A beautifully clear dawn with the sun rising just north of Licancabur volcano. At 7:30 we met in the “comedor” for a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, croissants, guava paste, and cheese and met Katia, the manager, with whom I have been emailing and had a helpful chat.
We set off at 8:45 driving south from San Pedro to the Salar de Atacama, a huge salt flat measuring about 20 miles wide by 50 miles long. It is surrounded by a ring of spectacular volcanoes and contains several lakes that are home to many water birds, including three species of flamingo: the Chilean, the Andean, and the Puma, or James's Flamingo.
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| Birdwatching the Salt Flats |
Bob, Hilary and I have seen the Chilean before and were hoping to get two more lifers, and three for Cait.
The lakes were a beautiful blue, reflecting mirror images of the pink and brown mountains behind them. We walked on paths, lined with lumps of salt and immediately saw flocks of flamingos swishing their feet in the briny water to stir up brine shrimp.
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| Andean Flamingos |
We could see the pink and white Chileans and the yellow-legged Andeans with their black rumps, but no James's.
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| Chliean Flamingo Flying |
We also saw black and white Andean Avocets with curved bills.
We started back towards our car and ran into a birding group who were excitedly looking at a James's Flamingos in the distance and directed us onto them! (The James's is similar to the Andean, except its legs are pink). The group was being led by Alvaro Jaramillo, who wrote our excellent "Birds of Chile" guides! Life birds and a birding celebrity!
We drove away from the lakes on back roads through the salt flats, which at times seemed to hardly exist, but finally reached Hwy 23 and started climbing up into the mountains.
We passed through the hamlet of Socaire and its pretty colonial church surrounded by ancient Incan terraces.
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| Ancient Incan Terraces |
We drove through vast stretches of golden bunch grass, occasional blue lupine and large mounds of cactus covered with dense red spines. Cait spotted a small herd of vicuña, smaller and more varied colored with woolier coats than the guanacos.
We also saw one ostrich-like Lesser Rhea and amazing views of the lovely bushy-tailed Andean Fox.
The road climbed up to over 13,000' and we descended into a valley with two glittering blue lakes, Lakes Miniques and Miscanti, surrounded by snow and high volcanoes!
We parked and walked on a snowy path to the lakes and spotted Bob's target bird, the rare and quite large Horned Coots.
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| Horned Coot |
They have a yellow bill topped with a black fleshy protuberance and they were swimming and splashing around in the icy water.
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Two Species of High-elevation Cacti
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It was after two by then, so we headed back to San Pedro, arriving at 4:15. Katia suggested Las Delicias del Carmen for dinner. We arrived at 6 PM and had a round of Pisco Sours followed by beers. Katia had said their portions were very large, so forewarned we split two delicious casseroles of Pastel de Choclo, a bowl of beef stew topped with a corn pudding - one of my favorites! It came with a classic Chilean salad of sliced tomatoes and onions - just the right amount. We stopped by a very nice crafts market that Katia had also recommended and admired their jewelry and fabrics. Home to bed.
We started back towards our car and ran into a birding group who were excitedly looking at a James's Flamingos in the distance and directed us onto them! (The James's is similar to the Andean, except its legs are pink). The group was being led by Alvaro Jaramillo, who wrote our excellent "Birds of Chile" guides! Life birds and a birding celebrity!
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