Saturday, May 21, 2011

Chile's Atacama Desert

[from Laura Fraser @ Los Angeles Times, 21 May 2011]

Chile's Atacama Desert: Otherworldly and timeless

There are plenty of wonders in this most inhospitable of places: steaming geysers, hoodoos, volcanoes, Saharan landscapes. The town of San Pedro de Atacama is a convenient staging ground for outdoor treks and other adventures.

Licancabur volcano

Reporting from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile— Only four people live in the village of Machuca, 13,000 feet up in the Chilean Andes, and all of them are related to Joel Colque. Colque, who grew up in this stone village that hugs the side of a volcano, is our guide for a daylong trek in the altiplano — the high rocky plateau — above the Atacama Desert, the driest spot on Earth, ringed by 19,000-foot volcanoes where rain evaporates long before it reaches the crusty salt flats far below.

We're shivering here on a June winter morning, the short alpine plants frozen sharp as needles.

Colque greets his aunts — squat women with long dark braids and colorful ponchos — who weave handicrafts and raise llamas to barbecue for visitors on their way to nearby steaming geysers or high mountain lagoons. They speak Quechua, the Inca language, as well as some Kunza, a nearly extinct language spoken in these northern Andes for centuries.

He tells us that his family has lived in this spot, in the shadow of the volcanoes, since the beginning of time. More recently, Colque's grandfather climbed the 19,409-foot Licancabur volcano to extract sulfur, and Colque has snowboarded down its slippery peak.

Colque belongs to this ancient world, as well as the world of San Pedro de Atacama, a small town and staging ground for outdoor adventures, full of camping gear stores, hostels, hotels and luxury resorts such as the Alto Atacama desert lodge, where he is the chief guide.

Alto Atacama desert lodge & spa

Read more here.