el tatio

Sunday morning we woke up at 4 am to see the el tatio geysers. We were picked up at our hostel by the tour agency we booked with, luckily the van had heating. It was a 2 hour drive out to the geyser field, however the road was very rough so I couldn’t do more than doze a little bit. The van took us directly to El Tatio geyser field, which according to my guide book is the geyser field at the highest elevation in the world, at 4,400m above sea level.

ugh, it's still dark.

The geysers aren’t geysers of shooting water, they are steam plumes. The lava underground from a volcano heats up an underground river, which begins to boil. (At least that’s what our guide said, I haven’t been able to find any information on it) The hot water boils out of holes in the ground and produces plumes of steam on contact with the cold air. The reason we had to go so early in the morning is because that is when the temperature difference is the highest, causing the most spectacular plumes. Our guide said normally it is around -18 degrees C, but we got lucky and only had -12. I was not prepared for the cold, if I had known, I would have worn tights under my pants, as we were hanging out there for a while. My camera hand, which didn’t have a glove on it all the time, was freezing and the next day the skin on my hand was all messed up and dry and ugly.

Our tour guide set up breakfast: coffee/tea, balogna, cheese, bread, and cookies…he warmed up the milk for the coffee by sticking the carton in a geyser…and after about 20 minutes the balogna was frozen. I had my first “mate de coca”, tea made out of coca leaves, which, among the many other wondrous properties ascribed to it, is supposed to be good for altitude sickness. I don’t feel sick, but walking uphill is difficult, that is, breathing is difficult.

There is one geyser they call the “killer geyser” because in the last year or so 6 people fell into it and died afterwards from the scalding. The water has a temperature of around 86 degrees Celsius. The ground in some places is not really firm, just a crust, and can break under your feet.

the killer geyser

There was also a thermal pool where we could swim, but I didn’t have a bathing suit, also, did I mention that it was -12 degrees outside? Yeah, so, no. Steffi swam though, I guess she is just a bit more Teutonically hardcore than me...

After the geysers we drove to a tiny one-street town called Machuca, with an official population of 40 (and year-round population of 7). on the way we saw a bunch of vicuñas (wild camelids, smaller than llamas), vizcacha (chinchilla family), and llamas. Also we drove by a field of huge cactii.

baby llama

Once we got back to San Pedro we had a great lunch and walked around a bit, and went to the museum, on the history of indigenous Andean cultures. We bought some bread and sardines to eat for dinner in the hostel common room, and drank the half-bottle of red wine someone had kindly left, yessssssssssss.

All the fotos of San Pedro and the geysers are already online here! I don't know if i mentioned it yet, but in the two weeks of the trip i took over 1,500 fotos...so these are just some of them.