Putre, Chile
Oct. 16th - Lauca National Park
Chile in on daylight savings time and an
earlier time zone so we lost 2 hours yesterday. I don’t think
we’d slept in to 8 AM since arriving in South America.
Breakfast was as disappointing as the hotel. Chile doesn’t
seem to have good bread. While Peru had lovely fresh baked
rolls, this morning we had what seemed like a cold English
muffin toasted over a flame. No eggs in the hotel for AD. We
packed a picnic lunch and got on the road to Parque National
Lauca. The road was good and without any traffic. We climbed
for an hour to 4500 meters.
 The park had lots of vicuna grazing along
the road. Lago Chungara was surrounded by snowcapped mountains
and was dominated by Volcan Parinacota. It sat all alone on
one side of the lake. Flamingoes, and Andes geese fed in the
waters. We tried walking out to see some of the birds and were
taken aback by our shortness of breath and the intensity of
the sun. The completeness of our isolation was shown by only
one oncoming car the entire trip back to Putre.
 On the return we stopped at another Thermal
springs. This one turned out to be a tin roofed building with
a number of cement pools collecting the hot spring water. Only
one pool was cool enough for us to soak in. We stayed a little
too long because AD was sick afterwards. He had to rest when
we returned to the hotel. It continues to amaze me how hot it
is in the sun but cold in the shade. I don’t know how long it
would take to get used to high elevations.
The hostal had a ping pong table. We spent
our late afternoon and evening playing on the table. AD has
gotten much better at the game and looks forward to winning.
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I went to a thermal bath. The water
was very hot I went in step by step. But mom went right
in. She said, “it felt good”. The baths were a concrete
tub that was 30 feet by 15 feet. The road to get there
was dirt not asphalt. The water came from the mountain
and was heated by the volcano.
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Drive to Arica...» |
