Volcanoes galore...

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After a delicious breakfast in San Juan, we headed out across Salar de Chiguana, which is smaller than salar di Uyuni. The Salar is surrounded by volcanoes, although I don't know if any of them are active. It was funny to have our driver point out to the three geologists in the vehicle that the mountains were volcanoes, and he even used hand gestures to show what an eruption looks like, in case we didn't understand what volcanoes were.

We did stop on an old volcanic flow where there were views of Volcan Ollaguë. This is an active volcano on the Chilean border. Every few minutes it gave off a little puff of smoke.

Just after leaving the volcano, we left the road and turned onto what I think was once an alpaca path. After much bumping along we came to the first of several mineral lakes, all of them above 4000m. Laguna Canapa didn't have flamingos, but it was a beautiful morning anyway.

I'm not sure when my dream of seeing flamingos in the wild started, or even why. I don't particularly love the colour pink. But the flamingos that we saw at the next lake, Laguna Hedionda, were beautiful. I could have watched them, and photographed them for hours. This was the first time in my travels that I wished I had my big zoom lens with me.

After passing two more mineral lakes, we entered Desierto Siloli. The wind was incredible, kicking up more dust than a convey of 4WDs. The landscape was stunning--the colours of the rocks making up for the minimal vegetation.

When we stopped at Arbol de Piedra, the wind blew small pebbles into my face. But when I stood with my back to the wind, it was like a massage.

By this time in the day, the blowing dust had obscured the sun, and when we reached Laguna Colorada shortly after, the weather was downright miserable. But that's a story for another blog...

As before, there are two pages of photos below the comments section, so keep scrolling down

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Comments

[Dancing Dave]

Magnificent
5 stars...fantastic shot...Magnificent Mountains thread for this one

[Dancing Dave]

MAGIC
What a great volcano blog...Salar de Chiguana...you are at the top of my wish list with Atacama Desert. Thank you...thank you.