Biodiversity of Andean fauna and flora

Como se llama llama?

Llamas (as they are more generally known as a group), consist of the vicuña, guanaco, alpaca, and the domestic llama. Guanacos and vicuñas live in the wild, while alpacas – as well as llamas – exist only as domesticated animals.

This one has to go to hairdresser...

Llamas have a fine undercoat which can be used for handicrafts and garments

Cria - "baby llama"



Unlike llama or alpaca - vicuna has never been domesticated. These shy fellows just don't seem to want to mate in captivity. They are viable trade for their valuable meat and fur. Vicuna wool is the most expensive in the world.

Solor means Flamingo (in atacameno dialect)

Flamingos often stand on one leg, the other tucked beneath the body. The reason for this behavior is not fully understood. Recent research indicates that standing on one leg may allow the birds to conserve more body heat, given that they spend a significant amount of time wading in cold water. 

Young flamingos hatch with greyish reddish plumage, but adults range from light pink to bright red due to aqueous bacteria and beta carotene obtained from their food supply. This would mean - eat carrot and you are gonna be orange!

The scenery of the salty lagoon was beautiful.

On our way back we stopped by a tiny cactoo. Apparently, the wood from the cactoo was widely used during colonial times. This one is about 1000 years old.

The Putana river is a house of many birds and species. The Reserve is protected by Unesco.

 Zorro:

I have met one more mammal that tried to fly. With no results, though...

Beware of UV radiation

Today's indication says that there's a slight danger when exposing yourself into UV radiation.
The fact is that in certain altitudes here you have to use sunblock filter 50. Every 2 hours.
The average level of UV radiation which is not harmful  for your skin is under 10. Here in San Pedro de Atacama it's over 20. In this case we can't say: it CAN produce cancer but it actually PRODUCES cancer. And no joke about it.
I guess some tourists are not aware of it.

El Tatio Geysers

Early wake up call

Dressed warmly we decided to catch the daybreak through geysers.

It was a very cold. Around -15 C on the top.  We decided to have a walk through gurlgling geysers and gassy fumaroles of the Tatio.
El Tatio geysers are the world's highest geyser field, ringed by volcanoes at 4300 above the sea level. (and yes, you feel dizzy when going up there)

We had a quick breakfast that consisted of coca tea and sandwiches. Now we are ready for the walk. The sun is still not there. Our guide - Alejandro keeps us calm - don't worry we have plenty of time :)

After some minutes the geyser spectacle has started with feria od colours.

We could hear the giant steam bath hiss, groan, spit and grumble as it shots up white-vapor jets of steam. 

The water boils there, so if you are hungry, you can simply cook some eggs for breakfast there. However, this touristic attraction is highly criticized as it damages natural bacterias living there.




While the sun rises over the surrounding cordilierra, you can see the surreal splash of reds, greens and blues.
This was the most amazing view in my life.

 

Later on we went to thermal baths. It was still around zero degrees :)

 

What a great start of the day???!!!!

Chile, the desert which looks like the moon and a high altitude

...and there we go...sitting in the bus from Salta (Argentina) towards San Pedro de Atacama (Chile), we had an amazing ride through the Andes. Yes, in order to arrive in Chile, these small barriers called Andes needed to be crossed. From a landscape point of view, this was one of the most stunning bus rides ever...

However, no matter how nice the views were, Karina and I suffered a bit from the high altitude. The ride went up to a maximum of almost 5000m...and yes, the pressure is different there. Even though, we were drinking a lot as suggested by our travel book, we felt quite dizzy and weak arriving at the boarder of Chile. After a well organized "getting every passenger through the border control" (the bus attendant was on adrenaline to manage everyone; including 5 reallllly old people, who should not have traveled alone; at some point they were just bored and walked away out of the line to get some rest...not the best thing to do when dealing with customs :-) ), we were told how to walk to the city center. Sweating and tired, we were walking through the dusty streets of San Pedro in the middle of the Atacama desert (the driest desert in the world) in desperate search of an ATM (we couldn`t get some Chilenian Pesos in Argentina and heard awful stories about the very few ATMs not working or out of money in San Pedro). We were followed by two ladies from Hawaii (both in their late 60s we suppose) hunting for cash as well...they were really funny and we both tried to reach the ATM first (to get the potentially last available money). We met them by chance several times more during our stay here...maybe they stalk us :-).

