Lagunas Miscanti and Mineques, Reserva Nacional los Flamencos

Laguna Miscanti

 The Reserva Nacional los Flamencos covers a large area of the Atacama Desert and mountains and is home to 3 of the 4 species of flamingos.  It ranges from the salt flats, with remnants of salty lagoons, to the altiplano valleys at 14,000 feet, along with their 18,000 to 20,000 foot volcanoes surrounding them.

Laguna Mineques

Today we visited Lagunas Miscanti and Mineques, 2 beautiful lakes at 13,600 feet, separated from each other by a low ridge.  These lakes are salty, as you can see from the salty white beaches surrounding them.  It looks like they fill up with the snow runoff in the early spring and then recede in the extremely dry air of the desert.

lemon yellow grass and 19,000 foot peak

On our drive from San Pedro along the huge salt flat south of the town, we saw wild donkeys standing in the sun by the side of the road.  I’m not sure what they were doing right there since there was no vegetation.  I assume they eat the low bushes that grow up a bit higher.

Up on the high altiplano beneath the peaks, we saw, once again, lots of vicuna, blending in beautifully with the bright grass that grows very high.  This grass was more lemon yellow than golden, as we saw farther north around the geyser basin.  It grows up the mountainsides to at least 16,000 feet, providing a glow against the black backdrop of the volcanoes.

vicuna herd high on the altiplano

This is a big tourist mecca, so we were not the only ones enjoying a sparkling day.  Despite dust kicked up by cars and vans, the air is exceptionally clear.  Very few people actually live in the area.  We saw no homes above the village of Socaire, which is about 10,500 feet high and 40 miles from the nearest town to the north.   While you turn off the main paved road onto a dusty, washboarded dirt road to go to the lakes, the main road continues south to a very high pass leading into Argentina.  All day, we were within a few miles of the Argentine border, which we will cross tomorrow on our way to Purmamarca and Salta, Argentina.