About twenty years ago when I was in my mid-thirties, I got call from a friend of mine who was working for an American bank in Santiago, Chile.  He wanted me to go with him to a place named Lauca, a little-known national park in the northern part of the country.  He said it was one of the most amazing places in all of South America, a vast stretch of altiplano nearly three miles above sea level, guarded on the west by the world’s driest desert, and on the east by the string of volcanic peaks that mark the boundary with Bolivia.  He described herds of vicuña, vast salt lakes with flocks of flamingos, and colonies of the strange rodents known in the Aymara language as vizcacha, resembling the product of an unholy mating between a rabbit and small dog. 

Fool that I was, I turned him down.  I was too busy with work and my career.  For the last two decades that decision has gnawed at me.  This year I decided to correct my mistake.  But getting there wasn’t quite so simple.

Arranging to get to the Lauca National Park would have been easy enough; the main road between the Chilean seaport of Arica and the Bolivian capital of La Paz runs right through it.  But the real sights lie off the beaten tract in the Park, and to the south in the Reserva Nacional Las Vicuñas and Monumento Natural de Salar de Surire.  These areas are accessible only part of the year by rutted dirt roads that wander through isolated stretches of high-altitude desert.  Also, there are only a handful of guides who offer expeditions to this area, and even fewer who speak English.  After a couple of months of effort, I managed to find a guide and recruited two friends to go with me.  It turned out to be one of the best trips of my life.

Flying non-stop on Delta to Santiago, we backtracked some 1100 miles to Arica, Chile’s northernmost city located only a dozen miles from the Peruvian border.  A wealthy town in the late nineteenth century, it was claimed by both Peru and Bolivia until the War of the Pacific (1879-1884) placed it under Chilean control.  Now a friendly but somewhat down-at-the-heels seaport town, it boasts two buildings designed and prefabricated in Paris by the Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, whose best known work has become the symbol of the City of Light.  The brightly painted Iglesia San Marcos dates from 1875, and the nearby former Customs House from the same era.  Except for its door, the church is made entirely of iron.

Traveling east from Arica, the land rises sharply, passing first through the Tarapacá Desert, a northern extension of the Atacama.  The land here is totally devoid of visible life as the road climbs toward snow-capped volcanoes that peek over the horizon.  Above about 3,500 feet in altitude the landscape begins to change, at first with a few cacti that draw their moisture from the inland winds off the Pacific, and then to a high plain with scattered grasses and small shrubs that survive between the infrequent rains and snow-falls.  Deep quebradas (gorges) that carry seasonal streams fed by mountain snow-melt cut through the rugged terrain.

With the presence of vegetation and water, small herds of guanaco are seen grazing freely on the hillsides.  Wild relatives of the domesticated llama and alpaca, they roam undisturbed at lower elevations in the northern altiplano.  Pre-columbian hillside terraces surrounding small adobe-built villages belie the fact that this once was a heavily traveled trade route from the mountain strongholds of the Inca (and preceding cultures) to the sea.

The village of Putre (about 11,500 ft. elevation) is frequently one of the first stops for visitors to Lauca.  Tucked in a green valley in the shadow of a 19,000 ft. peak a few miles to the northeast, this village of 1,250 hardy inhabitants boasts a limited selection of hotels with running water and 24-hour electricity, restaurants serving alpaca (tastes like gamey beef) and quinoa (the cereal-grain staple of the Inca diet), plus high speed internet and telephone access via satellite uplink.  Standing on the cobblestone streets, I had the distinct impression of seeing the sixteenth century crashing headlong into the twenty-first.

The Parque Nacional Lauca begins just beyond Putre.  The road climbs until leveling off in gently rolling hills above 14,000 ft. elevation.  At this altitude, every physical effort slows to a crawl as you fight the vague headache and chronic breathlessness brought on by the thin atmosphere.  Even the most routine activity leaves you gasping for air. You drink huge quantities of water to fight dehydration and help offset the metabolic effects of rapid breathing.

Whatever the physical pain, the rewards are worth it.  The snow-capped twin volcanoes of Parinacota and Pomerape, more than 20,000 feet high, are reflected in the lakes and highland bogs known as bofedales that serve as a rich source of nutrition for grazing herds of vicuña and more than a hundred species of birds.  The land here is primarily volcanic, but with the valleys and plains in between filled and smoothed by millions of years of weather-driven erosion.  Sharp rocky outcroppings serve as home to colonies of vizcacha.  About the size of a North American rabbit, they sit serenely on top of boulders with their eyes closed, soaking up the sun.  In the lakes, three species of flamingos troll for brine shrimp, while the tagua (giant coot) build their nests on floating islands of water plants. 

The area is full of small villages, many abandoned, each with its own adobe colonial church in the distinctive style of the altiplano.  Many date back to the seventeenth century, having been lovingly maintained and restored after the frequent earthquakes that shake the region.  Generally all have a single elongated chapel, surrounded by a wall with a square tapering campanario (bell tower) at one corner.  The style is unique, but carries traces of Andean, Spanish and Moorish architecture.  Once the center of community life, many are now closed as the influence of the church wanes with the encroachment of outside civilization. 

