Desierto florido - the flowering desert

While in La Serena (see previous post) we took a tour into the desert. We wanted to see the flowering desert, a phenonemon which occurs in the otherwise dry desert north of La Serena near another town called Vallenar and up towards Copiapo, a large copper mining base further north. This doesn't happen every spring, only after wet winters - and of course the extent of the flowering depends on how wet the preceding winter was.

This was not one of the most spectacular years, but the good thing is that the photos we have show nicely the contrast between the desert and the flowers. In very wet years the otherwise completely arid desert apparently becomes coated with grass and flowers, until summer when it returns to sandy nothingness - so ironically in these wetter years you might wonder what the fuss is about unless you're already familiar with the area. The flowers come from bulbs hidden under the sand, which are coaxed into flowering when there is enough rain - otherwise they just wait for the next year.

There are more than 100km between La Serena and Vallenar and our guide drove us, so far as we could tell, most of the way there. The area immediately north of La Serena is a semi-arid transitional zone - the transition between the mediterranean climate of the central zone of Chile and the harsher, much hotter and drier, north.

While creating this blog on a laptop with a small screen we always think that many of these photos are best seen expanded - this blog program should let you do that by clicking on the image, then back in the browser to return to the blog. 

We left La Serena at about 0830 and it was pretty cold, driving north along, and occasionally stopping on, a coastal road with the fog coming off the sea.

scrub-land and the fog off the sea

the sea in the background

The landscape is similar to south-eastern Spain

After stopping a couple of times, we began an ascent up a range of hills. In the afternoon the sun is so bright, and stays for so long, on this hillside that it feeds this amazing green vegetation.

Struan and Anna at the top of the hill

We rounded the top of the hill, and started to descend: 

clouds on the floor

...and the world changed: 

the desert!

 Now we were really in the desert, the norte chico.

a flowering cactus

Anna with our guide - who had a cool old school chilean army type hat

one of hundreds of burrows of a burrowing rodent

After hours of seeing these wonderful flowers we arrived at a desert oasis, called Oasis (pronouned "Wasis" though). This seemed to be a very small village, with a great restaurant, swimming pool, and campsite in a sort of olive tree orchard.

music and asado - desert celebrations for bicentenario!

Raptor on the prowl

Anna playing this fab game involving throwing steel discs into a frog's mouth

that frog up close - it's impossible

a more familiar game

an oasis for sure

a jolly man and his parillada

that meaty goodness up close

a satisfied team, a sleepy guide, with an olive orchard in the background

Some photos from around the orchard:

hammock

We hope you enjoyed these almost as much as we did!

chao!