An early start this morning for
our flight to Calama and then a cramped mini bus ride to our accommodation for
the next 3 days, San Pedro de Atacama.
There was an afternoon tour to the Atacama salt flats and the Chaxa
Lagoon. The point of this was to see the
flamingos who live on the lagoon. They
are a very intense pink colour because they feed on shrimp.
Fun Fact: The bent joint you see in a flamingo’s leg is
not their knee. It is in fact their
ankle. Their knee joint is hidden up
under their feathers.
Clarification: We are in the Atacama Desert – the driest
place on earth. We, however, got to
experience a tremendous thunder storm, lightning and an incredible downpour
(for which we did not have wet weather gear). The town of San Pedro where we were staying had flash flooding that afternoon.
Entrance to our hotel.
When we arrived at the Chaxa Lagoon, the weather had cleared sufficiently to start our walk out to see the flamingos. We were getting close enough to them, when we should have twigged that something wasn’t right. The group of five flamingos that we could see, suddenly hunkered down in the water. And then down came the rain. Not just ordinary rain, but rain driven by a heavy wind across the salt flats, which picked up tiny bits of salt as it blew towards us. When it hit us, this was like being sand blasted, with the tiny bits of sand stinging all over our exposed skin. We also got soaked to the skin, and into our shoes as well. Because this was salt-laden rain, when we returned to our hotel and stripped off our clothes, the salt was already sticky and starting to congeal in our clothes, just like starch. We had to hose down our clothes and shoes in the shower. Our Ecco walking shoes are never going to be the same again! The evening astronomical tour was also cancelled.
Church of San Pedro
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