Getting Lauca involves either renting a car or taking a tour. A 2 day tour was $130 per person, so we’re going the independent thing again and renting a car. In the end with the cost of gas and car rental we probably didn’t save more than $50 over the tour, but it was fun to have our own car and freedom of schedule. Another option that I’d consider very good if altitude doesn’t mess you up or you’re already acclimatized is doing the one day tour, which might be overwhelming, but is only about $30.
Car rental is actually more expensive than in the US. We ended up with a truck from Ghama Rent A Car (found in a sketchy mall near the international bus station) which was around $50 per day. People kept telling us a car wouldn’t cut it on the roads. After having gone we wish we had gotten a car which can be found for around $30 a day. Whatever you get, fill the tank in town before going, because the only gas near the park is purchased out of people’s home in Putre for about a 50% markup. You’ll want to take extra gas in a can or something if you want to drive to the salt flats, and then you might need 4×4. We didn’t go there though. Driving in Chile is almost like back home. There’s road signs and people actually pay attention to things like stop lights and speed limits, so it’s not scary like Peru would be.
It’s about 2 hours from Arica through deserty mountains before you get to interesting scenery, although you do pass candelebra cacti on the way. We burned a half a tank of gas getting there since you go from see level to about 4500 meters. We’re totally burned out on the charm of rural mountain towns, so Putre didn’t appeal to us at all. We stopped by there to get some more water before heading into the park.
We planned to camp at Lago Chungara so we headed directly there, but when we got there it was snowing and way to cold. Besides that, we were told camping is $8 per tent and we got a room in the tiny village of Parinacota for $10 for the both of us. In Parinacota you just stay with whatever family you can find in the deserted looking village. We found an old man with a dirty bathroom, but two beds with lots of blankets.
The next morning the weather had cleared up a lot and the views with the volcanoes are magnificent. The land around doesn’t look like much since all the vegetation is under a foot tall. We did a little nature hike of about 1 hour around the village and saw lots of birds in the marshy areas and alpacas where the greeness grows. We both felt pretty good hiking at this altitude, so we must not have lost all our acclimitization from Puno. The trails are decently maintained, but not at the end.
From the village we went back to Lake Chungara, which was much more impressive with clear skies. There’s a trail but we could only find half of it which is very short. You see tons of birds doing their thing here. There’s also the usual sweater/blanket/knick knack vendors at the ranger station.
On the way out of the park we stopped at the hot springs. The ones in the park aren’t that hot and are in a little cabin. This is right next to the little Las Cuevas trail were you can see some of the weird little endangered rodents, called Vizcachas, running around. There’s some more hotsprings outside the park called the Jurassi Hotsprings. Those are HOT! There’s an admission which is about $2, but there’s also multiple pools and mud baths so it’s totally worth it. The mud in the mud baths smells pretty bad, but the water is really hot. The top pool I couldn’t even touch. We played in the mud a little bit, washed off and soaked in the hot outdoor pool. We also had a picnic lunch here, which is nice since there’s a building for shade and tables. After lunch we went to the indoor pools since the sun doesn’t kick your butt there.
Overall it’s a very nice park, but both Kim and I are much more partial to heavily treed areas, something you won’t see at all here. It’s good that this is a preserved area though as the ecosystem seems very fragile. Hopefully Chile will continue to fund their Conaf department to keep land like this in good shape.
One other interesting thing. On the way back we stopped at Eco Truly to have dinner because there’s a half dozen signs on the road advertising vegetarian food in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately they weren’t serving dinner that night because their Hare Krishna leader was receiving an award or something in town. Instead we got a tour of their little compound and gave some women a lift into town. There land is interesting in that all their buildings look like beehives. They’re all about being sustainable with composting toilets and organic gardening. They had some funky art installations too. It turned out they were going to the Govindha restaurant in Arica, which is about the only vegetarian restaurant we found in Arica and around the block from the Residential Real where we were staying.