My main reason for visiting
Arica was the nearby Lauca national park, so today I joined a tour to visit. All the travel guides say that a one-day tour is not to be recommended, as going from 0 to 4500m of altitude in roughly four hours can lead to altitude sickness. Since there were no other tours available, I did it anyway - and had no problems at all. I guess I'm still acclimatized from spending several weeks in Bolivia :-)
One of our first stops was a valley where hundreds of candelabra cactuses grow. Similar to many other types of cactus, these grow at approximately 1 cm per year. A cactus that is 3 meters high - the average height in the valley, I'd guess - is therefore 300 years old!
Next was a mirador offering a view of Putre and the volcano at its side. Chile's north is so sparsely populated that a village with 2000 inhabitants gets to be the region's capital...
A little further, we stopped at Cotacotani lakes, a group of nice little ponds below snow-capped mountains:
The wildlife viewing opportunities throughout the tour were great. This was the first day that I saw all four types of camelids inhabiting South America: alpacas, llamas, guanacos and vicuñas. These are alpacas:
And these are llamas in front of lake Chungará, at 4500m above sea level:
I also saw non-mammals like this small lizard which was about 10 cm long:
The changes in landscape during the tour were amazing. Arica was pure desert, then came a fertile valley nestled within desert hills, and then with increasing altitude there were increasingly more and bigger plants to be seen. Just the opposite of what you'd expect in Europe, isn't it?
Arica was the nearby Lauca national park, so today I joined a tour to visit. All the travel guides say that a one-day tour is not to be recommended, as going from 0 to 4500m of altitude in roughly four hours can lead to altitude sickness. Since there were no other tours available, I did it anyway - and had no problems at all. I guess I'm still acclimatized from spending several weeks in Bolivia :-)
One of our first stops was a valley where hundreds of candelabra cactuses grow. Similar to many other types of cactus, these grow at approximately 1 cm per year. A cactus that is 3 meters high - the average height in the valley, I'd guess - is therefore 300 years old!
Next was a mirador offering a view of Putre and the volcano at its side. Chile's north is so sparsely populated that a village with 2000 inhabitants gets to be the region's capital...
A little further, we stopped at Cotacotani lakes, a group of nice little ponds below snow-capped mountains:
The wildlife viewing opportunities throughout the tour were great. This was the first day that I saw all four types of camelids inhabiting South America: alpacas, llamas, guanacos and vicuñas. These are alpacas:
And these are llamas in front of lake Chungará, at 4500m above sea level:
I also saw non-mammals like this small lizard which was about 10 cm long:
The changes in landscape during the tour were amazing. Arica was pure desert, then came a fertile valley nestled within desert hills, and then with increasing altitude there were increasingly more and bigger plants to be seen. Just the opposite of what you'd expect in Europe, isn't it?
