This is an out-of-sequence blog entry, largely because when we went to the Los Flamencos National Reserve here in the Atacama Desert yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the great Salar de Atacama, I forgot my camera – and felt bereft for much of the trip.
Then I recalled that I had my BlackBerry, so took some pictures with that, through the quality is significantly lower. Am posting the images before doing the rest of the sequence on the Chile trip so that I can free up the minuscule memory on the phone.
We learned a good deal about the hydrogeology of the Atacama, adding to what we had been told by Paula in the morning when we visited the Valle de la Luna. What sticks in my mind particularly is the fact that the Atlantic and Pacific once met in this area, before the Latin american land mass began its inexorable rise, thanks to tectonic subduction.
The salt-flats of the Salar are wonderfully monotonous, though the landscape is broken by occasional bright green trees – and even a ‘forest’ planted some time back by the government.
In the distance , on the flanks of the Andes, we saw the base camp of the extraordinary ALMA project, with its 66 antenna observatory. In San Pedro last night, we discussed the planning controls here that minimise light pollution – something other countries and regions could learn from.
Apart from the flamingos, I saw a variety of birdlife, a number of what I imagine were Darwin’s leaf-eared mouse and a green and red lizard that I was told had only arrived in the area some 20 years ago.
The wind picked up markedly as the sun set – and then we went out behind the visitor centre to see the mountains pick up the reddish hues of the sunset. Some time after 20.00, a Full Moon popped its head over the Andes, and then rose majestically into the night sky.
The ride back was enlivened a woman who decided that her passport had been stolen from her bag while we were at the reserve. Silence settled. Fernando slept on the back seat. Then a vicious swerve as the driver steered around a wayward burro in the night. And then the missing papers were found in the woman’s bedroom.
After a late dinner, we sat out, around a blazing fire pit, and watched the Moon gradually ascend into the heavens – albeit drowning out many of the constellations it would have been good to see in more detail.
Wonderful conversation with a Swiss couple from Zurich, he apparently a very successful architect, she raised in the UK, and the family of four doing a 2-month trip around Latin America. Next, at least for them, is Easter Island. Given that I also learned yesterday that Easter Island is on the sub ducting plate, so will eventually collide with Chile, I said I would probably wait for the island to hove into view.
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