After having money, we finally checked in in our nice hostal, which is run by an Atacaman lady...and we had the entire afternoon left.

So, of we went to the city center, which mainly consists of tour agencies, restaurants a church and the tourist information...but with a special charm.

After checking on some agencies, we decided to dedicate our afternoon taking the tour to the famous Valle Luna, the Moon Valley.

Our guide was picking us up at the agency...together with roundabout 15 Korean tourists. This was specifically funny, as we rarely met any Asian tourists during our trip so far...and now 15 :-).

We started off by driving to the Moon Valley national park, which is part of the Atacama Desert. Our first stop there were the so called three praying maries, a natural sculpture:

If you only see 2 Maries, here comes the explanation: some years ago, a french school class from Santiago de Chile came for a visit. One of the pupils was hugging the Marie on the left...it was a very extensive hug, as the pupil managed to hug her head off. Ever since, there are only two and a half maries left. And if you see 4 Maries, don`t get confused...one is Karina :-).

The white surface of the place is due to christalized minerals...including salt.Not considering the the white surface, the landscape is supposed to look very similar to the surface of the moon (tataaaaa, thats how the valley got its name). Thats why the NASA used this area for the development of all moon vehicles.

Next stop on our tour, was the so called Death Valley. What a name...but where does it come from?

Maybe, no life could be found there? Wrong, there are about 35 species who can survive the circumstances there.

So whats about the story, that two shepherds were killed there by rocks? Wroooong.

The true origin of the name has a linguistic background. During the conquership of the Spanish, the Catholic Church sent some priests to the country in order to "teach" the local communities their religion. When the Spanish came, they were well respected, as they were seen as gods. The Belgium Priest (speaking French) which came with them had big influence these days. And he was the one who brought the confusion: there is a only small difference between the Spanish word Marte (Mars) and Muerte (Death)...the valley looks very much like the the surface of Mars (again, NASA is doing some tests there), but if an influential Belgium Priest, is talking Spanish to the people with a sloppy french accent, Marte valley is quickly becoming Muerte valley. Marketing wise not a bad development :-).


Last but not least, we continued our tour to the most stunning part...watching the sunset and observing the Andes getting orange. No further comments needed:

 

Don't cry for us Argentina!

After almost a month we leave a country of asados, parillas, empanadas, good wine, pampa and gauchos. And tango...;-)
We are heading to the north, taking the 10 hrs bus ride in ruta national 51.
Below, some impressions from Argentina.

 

 

Biking our way through the Road of 365 curves

Incredible scenery

We started quite early in Mendoza. We drove towards Uspallata, tte village in a scenic location on the road which crosses the Andes between Mendoza and Santiago in Chile. The road to the Chilean border incorporates some of the most amazing scenery in the region, the Andean mountains in this part being part of the backdrop of the highest peak out of the ANDES, Aconcagua at almost 7,000 metres above sea level.

Few years ago, "7 years in Tibet" was shoot here, as there were too many limitations to make it in Tibet.

Just take a look:

Our guide - Louis picked us up with his cool Lada car. (Yes, indeed it was LADA!!!!).  We started naturally with yerba mate.

 

...for the good start of the day...

 

 

We were about to do a Road of 365 curves, former, the only road between Argentina and Chile.  Of course by bike.... hell yeah!

  We started at a view point towards Aconcagua.

The road RP 52, also called ruta de un año, is unpaved once you get past Villavicenzio, but it is wide enough to feel safe and does not need a 4 wheel drive car to do it. There were a few rocks across the at various places which made it look dramatic, but it's no real problem, even for a city people like us:) !

Ready to go.

 

However, we didn't expect clouds on the other side.

 

 

Later on it got little foggy...

But finally we made it to the picknick place!!!

 Although the weather at the other side was not perfect, we enjoyed the day a lot with the good company.