The Altiplano and Atacama Desert

Upon completion of our English course to the Capitania de Puerto personnel in Puerto Williams, Chile the first we took Tamara back to Ushuaia, Argentina, secured her on a mooring and left on an overland trip to the north. Our plan was to explore the altiplano and Atacama Desert of northern Chile, southern Peru, western Bolivia and NW Argentina.

The altiplano is a high windswept plateau of altitudes of 3,000 to over 4,000 meters composed of lakes and salt flats surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes. Air here is very dry and one has to be careful of the altitude. The altiplano has an abundance of wildlife consisting of vicuna, alpacas and condors. High altitude grasslands make good pastures for llamas, alpacas and sheep.

The Atacama Desert landscape spreads over a wide plain, or pampa, of bare rock and gravel and is incised with deep transverse canyons irrigated by the rivers which descend from the Andes to the east. To the west, the plain is lined by a range of coastal hills that drop abruptly to a narrow shelf of land where most of the region's towns and cities are scattered. Some coastal stations have never recorded measurable rainfall. The only precipitation comes from the convective fogs, known as camanchaca, which sometimes condense at higher elevations and support the scattered vegetation of the coastal hills. During the nineteenth century foreigners discovered the desert was rich in nitrates and a lucrative industry began in Chile, later to be followed by low-grade copper mining.

Pre-Columbian coastal peoples used the transverse canyons of the Atacama Desert as transport routes to exchange their fish, cotton and maize for the potatoes, wool and charque with the people in the precordillera, or foothills, and the altiplano of the Andes. Trade networks were vastly increased once the area came under the influence of pan-Andean empires: first that of Bolivia's great city, Tiahuanaco, and from 1480, that of the Incas.

The Aymara people are the second-largest indigenous linguistic group of South America. The culture began around Lake Titicaca and spread throughout the altiplano and Atacama Desert of what is now Bolivia, Peru and Chile. Today there are around three million Aymara scattered through the three countries.

Rainfall and vegetation increase with the elevation and distance from the Pacific Ocean. In the precordillera Aymara farmers still cultivate the terraces which have covered the foothills for millennia. In the altiplano, above 4,000 meters, the Aymara pasture llamas, alpacas and some sheep on the grasslands of the puna, or highlands.

We began our journey in Salta, Argentina and a bus ride on a very spectacular road over the Paso de Jama border crossing, 4,200 meters, to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. It zigzags up the river valley walls of a barren steppe, down into a salt flat, back up another plain, down into another salt flat, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn several times, up to the altiplano with views of high altitude lakes with flamingos, before finally dropping down past volcanic cones into the Atacama Desert, and the town of San Pedro de Atacama.

In the early 20th century, San Pedro de Atacama was a major stop on cattle drives from Salta in Argentina to the nitrate oficianas (processing plants) of northern Chile. It took 13-14 days for the drive to Atacama where the cattle were fed liberally for a few days, their condition depending largely upon weather experienced during the crossing. When ready, they would continue on for three more days to the nitrate mines. Atacama was also a stop over for the drovers of mule herds from Catamarca, La Rioja, San Luis and Cordoba, Argentina until the mules were replaced in the nitrate mines by train transport.

From Atacama we continued on to the coastal cities of Iquique and Arica, where we rented a 4x4 pickup truck for 2 days and drove up to the altiplano along the border with Bolivia. We spent the night in the Aymara village of Putre with it's cobbled streets and adobe houses with wooden doors. Returning to Arica we crossed into Peru and onto the city of Arequipa, a center of Spanish colonialism in the 16th and 17th century. There are many fine examples of the architectural style from that period in homes, churches and monasteries available to visit. We enjoyed the city very much finding it very vibrant and easygoing. From Arequipa we continue our bus journey up through the precordillera, onto the altiplano and Lake Titicaca.

Lake Titicaca is shared by Peru and Bolivia. Our first stop was Puna on the Peruvian side and a visit to the floating islands. The islands are man-made, first by taking block of a very low density turf like material that floats, linking them together and anchoring them to the bottom with rope and rocks. Reeds are harvested from the lake, dried and the laid on top of the turf in layers of alternating directions to form a thick mat. Houses and boats are made from bundles of the reeds.

The town of Puna was too much hustle and bustle so we quickly continued on to Copacabana, a very relaxing and culturally interesting town. The women of Bolivia all wear some form of hat, and among the more stylish are small Bowler hats that manage to remain on top of their heads. The story goes that a foreign hat salesman couldn't sell his stock of Bowler hats to the man but was able convinced the women that they were all the rage in Europe. Walking around on our second day we ran into fellow cruisers Martin and Anka, off the yacht Just Do It. who we met in Ushuaia. It was a pleasant surprise and we enjoyed a nice dinner with them that evening.

We had planned was not to stop in La Paz, Bolivia but we needed to attend to business and required cheap Internet. La Paz is located above 4,000 meters (12,000 ft) and the city itself is very hilly, making walking very strenuous. On the day we planned to leave, we discovered that students were on strike and had blocked all roads out of town, though access to the airport was available. Not knowing how long the strike would last we quickly got a flight out the next day to a city three hours south of La Paz and then a bus on to Ururo where we were able to get seats on the train to the Argentina border. Originally we were going to get off the train in Uyuni to visit the Uyuni salt flats, reported to be quite beautiful, but because of the extra days spent in La Paz we had run out of time. The overnight train ride, though not very comfortable, rewarded us with wonderful scenery in the morning through narrow canyons, stops in small villages, before arriving at the border mid-day.

We spent a few nights in the small village of Tilcara, in northern Argentina, before returning to Buenos Aires and a flight back to Ushuaia. After two weeks in Ushuaia we left with a Canadian friend, David, on his boat Incantation for a month in the Falklands. But that's another story to be continued.

Chao, Nancy and Mark