A weekend in late December, Larry was able to talk me into hiking a volcano not far from Calama. I bet you're thinking that it was one of these two volcanoes that we were to hike. Nope. These are San Pedro (20,160 ft.) and San Pablo (19,986 ft.). San Pablo is considered to be extinct but I read that the last verifiable eruption of San Pedro (on the left) was in 1938. It was spewing some steam this day which had me a tad uncomfortable as we had experienced a "tremor" the night before which I though could only mean the possibility of...more activity!
La Poruna is that little cinder cone to the left of San Pedro in this picture. I read that La Poruna is only 590 ft. high. However, I now know why it kicked my bum to hike up La Poruna -- we were at 12,467 ft.
There appeared to be several "paths" when we started this hiking adventure. Evidently not everyone is in agreement as to the easiest way up. Larry decided on a way up and off he scampered. The sides of the volcano are very steep and consist of loose cinder so the "hike" turned out to be more like climbing requiring the use of my hands (Larry knew to bring gloves along--whew!).
I stopped a lot to appreciate the view all the while thinking that there was going to be another "tremor" resulting in the larger of the cinder rocks responding to the shaking and allowing gravity to take over and I also couldn't help noticing that San Pedro seemed to be spewing more steam than when we arrived.
I finally joined Larry at the top. He had been exploring and found cactus.
This photo was taken as we began our trip back down. You can see our truck parked at the base of La Poruna. It was a beautiful view and going down was significantly easier! I was worried we'd have to slide down on our bums but we did just fine.
Had to show you that we did discover that there is some water and some green in the Atacama Desert!
Had to show you that we did discover that there is some water and some green in the Atacama Desert!
