Geyser del Tatio

For our last full day in San Pedro we were going to go to the El Tatio Volcano to view the geysers there. At over 4000m these are the highest geysers in the world. They also are a long way from town and best seen at dawn, so an early start was called for.

Of course in the middle of the night in the desert, high up a mountain, it is very, very cold. When we left San Pedro de Atacama at around 4am we were wearing all the clothing we had originally brought with the intention of going skiing in Santiago. And it was a good thing too. It was -15° Celsius outside as we drove across the Cordilero!

We arrived at the geysers at dawn. It was much warmer by now, at a piping -10° Celsius. While some of the geysers were quite small there were a few spectacular ones like this. And there were hot pools like the "French man's pool". So called as a French man died after falling in. We were warned not to create an Irish Man's one. (b.t.w. thats a person at the bottom)

The braver ones amongst us (which includes me) went for a dawn swim in a hot spring then. Very refreshing!

As we made our way back to San Pedro we passed some more mountain lakes. The local flamingos also lived in these when not down on the flats. Did I mention the amazing colours?

We also got to see some of the huge cacti used to make the boards they had used locally instead of wood. Unfortunately years of cutting has made this cactus almost as hard to find as trees. To preserve the remaining cacti, it is no longer used for lumber.

By now we had been in Chile for nearly a week and a half. Donogh and Mark were coming near to the end of their stay so they left us and headed back south to Santiago for the trip home. On the way the buggers managed to go skiing too. Edith, Bryan and I had time left on our holidays, so we were going north from Chile into Peru and Arequipa. But thats another story...