Aaarghhhgh! No more deserts! Ever!

Deserts in Chile, hot, dry, and high up. And many covered in salt. You see what looks at first sight like a beautiful, cool, lake. Then it turns out to be another salt plain.

Amazingly salt plains and shallow lakes support life : flocks of pink flamingos (which are pink due to the minerals that affect the plancton they eat), some delicate deerlike relatives of llamas (vichoinha?), ducks and foxes. But they´re adapted to drinking salt water.

Beautiful, but desolate. And cold at high altitudes > 4000 metres. Ultimately depressing. (Or maybe that´s just because I was feeling dehydrated and ill.)


Now in Salta, Argentina, which is greener and fresher. And seems very nice. (Also a lot cheaper than Chile.) It was 12 hours in a car to get here over the Andes though.