San Pedro de Atacama, Día 2: Salar de Atacama

On our second day in San Pedro, we hit up an all day tour (~8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). It was quite a long day, but we saw some pretty spectacular sites, most of which did not have very many other visitors when we were there. Also, we had a pretty good crew of tourists on our trip (again, the tour guide spoke spanish....again frustrating my dad a bit). The main attraction of the trip was the enormous Salar de Atacama, which is essentially an immmense layer of salt in the middle of the desert that is deposited by run-off from the Andes. We also went to two volano-surrounded lagunas at ~3500 m altitude! Lastly, we went to the small town of Toconao for lunch & some sight-seeing (i.e. walking through the town like goofy tourists).


Me standing in the salar. We visited a part of the salar where there is a small laguna and they have made a small nature park with a trail. The salt deposits are quite amazing. They form tremendously jagged, rocky shapes when they are weathered. The only thing visible for miles in any direction were these salt formations.


Here is a sweet-looking lizard that was romping around the salt. It's amazing that creatures like this survive on a surface that is entirely salt. Also on the trail were a couple of tiny ponds in the salt swarming with millions of tiny organisms feasting on the minerals in the salt deposits.


My dad on the salar trail. It's amazing that somebody actually removed all the enormous salt rocks and smoothed the remaining salt into a trail! But i'm glad they did!


Another main attraction of the salar was the flamingos that come from the mountains to feed on the tiny organisms in the laguna. Three quick cool facts about flamingos: 1) they eat tiny organisms, so they need to spend tons of time eating...that's why their heads are always down! 2) nobody can tell their sex until they start mating! 3) when it's time for the little ones to feed, all the adults will leave (save one elder, to babysit), allowing them to get a fair share of food.


More flamingos eating. We also saw a few flying around later in the trip.


After visiting the salar for awhile, we got in the van and climbed, and climbed, and climbed up to 3,500 m. Then we got out to explore two lagunas (Miscanti and Varela), walked a bit, and got very light-headed. Yeah...the lagunas were cool!


Cone-shaped volcanoes surrounding Laguna Miscanti. Very cool! Plus, the clouds casting shadows on the slopes of the volcanoes was a nice touch.


Here's a sweet birds' nest in the middle of Laguna Varela. I crept up slowly as to not scare the 2 birds away...and of course one started honking loudly and buzzing around my head. Still, I snapped one picture of the other bird before fleeing.


Another shot of Laguna Varela, the smaller of the two lagunas. These guys were about 30 miles from the Argentinean border, to the south of San Pedro.


A small, old church-bell tower in the town of Toconao.


A river (water!) just outside of Toconao. It's safe to say that the only reason the town is there is because of the river. Also, they all use terrace agriculture, which is very cool-looking AND practical.