“Hola chicos!”
From Horiol’s very first friendly greeting as we opened the gate of his tiny hotel in equally tiny Putre, Chile, we knew we were in for a good time. This was a welcome omen, even more so once we discovered we’d been robbed in the Chilean frontier town of Arica. Boo! But it was our fault – a real beginner’s mistake. And it was just cash, and not too much, and Horiol’s big smile washed away the memory very quickly.
Horiol was a Jolly Green Giant. Tall as a tree, mouth blackened from chewing coca leaves or tobacco (I didn’t look too closely), and a very endearing way of speaking half-Spanish, half-English, punctuated with a French-style “eh, eh, eh” when emphasising his points, he would take us up into the Parque Nacional Lauca around 4,700 metres above sea level to walk alongside herds of alpaca grazing beneath Parinacota volcano, which bore a striking resemblance to Mt Fuji.
Putre was a wincy little village at 3,500m, nestled above a gorge which itself hung to the skirts of the mountain slopes that led up to the plateau of the Lauca park. It had three or four small shops, closed all afternoon, and two or three restaurants. After eating a delicious estafado de alpaca – alpaca stew – we roamed the village looking for something to do. There wasn’t really much. In fact, there wasn’t really anything. But the next day the village came alive for the celebrations of the Festival of the Virgin of the Asuncion. All day – and all night – a brass band roamed the streets playing the same tune over and over, while beautifully-dressed women twirled and twisted alongside, dresses flying in the air.
We followed around for a while, watching as the priest made various blessings at various points in the village. In the afternoon after the first night, they reached Putre’s cute little church and carried two statues of the Virgin back inside. After that, they partied in the town square for at least another 12 hours.
 Mt Yotei |
 Colca Canyon |
 Sham Valley |
The reason for visiting Putre was Parque Nacional Lauca – home to volcanoes, lakes, pink flamingos, llamas, alpacas, and their wild cousins, vicuñas. The park is mostly around 4,500m in altitude, which was enough to give me a dull headache for some of the day. It’s sparsely populated, with only a few very small villages and a few Chilean military outposts (the park is tucked into the north-east corner of Chile between Peru and Bolivia).
A popular stop-off is the miniscule village of Parinacota, most famous for its church. Horiol found us the man who held the keys and we had a look inside. The villagers have lashed a small table to the church wall, because legend has it the table once ran out into the streets and stopped in front of a man’s house. The man died the next day, so the table is seen as the harbinger of doom, and restrained accordingly. A small room to the side of the main part of the church contained a decent little treasure trove – all in silver – and three skulls of prominent Parinacotans who evidently did not wish to be forgotten. And the church walls have quite beautiful paintings of the “Stations of the Cross”, with Christ being tormented by Spanish conquistadors, an interesting twist given that the conquistadors forcibly converted most indigenous South Americans in the 15 and 1600s.
Lauca’s animals are very cute, and easy to see. Vicuñas, whose wool is so fine and valued that the animals were heavily hunted, are now protected and roam freely on the plateau, nibbling on the tough grass that grows there. From a distance they look a little like deer (minus the antlers, of course). Domesticated llamas and alpacas were also everywhere, some of them mooching around with little ribbons on their ears and necks.
Further up towards the frontier with Bolivia, the landscape for which Lauca is really famous revealed itself.
Parinacota volcano, which reminded me of Fuji-san, soars 6,348 metres above sea level. It dominates Lake Chungara, whose level was extremely low when we visited. In the right season – not when we were there! – Chungara hosts a large colony of pink flamingos. We saw a few, preening themselves off in the distance. There were plenty of other birds, raucously cackling and crowing and splashing around in the lake.
Around the shoreline, strange plants grew, despite the dry and high environment.
Away from the bog, the ground was mostly volcanic sand, peppered with rocks from pebbles to boulders.
Walking downhill was easy; getting back up really took your breath away. As Horiol, the Jolly Green Giant, reminded us: “Ok chicos, we are very high, eh, eh, yes! Walk slowly, take your time chicos, eh?” Later, we soaked away the muscular pain in a tiny little natural thermal bath looking up the rocky valley and into the blue sky beyond.
From Putre, Horiol drove us up to the main road and wished us farewell before we waited in the dust for the bus to La Paz, Bolivia.
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