My first volcanos!
From La paz
to Arica
We had to
catch our plane again from Lima in three weeks time and there was so much left
to see in Peru that we slowly had to make our way back. I desperately wanted to
continue southeast into Bolivia but it will have to wait for another time. So
basically we had two options to go back. We could go back the way we came
through Puno and on to Arequipa, or we could venture into north Chile and to
Arequipa along the coast. The second way was far more exciting, so we took the
bus to Arica, Chile.
It is a
wild trip from La Paz to Arica. We had to leave very early and Aart still
wasn’t feeling well. He made the impression that leaving La Paz had been a
mistake, but we were in the bus already.
There isn’t
much to see on the Altiplano for the first few hours, but when we approached
the Bolivia-Chile border, the bus began to circle past an enormous mountain
(volcano?) called the Nevado Sajama. If you look it up in Google Earth
it is a very big white speck. I guess it was a volcano and it rose above the
landscape of shrubs magnificently with its crown of snow. Sajama wasn’t the
only volcano. This was a true volcano country we entered and there were lonely
snowcapped peaks all around us. As we approached the border, I even saw smoke
coming out of one of them.
I can’t
remember ever having seen a volcano, but I came to the right place! The Chile
customs house is located at an expecially spectacular place, because right over
the border there is the Chile National Park Lauca, with its beautiful
twin volcanos. What a place! I was standing there at 4600 m. high (a new
personal record!) and behind me were two of the most beautiful volcanos in the
world! The awesomest of all, the Parinacota, in full view. At their feet
was also one of the highest lakes in the world, Laguna Chungara, which
lies almost a kilometer higher as Lake Titicaca! Parts of lake Chungara were
frozen.
Now comes
the environmentally most extreme trip of the vacation. In three hours time, we
plunged from 4600m, with its snowcapped volcanos and frozen lakes, down right
through the Atacama desert, the driest and one of the hottest places of the
world, and ended up next to the Pacific Ocean. A descent of 4600m from frozen
lakes through the driest desert to the biggest ocean of the world! Every time I
took out my water bottle, it was squeezed by the air.
There was
another big contrast. Bolivia is South America’s poorest country and Chile its
richest. La Paz is a sprawling city with visible poverty while Arica is a
luxurious beach community made for shopping. What a mind-boggling change in a
single day.
