Surireal Stuff

Salar de Surir - and a tiring day; driving 150 km on dirt tracks. But the day was great. If the Andes in Patagonia have a glacial, other-worldly beauty and the Central Andes have a harsh, frightening quality, then the Andean altiplano has a softness to it; a watercolour of green meadows ringed by snow-capped mountains under a brilliant blue sky. This land supports life – the most visible signs of which were the herds of llamas and alpacas grazing on the bodafel. We also saw vicunas – which look like guanacos but are very delicate creatures. They also resist domestication unlike alpacas and llamas.

Driving through to Salar de Surir, the horizon is dominated by Vulcan Parinacota and Vulcan Guillatiri. Guillatiri is still active – spewing clouds of white smoke incessantly. Parinacota is this perfectly shaped volcano – looking like a giant pudding with icing on top. Parina in Aymara means flamingo and Parinacota is the ‘land of flamingoes’. Fittingly, the Salar is home to hundreds of flamingos. The salt flats themselves are immense (a circumference of 100km – with a borax plant blotting the northern end). On the southern side, there are cobalt-blue sulphur pools ringed by brown hills. Of course, there’s also a strong pong! Carlos talked of how he had got some European tourists here who stripped down and went topless into the pools. Wonder what it is about these grizzled driver guides and these stories – remembered the guide in Cairns many years ago who took us to this secluded waterfall and talked of these four Swedes who went starkers (luckily for them, they weren’t Germans!). Some kind of middle-aged grizzly man fantasy??

Got talking to Alain and Agnes – they are quite cute. Agnes has a dry sense of humour (some one had carved ‘Putre’ on the hills near the town and she said “now here’s a geoglyph”!) while Alain – though he didn’t speak much English – was just funny in an expressive French sort of way. The drive back to Putre was incredible – it had rained in the afternoon and the dirt roads were now raging rivulets which we had to negotiate carefully. The sky was black and the clouds were scrawling sheets of rain across the sky – over V. Guillatiri towards V. Parinacota. The sun made a mellow appearance later and the snow on V. Guillatiri glowed a pristine white.

Back in Putre, the town was getting a thorough spring cleaning and the police and military were out in full force – with Michelle Bachelet due for a visit the next morning. Curiously enough, she was visiting Puerto Natales too when I was there (“following me” as Agnes remarked)…

Went to Putre’s best restaurant for dinner (to make up for last night) – some decent veggie options including a nice quinoa soup. Back to my mucho frijo room for another uncomfortable night…