Forrest and Meryl do Southie: National Parks of Northern Chile

I am presently in Northern Chile, and I have spent the past two weeks working my way up here from Santiago, at the moment I am in San Pedro De Atacama. About 4 days ago I visited the National Park Nevado de 3 Cruces located near the Argentine border, high up in the Andes over 14,000ft. We visited the park and the surrounding area and spent 2 nights camping on the side of a saline lake called Laguna Verde at almost 15,000ft. The season for the park is over, it ended about 2 weeks ago, but while we were there we encountered 4 exploratory geologists! We arrived late in the evening and they invited us into the refugio that they were using to have coffee and snacks. They explained to me (in Spanish- my geological terminology in Spanish isn’t so good) that there is a volcanic formation under the lake that is leeching titanium into the water, so it’s dissolved in this freezing salty lake. I assumed they were their checking things out on land, but I got the full idea of their field work the next morning when they suited up in full dry suits and got in a tiny motor boat! They were diving for water samples in a lake 4 times saltier than the Mediterranean (this required lots of belt weights), and the water temp because of all the salt is below freezing (-2-3deg C), the air temp wasn’t so warm either! I think the only thing that made their diving bearable were the hot springs located on the edge of the lake!

Near the lake is the highest active Volcano in the world, (Ojos del Slado) and the tallest peak in Chile (only 70m shorter than Aconcagua) we hiked part of the way up to 18,000ft. After we left the park we headed back to the coast to another national park Pan de Azucar, where I saw Penguins in the desert!! They live on an island that is covered with cactus. I never thought I would see a penguin and a cactus in the same place, but Chile is full of surprises.

I have never seen so many mines in my entire life, Northern Chile is one massive mining complex. I saw a monitoring well at 16,000ft in the middle of the desert. It seemed funny to me because it is one of the driest places on earth and no one has to de-water their pits here b/c there is no water. I also met a hydrogeologist in the Park he was from Canada working for Golder, he was looking for water so they could being operating a new mine- but he wasn’t finding any. He informed me that AMEC is their biggest competitor here and that seemed to be true, I saw a few AMEC trucks driving around.

I have toured an old nitrate mining ghost town, from the 1920, and visited an abandoned copper smelter from the 30s. At the moment I am really close to a massive copper mine that was formerly run be Anaconda Copper CO (people here actually know that Montana is a state b/c of this), it’s about 3x the size of the Berkley pit!

I am heading into Bolivia on Thursday, to continue my journey north.