{"id":65503,"date":"2024-07-29T17:18:32","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T15:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/actualites\/2024\/07\/29\/atacama-a-desert-under-a-rain-of-stars\/"},"modified":"2024-07-29T17:18:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-29T15:18:32","slug":"atacama-a-desert-under-a-rain-of-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/news\/2024\/07\/29\/atacama-a-desert-under-a-rain-of-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Atacama, a desert under a rain of stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miguel is nine years old and lives in a small village, a few dozen kilometres from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.
\nMiguel is nine years old. He has never seen rain!
\nEvery desert has its particularity. The Atacama chose to be the most arid, offering the world spectacular landscapes that seem to come from another planet.<\/a> Some say the Atacama resembles Mars when its rocks turn red. Its volcanoes and the fumaroles of its geysers could just as easily evoke Venus. Unless it\u2019s the dwarf planet Ceres, with its salt-saturated lakes.
\nLet\u2019s say instead that these landscapes plunge us out of time and space, toward an extraordinary unknown.
\nAnd while its days are made of mirages, its starlit nights, unlike anywhere else, invite reverie.<\/p>\n

Those who love deserts already have images of the Atacama in mind. Snow-capped peaks rising behind orange-red valleys, pink flamingos on the Chaxa lagoon, stretches of salt under a royal blue sky \u2014 these are the Atacama\u2019s \u201cpostcards\u201d. They rival those of the starry skies captured on the \u201croof of the world\u201d, at five thousand metres altitude, and those of the El Tatio geysers, known as one of the largest hot spring fields on Earth.
\nOnce there, the geysers, the red rocks, the salt flats and the snow-capped volcanoes are indeed present. But nothing is quite the same \u2014 everything takes on a tinge of unreality, everything becomes magical, supernatural. Like a journey into a fourth dimension, pulling us out of the space-time of planet Earth.
\nWhile some landscapes take time to reveal their full majesty to the traveller, the Atacama delivers an immediate uppercut to the day-visitor. A real shock! Never have landscapes seemed so vast, colours so pure. Even the silence is perfect. The only audible sound is the beating of one\u2019s own heart. All that remains is to let oneself be seized, in silence, happy to lose all bearings.<\/p>\n

What accounts for the magic? Perhaps the purity of the atmosphere, which seems to cast a crystalline veil over the endless red expanses, over the volcanoes, over the lagoons and salt marshes. The view carries for dozens of kilometres. Here, the air has such a strange density that it distorts one\u2019s vision. One of the few places on Earth, along with Antarctica, where this same sensation can be experienced.
\nIn the realm of mirages, the Atacama reigns supreme.
\nOn this curious planet, time, space and movement lose their consistency. However fast the 4×4 drives to reach one of the many sites around San Pedro de Atacama, one almost feels motionless. However many kilometres tick by on the odometer, the distant mountains and volcanoes never seem to draw closer. They remain fixed in place, indifferent to our attempts at movement. They seem to watch us, eternally serene and faintly mocking.<\/p>\n

The Atacama, a magical, mineral planet… Wherever the eye turns, all is supernatural beauty. The Licancabur volcano, \u201cmountain of the people\u201d in Quechua, is always within sight, watching over the white expanses of the Salar de Atacama from afar. The second-largest salt lake in the world casts a light so intense it blurs the vision, much like a stretch of snow might. Here too, bearings become confused. Are we truly in the most arid desert in the world, or in the powder snow of the Alps? The 40\u00b0C heat is a reminder that we are indeed in the Atacama, as are the pink flamingos glimpsed in the distance, as is the smell of chloride rising from the brackish crusts bordering the salt flat. Then, suddenly, the flamingos dissolve into the air, caught in a mirage. The snow-capped peaks remain as still as marble \u2014 or ice: they stand so high that the heat cannot reach them.
\nThe magic reaches its peak when, in the early morning, at nearly four thousand two hundred metres altitude, one watches the sun rise over the El Tatio geysers…
\nLeaving San Pedro at 4am, the temperature is below freezing and millions of stars act as streetlamps lighting up the sky. Nights are rarely dark in Miguel\u2019s country!
\nOn arrival, just before dawn breaks, as the geysers bubble, the mineral planet opens up, lays bare its entrails, releasing fumaroles and scalding jets of water. It rumbles as it expels its elements. One can\u2019t help but think it is giving birth to countless children, who will become stone, volcano, salt. And we watch this spectacle, happy, slightly breathless, for oxygen grows scarce at this altitude.
\nScholars then recall that the Atacama is a paradise for scientists searching for the origins of life. Here they have discovered cyanobacteria<\/a> among the most primitive in the world, capable of surviving by colonising rock.
\nThe Atacama desert, or the miracle of rocks giving birth to life…
\nA mineral wedding.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Text: Karine Welter
\n\u00a9 Photos: Awasi Atacama & Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miguel is nine years old and lives in a small village, a few dozen kilometres from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Miguel is nine years old. He has never seen rain! Every desert has its particularity. The Atacama chose to be the most arid, offering the world spectacular landscapes that seem to come from another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":64476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[2230,2229,2231,2233,2232,2292,2294,2293],"class_list":["post-65503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-at-the-heart-of-nature-volume-1","category-chile","tag-atacama","tag-chili","tag-desert","tag-desert-atacama","tag-etoiles","tag-san-pedro-de-atamaca","tag-volcan-licancabur","tag-voyage-chili"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etendues-sauvages.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}