To the altiplano

Our long bus ride through the endless Chilean Atacama ended in the fairly pleasant seaside city of Arica, where we enjoyed outdoor cafes while being assaulted by wandering musicians who refused to take their screechy accordion and out-of-tune guitar from our table until we paid up. By this time we were pretty excited to leave the brown, sandy vistas of the prior days and head into the high country. Arica was our base for renting a car and escaping to the altiplano. After filling our lungs full of air, we steered our way towards the high peaks of Lauca National Park.

Leaving Arica, we drove through a surreal landscape:

A contemplative spot

There is effectively no vegetation here as we travel away from the coast and up to the highlands. We’re still in the dry land, where it just doesn’t rain. So no vegetation to admire, except these big guys! About the same size as your average saguaro. They’re called the candelabra cactus. There’s no rain, so how does it grow? With this:

Fog. What the Chileans call the camanchaca, that rolls in from the ocean and cloaks the hillsides. These candelabra cacti get all the moisture they need from fog. Pretty amazing adaptation!

Both of us love rocks, Audie especially, with his background, so when we started to see these, we pulled the car over to investigate. What causes this erosion?

I'll just quote Audie on this one: "Wind ablation, per se, wouldn't suffice to cause these peculiar shapes. Nonetheless, with all the rocks in this area showing erosion oriented in this direction, something like that must be occurring.  

What has happened is that these rocks all contain minute quantities of sulfides. When the fog-bearing camanchaca rolls in from the Pacific, and condenses on the west-facing rock surfaces, a small amount of sulfuric acid forms. North-, south-, and east-facing surfaces receive less fog and thus remain relatively less degraded by this acid.  So: we can call this fog erosion!"

As we climbed higher and higher in elevation, the roads got really crazy:

And because this particular route to Lauca National Park just also happens to be Bolivia's only access route to the sea, we shared the road with half-suicidal Bolivian truckers who like passing on curves, dense fog be damned. There is a Spanish saying "Si Dios quiere" or "God willing....I'll make it around this curve. God willing I'll pass these stupid gringo drivers without slamming into the front of my compadre's rig." There were also the usual traffic jams:

Before we arrived in the village of Putre, our night's destination, we took a side trip to the village of Socoroma, population 15, if even that. This place was a mystery for us: a fairly good-sized village, many streets, with enough buildings to comprise a population of a few hundred, but something wasn't quite right.

As we entered the village, we had glimpses of our first terraced hillsides, these covered with oregano. Two farmers were busy in one field as we stopped to observe a hummingbird. But as we entered the village proper, this is what we saw:

Dead streets. Boarded-up houses. No stores. Nothing but more surrealism.

As we continued to drive around the empy streets, we eventually came to the town square, where two children and their mother were playing soccer. These three, plus the two farmers, and another man herding sheep were the only people we saw. The children waved and smiled at us, friendly enough, and then disappeared. The town square, below, looked well-maintained and cared for, but where were all the people? What happened to them? We asked people in Putre when we arrived, but couldn't get a straight answer. It's a mystery. A pretty little village, with a few resilient residents surrounded by silent streets.