Beyond Lauca to the south, the roads are dirt and gravel, maintained more by the mining companies who have interests in the region than by the government.  Our path tracked the Bolivian border to the east through the Reserva Nacional Las Vicuñas.  These small camelids, once nearly extinct due to over-hunting, now number in the tens of thousands and seem to have little fear of man.  Sightings of the ostrich-like ñandú (rhea), standing up to 5 feet tall, are common. 

In the heart of the reserve is the pre-hispanic village of Guallitire, consisting of about 50 houses at the foot of the smoking volcano by the same name.  The church, again in the classical altiplano style, dates from the seventeen century.  It faces the volcano and a lush green valley watered by snow-melt and full of grazing llama and alpaca.

To the south of the vicuña reserve, the salar (salt lake) de Surire lies in a “National Monument” by the same name, but was once part of the Lauca National Park.  In the late 1980’s the dictatorship of outgoing President Pinochet chopped up the park, giving mining rights in the salar to a private company.  Today, much of the formerly pristine wildlife habitat is being actively mined, making a mockery of the sign posted at the lake side by the Chilean government that reads (in Spanish), “This salt lake is a natural habitat of the flamingos.  Help us protect them.” 

Continuing our way south from Surire, we followed the Rio Isluga to the village of Colchane (pronounced cōl-chá-nē), a sleepy little border town on the Bolivian frontier.  We’d had reservations for our previous nights in the altiplano, but such were impossible here.  While the local carabineros have a substantial-looking outpost, the rest of the town lacks consistent electricity, telephone, or internet access.  We found rooms at what was undoubtedly the best place in town, $12 per night (expensive by local standards), but including both breakfast and dinner (llama and quinoa this time).  Like most buildings in the altiplano, there was no heating or cooling (it was below freezing at night), and the electricity was available only from 7 PM to 11 PM—if they cranked up the generator.  I waited to take a shower, missing the hot water, but slept well. 

Turning back to the west the next day, we headed toward the seaport of Iquique.  We passed through the prosperous appearing, but strangely deserted town of Cariquima, with its exquisite blue-doored church.  Calm by day, it awakens after dark as smugglers make their midnight runs to and from the Bolivian border just a few miles away.

Gradually losing altitude, we descended from high altiplano, through mountains and into harsh desert that is best described as resembling photos from one of the Mars rovers.  This area, as well as the entire coast of northern Chile and southern Peru, is famous for its geoglyphs.  The best known are the Nazca lines several hundred miles to the north, but the geographically similar area in Chile displays scores of examples that are easily viewed from almost every major travel route.  One of the best known is El Gigante (The Giant) more than 400 feet high and located on a small hill not far from the Pan-American Highway.  Most of the quebradas that served as caravan routes to the sea display complex figures that are thought to have served as waymarkers for the traders in the pre-hispanic era.

The approach to Iquique is through Chile’s fabled nitrate flats, one of the primary ingredients in the world’s explosives and fertilizers well into the mid-twentieth century.  The UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works is an eerie ghost town that seems to have been frozen in time in the late 1930s.  Movie posters advertising Gone With The Wind and Citizen Kane still adorn the marquee of the company theater.  The massive iron piscina (swimming pool) lies empty next to a wooden pergola that only yesterday might have sheltered bathers from the constant equatorial sun.  Complex processing plants, made useless by the discovery of how to extract nitrates from petroleum, struggle to survive the frequent earthquakes and shifting desert sands.

The city of Iquique, like Arica to the north, was at one time a rich port town based on nitrate exports.  It lies sandwiched on a narrow strip of tsunami-prone land between the sea and an 1,800 foot cliff behind that marks the beginning of the desert.  For practical purposes it never rains in Iquique, allowing the neoclassical Teatro Municipal (1890) and ornate Torre del Reloj (1877) to be made entirely of Oregon pine imported as ballast for ships arriving to pick up nitrates for export.  A bit to the south, the city boasts a modern beach area modeled for better or worse after Miami, Florida.

The road north from Iquique back to Arica crosses arid desert and vast mineral flats that crackle and groan audibly as heat from the sun expands and contracts the exposed nitrate layers.  The monotonous landscape, which lies at an altitude of 3,500 to 4,500 feet, is periodically sliced by canyon-like quebradas, the deepest of which requires a driver to drop an ear-popping 4,200 feet in a few miles before beginning the ascent an equal height up the other side. 

Back in Arica, we hired a boat to take us down the coast to see a colony of penguins and sea lions, drank a few beers, and booked train passage north to Tacna in Peru.  It was a good trip, I thought, well worth the twenty-year wait.  But I realized that while the mountains may always be there, the world is changing.  People who only a few years ago relied on herding and sustenance farming for support now have the internet and satellite TV.  As time passes, the culture and mystique of this ancient land will fade away.  The coastal cities will grow, populated by the youth of the altiplano fleeing the harsh life of their ancestors.  I’m glad I didn’t miss it completely. 

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