Day 8 Salar de Tara y Monjes de la Pacana, Atacoma Desert, Chile
Today is the day! We will hit the highest elevation point of our trip...15,901 feet!
Throughout today, our hike will take us to the Monjes de la Pacana and the Salar de Tara (the Tara Salt Flat) at 14,107 feet above sea level, about as high as Mt. Rainer.
We awoke to another strikingly beautiful crystal clear blue sky day.
We awoke to another strikingly beautiful crystal clear blue sky day.
We received a call from our guide this morning who told us we'd be leaving later than planned because the road we were to take, Route #27, was closed due to last night's snow at higher elevations creating hazardous driving conditions. Hopefully, this road will be open later this morning, he just could not say when. It is impressive that they had closed Route #27 as it is the main road to both Bolivia and Argentina.
No worries, we didn't mind waiting in the shade at our casa to be picked up. It was a lovely morning.
And once picked up for the hike, we really didn't have to wait very long in line for route #27 to open, even though we were not the only vehicle waiting for the road to open that morning.
The road looked very dry when we started up.
As we ascended we soon understood why the road had been closed.
SNOW! Who would have thought it could snow in the desert?
And there was a lot of snow in the Atacama Desert that morning. Our hiking guide, Mariano, told us with the Atacama's afternoon's heat, all this snow would be gone.
We drove 100 km across the pass of 15,900 ft then turned off-road to Salar de Tara at over 14,000 + feet.
No more snow on the road as we headed off-road and I do mean off-road! No sign, just Mariano's local knowledge led the way.
Above you'll see the Licancabur volcano on the left. It is 19,409 feet. The volcano on the right is Juriques at 18,713 feet.
It is impressive how quickly the desert changes colors. There can be tuffs of vegetation on one side and then red clay dirt on the other.
We literally were in the middle of nowhere.
The Atacama Desert, this plateau just west of the Andes Mountains, is simultaneously barren and beautiful. I couldn't believe I was in the highest and driest non-polar desert in the world. We felt very fortunate to be here.
We drove to one of the most famous rock formations, "The Indian". This is a massive stone monolith. As our guide, Mariano told us, "when looked at in the proper light, it resembles an Indian's face." I'm the little dot on the lower right-hand side of the ground by the base.
You need to look at the upper portion for the face.
Even though we were at 14,000+ feet,
we took a lovely hike. All of our altitude acclimation hikes of the past 4 days had paid off and we really enjoyed it.
Then we were driven across a massive altiplano that went on and on for miles and miles. Nothing but wide empty space...just bright blue sky above and crushed red rock beneath. It seemed to go on forever!
In a while, we came to a totally different area of ground cover...black rocks instead of red. We got out of the car and explored this circular patch of black rocks. Mariano told us the rocks were obsidian and he had discovered this spot in the vast altiplano just recently!
Obsidian is a volcanic glass formed as an igneous rock. Obsidian blade edges can be cut to almost molecular thinness leading to its ancient use as arrowheads and to its modern use as surgical scalpel blades. Here in the altiplano of the Atacama Desert, the obsidian was beautiful in the bright sunlight.
We continued driving onward across the never-ending altiplano to...Bolivia! There is NOTHING out here except for this post to mark the spot. I promptly hopped out and had my photo taken with one foot in Chile and one foot in Bolivia!
While you may not be able to see the rheas clearly for they are in the distance running for the hills, you can clearly see the vastness of the Atacama Desert. We were headed for the rocks in the distance and we continued on for miles and miles. Distances are very deceiving in the desert.
We took a hike thru some astounding geological creations!
I'm on the right-hand side of this monolith.
It was a great hike and then we were back driving on into the Atacama until seemingly out of the flatness sprung up tall, free-standing rock formations. The Monjes de la Pacana, translated as the Pecan Monks, lay before us.
From here one can see the Salar de Tara.
The Salar de Tara is 14,107 feet. We hiked down to it.
The Salar de Tara is a series of salt lakes and salt flats located at the foothills of a chain of volcanoes stretching along the eastern side of the much greater Salar de Atacama.
We hiked over to another nearly 15,000-foot high salt lake where there were 50 or more pink flamingos feeding on the pink shrimp that live in the salt water.
After soaking in the view of the flamingos, and the vicunas (wild llamas) who love to eat the tops of this grass,
we were off for our last high altitude hiking adventure of the day here.
Amazing day with spectacular scenery! It is one we will not forget!