El Tatio Geyser

This morning we woke at 3:30am to leave at 4am to visit the geysers at El Tatio at dawn. We slept most of the bumpy way there, arriving to see steam rising throughout the valley.

I seem to be repeating myself, but dawn at the geysers was equally as magnificent as dawn at the salt flat. Maybe I need to experience dawn more often. The geysers gurgled and sputtered, throwing the occasional water in the air, but with vapor always rising. And of course, as the sun finally came out, the entire area sparkled. I felt as though I was living in an Ansel Adams photograph.

There are four different types of geysers in the park: thermal, mud, gas and (i forget the name) but whichever ones are pressurized and actually shoot water in the air. The thermal geysers were so inviting and I wished I had brought my suit with me to climb in to escape the -8 C/10F air. The mud geysers looked like boiling mud-pies, all bubbly and as though they could have been in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The gas ones just steamed (delightful noises!) and the ones under extreme pressure shot up into the air, the beads of water exploding upwards like fireworks and looking like flying diamonds in the sun.

After spending lots of time playing around the geysers, (some of which were different colors because of the bacteria - red, yellow, green - gorgeous!) we went to a village and ate some llama meat. It was tasty. I felt a bit bad because I've been kissed by a llama before, but the THREE people who live in this village subsist on it, so I bought a kebab. Delicious - very tender.

Next stop was a cactus forest which grew on rocky hills, and in the valley between the hills was a stream and hundreds of fox tails, which waved in the wind and stood out in stark whiteness against the clay colored, cactus covered hills. We climbed to the top and were able to look back over the entire valley ringed by mountains. When we turned the other direction, we could see the Dameyko range and the salt flats we visited yesterday.

I am happy...