Salar de Tara, Atacama Desert, Northern Chile.

(This post is out of sequence. It was supposed to be before the previous monochrome post).

This is Licancabur and we are heading towards Salar de Tara. Licancabur has been an active volcano for at least 56,000 years and maybe 220,000 years. It’s last eruption in 1993 was a large eruption that saw ash fall as far away as Buenos Aires, nearly 3,000 kilometres away.

We are now approaching Salar de Tara, or Tara Salt Flats, in the distance on the right. In the middle left above the cliff and the truck is Los Monjes de la Pacana or the Pecan Monks. These are eroded volcanic plugs and rock structures.

Perhaps a monk, perhaps a giant moai.

Here is a closer view of Salar de Tara, with some vicuñas grazing in the foreground.

We are close to the border of both Bolivia and Argentina and this is a protected Ramsar wetland area.

So, quickly, how many flamingos do you think are in this image (you may need to click on it for a larger view to see it better).

There is an austere majesty to some of the views here. And there is a stone pen on this spit of land, whether for llamas, goats pr sheep I do not know.

Salar de Tara and foreground tussocks.

Eroded volcanic cliffs.

Andean geese.

Chilean flamingo.

Vicuñas (and flamingos in the distance).

Black-hooded sierra-finch.

Now again, you’ll probably need to click on it, how many flamingos are in this image?

Three vicuñas at the foot of a cliff.

We are heading back to San Pedro de Atacama now. I think I know where this is but there’s no name on the map. There is a road in the distance and two empty trucks heading towards Argentina.

Answers: 219 flamingos in the first image and 148 in the second.

This was the last Atacama post (apart from a mono post or two coming up next).

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.

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.