Geysers, flamingos and viscachas

It is recommended to get to the geyser field before sunrise, because the plumes of steam are much higher and photogenic in the cold night air. We left our hotel at 0500 so that I could take some Milky Way pictures, and we figured that we’d just pull off the side of the road, set up the tripod and snap a few pictures before driving on. Well…we didn’t count on the huge line of tourist vans and cars heading out the same dirt road. So, we drove on, until we met a spur road (in much worse condition) and drove 4 or 5 km to get up on a rise and out of the sweep of oncoming headlights.

That picture was the best I had of the Magellanic Clouds, so just ignore the headlight and hill in the bottom.

As we then headed on to the geysers we were at the end of the long line of vans, but they were luckily quite a ways ahead, so their dust didn’t bother us. We had to drive 1 1/2 hrs on a packed dirt road in the dark, but did get to see the sky slowly lighten as we neared our destination.

The El Tatio geyser field has over 80 active geysers, making it the largest field in the southern hemisphere and the third largest in the world. It sits at 4320 m (14,173 ft) of elevation.

There were shooting geysers like that one above, and others were just steaming pools.

This helps give the atmosphere - think puffy jackets, down gloves and balaclavas/buffs on all (but us silly gringos):

I just really liked this shot:

As the sun cleared the surroundings mountains, the scene changed remarkably -

The blue of the sky was suddenly much more prominent…

…and the shadows in the steam, way cooler.

The audio from these burbling pools just made me smile - (if the video doesn’t play in your email, click through to the site)

Driving back from the geysers, we could see what we had missed in the dark, and it was substantial.

First, I saw some viscachas at the waters’ edge (for those of you who may remember, we first spied these cute bundles of fur on our high altitude crossing in Peru to see the condors). They are in the chinchilla family, and actually not closely related to rabbits -

Then we saw some Andean Flamingos, and I swear, they are the most beautiful of all 6 species in the world.

The Chilean Flamingo is much paler -

Again…just makes me smile -

This makes for a great last shot, showing the differences between two extinct volcanoes: