Index

Introduction Lluta Valley Chungarà Lake Some tips Conclusion

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Introduction

My trip to Chile lasted for two and a half weeks and I had the opportunity to see so many incredible places. Among the wonderful places we visited with @lezra, one of the most memorable is definitely Lake Chungará.

On the way to Bolivia, you leave the city of Arica (click on the name to see the amazing post of @lezra) towards the northeast, through Lluta Valley.

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Lluta Valley

This valley together with the Azapa Valley are two oases in the middle of the desert. They are rich in harvesting soil and home to many products such as olives, tomatoes, papayas and much more. The impressive thing of it is that it is in the middle of the desert. Surrounded by sand mountains and rocks, with very little water, subterranean water rivers flowing towards the ocean give life to the rich areas. They used to be home to the main source of livelihood and food for the old towns. You have to understand, Chile is such a geographically accident place, there was little room for sustainable towns to grow and flourish without the technology we have today. You find towns and cities in Chile after driving many many hours and these are always either close to the ocean or to any form of sweet water (or both).. otherwise, it was just impossible to survive.

The Lluta valley is stunning, and as you drive through it starts taking you up up up til you reach the 4500 meters above sea level. If you have never been this high, you might not be familiar with the feeling of little oxygen. It was my first encounter with the altitude, even at 4000 I could feel shortness of breath and headaches, especially when I tried to make rapid movements. You walk slowly. Absolutely never rush to tie your shoelaces and eat preferably salty things. No sweets. When we arrived at the lake, we decided to get out of the car and shoot some drone footage to capture even more of the beauty of the landscape where we were. We move in slow-mo. Like walking on the moon, except for the gravity which was not lower.

a Drone video converted to gif (sorry for the low quality but otherwise it was not possible to load it) of @lezra wandering around the valley

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Chungarà Lake

Lake Chungará is surrounded by volcanoes, other smaller lakes, and wild animals like llamas and flamingos. We had a beautiful day there. Nice sunny weather. Next to the Bolivian border, Lake Chungará is the highest lake in Chile and the world. You can’t navigate in it like you can in Titicaca lake in Bolivia. But this latter lake does not hit 4000 meters above sea level.

Thank you @lezra for taking this amazing picture of me (I swear the one in the picture is me, even if is not so clear 😂)

While we were at the lake I also learned how to use the drone which we then used for the rest of the holiday to take spectacular videos of the places we visited.
The most difficult thing to do while using the drone is definitely the return to 'base'. Usually, the drone can be flown from any surface that is flat enough to allow it to stay horizontal to the ground. It is a different matter for landing, where there are several variations that can make the operation more difficult than expected. One is obstacles of course, as the drone is equipped with sensors that allow it to detect the presence of objects around it that could pose a danger. Another problem can be gusts of wind that can destabilize the drone, causing it to lose its attitude. This of course can also be a problem in other phases of flight, but when you are above a certain height the situation is more easily recoverable (provided, of course, that the wind is not too strong), whereas during landing it is more unpredictable. Precisely for these cases, we had brought along a square wooden base that rested on the ground and served as a landing point. When even this noise was sufficient and the drone crashed, the last resort was the manual landing, in which you have to be very careful to get the distance right.

The views are breathtaking and unbelievable.

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Some tips

As always in Chile, one of the main things to take into account is the scarcity of gas stations. Be sure to take enough gas with you in the car as there are no gas stations once you leave the city of Arica. We learned this the hard way since we calculated the distances we had to cover during the day in the wrong way, and when we arrived at a city that was on the way to go to the Lake, we were already short of fuel and there were no places where to refill it. Luckily the people of these small towns are prepared for this kind of circumstance, maybe because they are used to tourists running out of it, or maybe also they themselves need it. In one of the local stores, we were able to find some tanks of gasoline (20 liters each) that we immediately bought (at a price that was double the normal one, but hey... we couldn't blame them). So, remember always do your math and check accurately how km you need to cover and how much gasoline you have at your disposal.

And we recommend that you stop on the road for some traditional food. Truck drivers always know where nice good and cheap food is. Just stop where they all stop and treat yourself to some pan and pepper, meat, and cazuelas.

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Conclusion

As always, in Chile, I only saw amazing places, and Lake Chungarà was one of them. Probably compared to other places I saw during the vacation, like Laguna Roja or Valle de la Luna (a link to the post is included in case you are curious), is less remarkable, but still, I have a very good memory since it was my first experience at such a high altitude and, let's be honest, if I had seen the Lake in any other country it would have been by fr the best thing I saw, but Chile is so full of amazing things that the standard bar is set very high.
Thank you @lezra for making me discover such an amazing country!!!

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_{All photos were taken with our phones and the drones.
Farewell image and text separators, created by me with Canva}