As difficult as it was to leave the Hacienda los Andes (I missed the horses for days!), I was very excited about our upcoming journey: into the Atacama! At my very core, I'm a desert rat and always will be. I love deserts and want to travel through every one. I've dreamed of the Atacama for years, although unlike the Sahara and the Gobi, I hadn't seen very many pictures of it, so didn't know exactly what to expect.
I imagined:
vast stretches of sand: and got it!
little to no vegetation: got it!
desolation and loneliness: got it!
silence: got it!
brown, brown, and brown: got it!
I knew what to expect in a desert, after all I was born and raised in the Sonoran Desert. But what I didn't realize is that the Sonoran Desert is a rainforest compared to the Atacama, where some of the sparse vegetation never receives a drop of rain in its life, but whose moisture is delivered exclusively by the fog that often rolls in from the sea.
What surprised me most about the Atacama:
How seemingly endless it is
Get out a map of South America. Put a finger just south of the Peru-Ecuador border. Put another finger just north of La Serena, Chile. ALL of that land, primarily straddling the coast, is desert. Once you start driving it, you feel it will never end. You travel through lands where rain has never fallen in recorded history, and after just a few days you forget that dark moisture-laden clouds can obscure the sun, that air can feel moist, that the earth can feel soft to walk upon, not hard and full of cracks.
Why it exists
This place of no water exists because of the largest body of water on the planet, the Pacific Ocean, and primarily one current in this ocean: the Humboldt Current. When the winds from the west, laden with moisture, hit this extremely cold current of water from Antarctica, the clouds drop their moisture before it ever gets to land. This desert exists because of Antarctica...how amazing is that?
The presence of humans
Nitrate ghost towns (in picture above), ancient stone drawings in the sands, coastal cities that suddenly emerge from the brown vastness.
The absolute silence
More than Alaska, even, because there are no birds, no animals, no insects. It's a silence to get lost in, and love. A silence where you can hear yourself think, hear yourself breathe. You don't feel small in this desert, you feel big, because you feel like the only living being in the world.
6 comments:
What a huge change from the Hacienda, and I bet you did miss the horses! Amazing that stuff will even grow there at all, considering it never rains - your pictures certainly show how dry it is - very interesting how it all works.
I've had my map of South America and Chili out. Thanks for sharing your adventures - I am assuming you make it out of the Atacama Desert! The contrasting worlds of Chili and Alaska that you have been a part of are amazing. Not too long ago I read Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, and his amasement was much like yours.
Yes, the Atacama and Alaska are definitely two contrasting worlds. And amazing that people have thrived in both of these extreme environments.
We DO make it out of the Atacama....eventually. The next posting, when we're in the altiplano will come....eventually. :)
i stumbled on to your blog. it's a good read, i also love traveling. SO, i;ll keep tabs on your blog ,tosee what new adventures you take. love, cathie
Hi Cathie...thanks for reading, and I'm glad you enjoy it! Updates come pretty slowly on this blog, but I keep trying. Next up will be far northern Chile, in the surreal landscape of the Lauca National Park.
Cheers!
Yeah...I'm glad you got back to this.
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